Who is up for some more zombie talk? As explained in the short intro to this weeks show, we ran into some scheduling issues that prevented us from getting to the topics we wanted to discuss so in lieu of missing a week we have something outside the box to share.
Previous guest host on the podcast Brent Holland promised to drag Ted onto his radio/television show Night Fright to spend an hour and it just so happens that very thing went down – taped as the 2012 halloween special dedicated to zombies. So that is what we have to share with you this week, a preview of the Night Fright program featuring (a very uncomfortable) Kingstown Ted chatting about all things zombie. While on set, we also recorded a short conversation discussing vampire mythology and the radical shift toward the romanticized presentation of the creature of the night, the metaphorical savagery of the werewolf mythology, and Ted may or may not have threatened to run naked in the moonlight.
Thanks for your patience with this week’s placeholder episode, looking forward to sharing a wealth of recent genre watches next week.
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I’d like the recommend Carmilla. A vampire novel that pre-dates Dracula and to my knowledge is one of the first examples of the the beautiful , romantic, aristocratic vampire. Back then they were used as a metaphor of the wealthy literally feeding off of the masses.
Oh and Frankenstein wasn’t a zombie, he was a Promethean – Animated by the Divine Fire, but lacking a soul.
The “aristocratic vampire” was actually born in the same room as Frankenstein’s monster, at that same party. After Mary told her story, John Polidori told and later published a story called “The Vampyre”, starring a vampire aristocrat named “Lord Ruthven”, who was a transparent (and unflattering) portrait of Lord Byron, who was also at that party. Given how atrociously he treated Mary and her sister Claire on that trip (don’t have time but look it up- seriously, the guy was a total bastard), it’s not surprising that he became the model for the aristocrat vampire.
Brains!!
I enjoyed the show and just wanted to chime in. The great thing about the zombie genre is that it brings out the viewers own concerns and fears. You guys discussed how (slow walking) zombies represent the inevitability of death. To me, the zombie story also represents the struggle of the protagonist to maintain an identity and consciousness. Dawn of the Dead I think illustrated this most heavily. The zombies were the consumers, no longer even knowing or caring what they do. They just remember the shopping mall. When I take in a zombie film or book, I tend to see it in terms of the individual survivors trying not to become absorbed into the horde of mindless shufflers. The unconsciousness and lack of self-awareness frightens me the most about zombies because I fear that in our society.