(not) Zen and the (not) Art of (not) Zombies

Today on my way to work I passed a neon sign with a girly devil face on it, an art and design studio of some kind, called “Zombies.” Art and design, I will remind. Girly devil face, I will remind you.

Let’s do some meta-analysis. There’s “classical” which is the idea that truth is beauty and beauty truth, that there’s an underlying universal structure to things. Then there’s “modern” which is the idea that there’s no underlying universal structure, only the structures we create. Then “post-modern,” which says not even the structures we make have any structure. ‘Post-post modern” would be “Ironic,” and so would say there are structures after all, but only in a lack of structure, and “Post-Ironic” says nevermind structure at all, just be.

That’s glib, but sue me if you don’t think a person who never took a single philosophy, art history, or music survey course has any business talking about this stuff. This is a zombie blog, for Romero’s sake.

Let’s apply my glibness to zombie history. Start with the first zombie movie, call that classical. Then the first zombie apocalypse move, call that modern. Then the first zombie movie where people are killing each other more than zombies are, call that post-modern. Post-post or ironic would be all of this zombies stuff we’re experiencing now, zombies in commercial, cute zombies on T-shirt, zombies as metaphors.

Post-ironic zombies, then, just are. The zombie art and design studio doesn’t try to do anything to discuss the zombie “thing,” to further any kind if understanding. It’s pseudo-zen. It’s returning the word to the very core of existence—just a word, devoid of connotation, barely even a label. A sound stuck on a wall over an image next to a place where they… well, I don’t know what they do. And so I don’t know what they do, I don’t even know if they exist.

There’s cartoon out there on the web, showing four zombies at a dinner table. One says “I've always thought of zombies as representing a pervasive American xenophobia.” The next says “Really, I’ve always considered us a metaphor for runaway consumerism.” The next one says, “There’s something to the idea that we illustrate the tenuous line between civilization and barbarism.” The last zombie thinks to himself “I feel really stupid for ordering brains now…”

“Xenophobia” is the classical concept. “Consumerism” is modern. “Barbarism” is post-modern. Ordering brains, and the cartoon itself is “ironic.” This blog post is post-ironic. Get it now?

Yeah, me neither.