Netflix and zombies.

I've been saying for a while that I need to sign up for Netflix, and today I finally did. After looking through their selection, I can pretty safely say that this will be both (a) one of the highlights of my summer and (b) highly addictive and a large time-waster.

Anyway, Jewel and I watched our first selection tonight: a mockumentary called American Zombie (directed by Grace Lee). It seemed like the perfect fit for us, since we both love documentaries and zombie movies. Both in one? Sign us up. It ended up being pretty interesting, though it departs from the classic zombie archetype quite a bit. It was entertaining as a zombie movie, and it also had some potential as an allegory for illegal immigration. Your local Blockbuster might not have it, but if you can find it, check it out.

And watching the movie got me thinking about a project/idea I've had in the back of my head for some time: someday, I want to teach an elective course on Zombie Literature. It'd be interesting to study the genre itself and its evolution, as well as the historical context of various zombie works and the possible allegorical connections. Sometimes a zombie is just a zombie, but sometimes a zombie could be code for AIDS, minority groups, or anything we fear due to lack of understanding.

Possible texts and films for the course (in no particular order):

• Evil Dead
• Night of the Living Dead
• 28 Days Later (as well as its sequel, 28 Weeks Later)
• Zombieland (a more lighthearted look at the post-zombie apocalypse, if such a thing is possible)
• Dead Set (a BBC miniseries that envisions how contestants on the set of the British version of Big Brother would cope with an outbreak)
• American Zombie
• Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (a unique and rather unexpected re-imagining of Austen)
• World War Z (a novel similar to American Zombie in that it takes a mockumentary approach, in this case post-outbreak oral histories)
• The Zombie Survival Guide (like the Worst Case Scenario series, but only for situations involving the undead)

And that's just off the top of my head. Like I said, it's just an idea at this point, but I think it's got potential. Who knows -- fifteen years from now, undergrads will be clamoring to take ENGL 550: Zombie Lit with Prof. Smith. Maybe for the final I'll make everyone smear their faces with red food dye and stumble around the quads.

Ah, higher education.

-- its