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March 21, 2005

Dawn of the Cheeseheads

At last comes the anniversary of the release of the remake of the classic horror flick (...carry the one...), Dawn of the Dead. The re-make, set in my home state of Wisconsin, is an update on the orignal with a few variations. The story is of the recently dead returning to life and attacking the living in an attempt to consume their flesh. Of course, a little suspension of disbelief is involved. It has a black police officer in Wisconsin.

Kidding!

It's wonderful, of course, that Hollywood chose to set a movie like this in Wisconsin, and to not paint the residents as yokels; there's a Hollywood law that requires that if a film isn't set in a few certain American locations, the locals must be inbred hicks who speak with Southern accents... even if it's in Washington). However, the film runs into some trouble because, in their efforts to avoid the stereotyping, they seem to have disregarded the setting entirely. Let me offer a parallel with a typical film form of recreation: surfing. It's easy to dismiss this bit of fun, when you're from an area where it's impossible to surf, as the domain of blond-haired doofuses, so films often show businessmen, engineers, etc, participating to show that this stereotype isn't the case. Fine, I'll believe it. So why is it, then, that films can't show other things in such a light? Why is it only rednecks who hunt and fish for the most part, when in reality people of varying incomes and educations do it in real life? I only bring it up because of some of the deficiencies of plot that come up. You see, odds are if you pick a male Wisconsinite at random, they would have at least one of the following: gun (for hunting), boat (for fishing), SUV/Pick-up (for hauling and off-roading), or ATV, dirtbike, or snowmobile (for off-roading too). Odds are you may have several of them, and this is the key part, even if you live in a major city. For certain key weekends, the roads are jammed with people of all backgrounds, including differences of race, gender, income, etc, heading to the best places for hunting, fishing, boating, etc. It's a cultural part of the state in the same way that standing on a piece of fiberglass in the ocean is a cultural part of California.

Now, I bring this up because it speaks a bit to some of the plot points of the film. For one thing, not one person in the film has a rifle/shotgun for hunting. Poppycock. That many people, there should be, at absolute minimum, three. But the major issue is the rich jerk and his yacht that's the key to the escape. Folks, even my brother has his own boat, and this guy has to write out a check to pay for a pack of cigarettes. Granted, it's no yacht, but why does it have to be? You're not talking about the ocean here, you're talking a lake, and even if you don't own a boat, there are boats all over the place with "for sale" signs up that, can be used (and I'm not talking about row boats, just so you understand). Saying you own a boat in Wisconsin is like saying you own skis if you live in Colorado, or an umbrella if you live in Seattle, or a politician if you live in New York.

But where the issue of local color really comes into play is in the special features section. There's an interesting fake news account of the descent into madness as the situation worsens and worsens. It has a cameo appearance by Earl from the Joe Schmo Show declaring martial law, which was hysterical to me. The news man really delivers a, shall we say, um, bad, yes, bad is the word I'm looking for, performance. He starts out by announcing that what had originally been reported as a race riot in Madison was actually an error. No kidding. If you told someone here that there's either a race riot in Madison or the bodies of the recently dead are returning to life and feasting on the living, they'd ask how recently you were talking. After that they'd ask you if you were allowed to hunt the recently dead for sport, and if you needed a license. Unfortunately, that would create a severe dilemma, because there's a firm belief in eating your kill, and that could get seriously ugly since Jeffrey Dahmer's no longer around to help us Wisconsinites out on this one. But getting back, a race riot in Madison? Anything after that is mundane, including man-eating zombies. That, in fact, should have been how it was handled. "What was originally considered a race riot has actually been revealed to merely be an outbreak of living dead. Residents are advised to collect beer and tags from the corner bait shop."

I will say, all joking aside, that while Wisconisin isn't the melting pot of the world, there's a large number of what is called in the media "minority races." Largely we don't think about it much here because, first off, you're so bundled up in the arctic winds blowing out of Canada you couldn't tell if someone next to you was a Wookiee, nevermind a different race. Second, you are far more likely to suffer from prejudice over your football team than over anything so mundane as where you or your ancestors came from. You can come from any nation on Earth, visibly sporting types of diseases scientists haven't gotten around to naming, that's okay so long as you like the green and gold. But if you come from Minnesota in your f**king Vikings jersey with it's f**king purple and white colors, why the hell don't you and your kind just go back where you came from! We don't need your type around here, trying to take our jobs so you can get money to buy more of your purple and white f**king Vikings shit. It's against the natural order....

Anyway, the fake news report also included a short speech by the president which cracked me up, because it included the famous Roosevelt quote: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." So, we don't have to fear being eaten in our beds by mindless zombies? Whew, what a load off that is!

Still, as far as zombie movies go, this satisfied me, and despite some of the bits that got a chuckle, the special features were quite good as well. So, if you want to see a mob of crazed people in cheesehats attacking, but don't much care for football, check out Dawn of the Dead.

Posted by Chuck at March 21, 2005 10:01 PM

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