Giles Bowkett has posted one of his (lengthy) discussions on What Zombie Movies Are About. Giles writes a lot of programming related stuff (Ruby in particular), and I’ve been following his blog in that regard for a while. But this post just seemed particularly relevant to Left 4 Dead:
Another problem: saying that “zombies equal homeless people” gives us a simple, pat explanation. Simple, pat explanations are useless when you want to understand a mythological monster. Mythological monsters have more than one dimension. It’s their multi-dimensional nature that makes them valuable for stories. Consider vampires. True Blood can tell stories about sexual identity with vampires, Twilight can tell a story about teenage romance with vampires, and Let The Right One In can tell a story about isolation, co-dependent relationships, and disease with vampires.
There’s not much of the homeless in the zombies from George Romero’s unsettling, brilliant Night Of The Living Dead, which every zombie movie since 1968 owes a debt to. The zombies in Dawn Of The Dead, Romero’s 1978 sequel, are nothing like the homeless at all. They wear nice clothes and spend every moment of their un-lives wandering around a mall looking at brand-new stuff. They look just like shoppers.
28 Days Later and Night Of The Living Homeless tell stories about homelessness with zombies, while Dawn Of The Dead uses zombies to tell a story about the emptiness of consumerism as a cultural value. This story remains relevant today, especially now, when we’re discovering the emptiness of consumerism as an engine of the economy. The low-budget horror-comedy Re-Animator, which blends Ghostbusters with Moby Dick, uses zombies to tell an incredible story (by H.P. Lovecraft) about obsession, and the dangerous border territory shared by madness and genius.
What about L4D Zombies?
This got me thinking about what metaphor the zombies infected in L4D represent.
Lets take a look their general description:
- Meander around aimlessly groaning and occasionally make strained, agony sounds
- When provoked, attack viciously and irrationally in a large pack
- Hostile to any new people in their environment
- General poor hygiene - most appear unwashed.
- Loud, sudden shocks (such as car alarms) cause them to descend in great numbers from a wide area and attack a single target
- Incoherent communication style
- Low apparent intellectual capacity
- Attracted to small, shiny, electronic beeping objects
Now, what could this represent at a higher, abstract level? What moral is Valve trying to teach us here? I thought about this for about 5 seconds, and then it occurred to me.
Steam forum users are Valve’s inspiration for the L4D zombies
This thread over at ubercharged sums it up best: The Best Of The Steam Forums
Yes, the friendly and intelligent denizens over at the Steam Forums are the metaphorical monsters in L4D. Valve isn’t trying to make an artistic point about homelessness, or mass-consumerism. No, they have given us a pointed social satire on the dumbassedness of the users that direct conversation at them every day.
Lets take a look their general description:
- Meander around aimlessly groaning and occasionally make strained, agony sounds
- When provoked, attack viciously and irrationally in a large pack
- Hostile to any new people in their environment
- General poor hygiene - most appear unwashed.
- Loud, sudden shocks (such as thread about aimbotting) cause them to descend in great numbers from a wide area and attack a single target
- Incoherent communication style
- Low apparent intellectual capacity
- Attracted to small, shiny, electronic beeping objects
As another example, have a read of naother achievement quesiton.
This just goes to show that the most scary monsters, are also the ones that are the most familiar.
