Melissammoore’s Weblog

Taking in one more of many viewings of Shaun of the Dead, I saw it in a different light. I had never before really seen this as much more than a hysterical film until i looked at it with a postmodern lense. In the film, Shaun is stuck in a mundane routine of a stagnant position at his job, going out to his favorite pub with an unmotivated friend, and dating an unsatisfied girlfriend. As Liz can no longer take Shaun’s slacking, she dumps him which offers the catalyst for Shaun’s changing his life. Shaun reaches this epiphany simultaneously with a zombie plague in which they are attacking everyone living. The film spoofs the typical zombie movie cliches as well as addressing cliches of contemporary society, such as the male ‘adult child’ who is uanble to progress in life due to the inability to relinquish the past. Shaun is doing a job with no potential progression, has an inability to commit to his girlfriend and can not give up his sidekick buddy or favorite pub and records. Shaun has this Peter Pan syndrome, and it’s not until the zombies threaten to take everything from him that he takes charge of his life. In the end, Shaun and his girlfriend are saved and Ed has been bitten but is still alive. Six months after the attack, the zombies have been simualted into society, Ed is living in Shaun’s shed where they continue to play video games, and Liz is dating Shaun again but has taken on less of a typical girlfriend role and more of a friend role. Shaun has everything he could want but not much has changed. Just like the zombies, Shaun has assimilated into the consumerist society and is content at living this mundane, consumeristic life.

With the end of the novel, the narrator uncovers a harsh realization in regards to the town and himself. As the history of the town folds out before him, we find that the town was initially founded by freedmen after the Civil War and given by them the name Freedom. Later a white entrepreneur came to the town and renamed it after himself, Winthrop. Winthrop produced barbed wire, a sharp metal material that’s purpose is to contain things or to keep things out. The narrator discovers that Winthrop is a name that represents the repression of the freedmen yet again by the powerful white men. Just as the barbed wire holds things back, Winthrop held back the freedmen from their freedom in their own town. The freedmen were now a force for the wealthy white man to gain more wealth through their work. The narrator realizes this about himself, as he went to a mainly white Ivy league college only to be a part of the work force to increase wealth for a predominantly white male run corporation and as he further discovers a white male run country. As the narrator concludes, “As the weeks went on and he settled into his new life, he had to admit that actually, his foot hurt more than ever.” Although the narrator did what he felt was appropriate, a name only covers the hurt, the struggle and injustices. Nothing can make up for the wrong, and not much in life has changed. In facing this realization of the truth, the narrator is no longer blind to reality but rather is aware of the awful truth which makes moving on with his life difficult.

As I conintued through Apex Hides The Hurt, I saw how the narrator’s struggles overlaped that of the town’s. The narrator had fallen into the midst of the corporate world and is at they height of his career, yet constantly feels he needs to make worth of his profession. The narrator tries to refuse these feelings that his profession is worthless, by hiding behind a wealthy lifestyle. The narrator was named one of 50 most eligible bachelors and put that title to use in going out on meaningless dates to nice restaurants, until eventually his life bottoms out. His time in Winthrop seems to parallel the town’s search for a new name, as he is in pursuit for his identity. The narrator realizes that his old self is no longer fulfilling, similar to that Winthrop is no longer fulfilling the town’s needs as a name. As much as the narrator realizes his need to move on, he can not conceive of who he is, similar to that of the town being unable to reach a suitable name. The narrator is in a stalemate which is juxtaposed to the stalemate of the town. The town is headed towards a new, commercial era yet there are remenants of the past throughout the town.

The first half of the novel was easy for me to get into because the concept really struck my interest. The idea of re-naming a town for the sake of ’catching up with the twenty first century’ seems like such a trendy, American thing to do. It reminded me of how people in the public eye give themselves stage names when they are up and coming. These names are more marketable than what they were given at birth, and they stick.  This made me wonder at my own attachments with my name, and that I might have difficulty changing my name. In many ways a name represents history, such as a last name is inherited through being a part of a family and the name of the town I live in dates back to Dutch settlers. In a way, changing a name seems to be changing a history or what we believe to know about that history.