They're Coming For You, Barbara...

Zombies are on the loose! It seems like every horror film, show, game has some sort of Zombie Apocolypse attached to it these days. From The Walking Dead and it's multiple spin-off shows, to the latest craze surrounding The Last of Us, it seems like people can't get enough of the undead.
Is it a good thing? Is it lazy? Or is it all fair game? Let's chat about re-animators!

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Download this and future episodes of our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocketcasts, and anywhere else to find your favorite shows. You can search Why Are We Like This? and please be sure to subscribe, and/or write a review if possible to help build our show.  Have an idea for a future episode, or want to join us for a conversation? Send us a message with the link above!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Hey everybody, welcome back. This is episode four, season four of the Mr. and Mrs. Show. I am Nomi More.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

They're coming to get you, know me.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

They've always been coming to get me.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

This is Robert. Hi.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Hi. We are talking about zombie apocalypse culture today.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Post-apocaloptic.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Post-apocaloptic.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Um zombies. I actually, as you guys know, I think you're turning into one, actually. I feel it. Yeah. I feel like I am a zombie.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

You are you are on the slow road to recovery. I feel I feel much better now.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Good. I'm glad. Yes. No, I am really glad. Because you're a terrible sick person.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

I am a terrible sick person.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Awful to be around when you're sick. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

I am awful to be around when I'm sick because I hate being. It's being sick is being in this like imaginary prison for me. I can't do the things that I want to do. I can't go out. I can't think normally. I can't feel normal. And my anxiety just goes through the roof because I'm also not the kind of person that just gets a cold. I will go two or three years without getting sick. I get what I think is a cold. And then two months later I've gone through strep throat pneumonia.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

And or COVID and a sinus infection. It's great. Yeah. It's real fun.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. Um, I just get sick. And also, too, I just want to be left the fuck alone. So that's not that bad either.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

Yeah. Yeah, it's not all bad.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

When I get cranky and when I become that miserable person to deal with is when people start coming to me and talking to me or expecting things of me as if I'm not sick. Like, bitch, my eyes are crossed, my hair hasn't seen water in four days. I can barely walk straight. Don't ask me any important questions right now. I'm solely focused on not dying at the moment.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

Because she's a zombie.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Because I don't want to be a zombie unless I take the fucking potion from Death Becomes Her.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Um, I don't like scary movies very much. Um as many of you know. But I'm like ramping it up and and like building on my tolerance of scariness. So I enjoy types of scary movies, and zombie movies are something that I have grown to appreciate. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Tell us about that, Robert.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Well, I I feel like I was always afraid of it. Like when when I first started watching movies on my own, like it wasn't a movie that my parents would put on. Uh, there was some stuff like 28 Days Later. Oh yeah. And um that like fast zombies. Yeah, and so it was I I I didn't grow up with the um Knight of the Living Dead zombies that are like a little more slower and kind of dumb and funny. Um so it it's it's something where I feel like people have taken liberty in telling different versions of zombie stories, yes, and that's kind of cool to me. Like I see something like Sean of the Dead. This is one of my favorite movies, um, because it's it's it feels more comedy, but it's also really well done, and it's a zombie movie. Um but on the flip side, I feel like zombies are kind of overdone now.

SPEAKER_00 3:36

A hundred percent. That is that is my feeling with the zombie apocalypse culture, is the fact that it's actually become a culture. It's I don't remember, it started with Resident Evil in like 2001 or 2002, which was a brand new take on the zombie horror genre, and it was fantastic, and they did a number of them, and then of course, there are all these knockoffs, and then um uh Romero uh comes back with you know the Living Dead franchise, and some of those were fantastic. Uh, and then you get the Walking Dead, and Walking Dead was something that just never gelled with me. I watched a few episodes of it, I really couldn't get into it because I think that there were things other than the zombie aspect of it that were pulling people in, and then once that happens, it becomes secondary to the stories of the players. It just becomes a backdrop. And it's like, well, I can tune into any network cable television show to get this is us. I don't need it uh with the zombie backdrop. Horror movies, I think, do not make good horror franchises because if you stretch the scare out too long, it's no longer a scare.

SPEAKER_01 4:53

I think that's a good opposition.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

And then the merchandising from it comes in, and I think there's more opportunity, although it weakens and dilutes the horror. When you have something that's going on for two, three, four, five seasons, and you start playing up like the hotness of the characters, it provides more merchandising, and then once again it becomes about making money. Not making money off of a really good movie to pay the people who brought us that story, but just for the people that are sitting in the offices in Century City wanting to count their pennies as they come into their payroll.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

I think we watched the first season or so, and it wasn't bad TV. I enjoyed watching it. Um, but at some point I did realize that it was it was starting to become more of a story about the people rather than uh an isolated incident, which I also think is kind of interesting, but it's something that I have a hard time with a lot of uh series these days, especially Netflix series. I I feel like the powers that be are intentionally dragging these stories out in order to fill content to get more viewership, to get more watched hours, which translates to more engagement on social media and more dollars, yep. And and I think that many of these stories can be very succinctly put into a traditional feature-length film.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 6:17

And I and I wish that that was But they've already been done, that's the problem. Yeah, and I and I think that that's why they're gonna weigh it. Right. Um, I I I'm not really into Walking Dead and don't know enough about it, really.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

But I made a great maze at Universal, I can tell you that much.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

That was fun, yeah. I did enjoy that. Um, but it's it's a play on words, right? Like we think the walking dead, we think zombies, but then these living people are actually walking dead people, right? Because they're gonna die at some point.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

Well, it's like like like uh dead man walking in prison.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

Is that is that do you get that sense too? I don't know if that's I don't know if that's intentional or not. I've just always kind of thought that. Like, oh, look at them being clever. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

I did not think of it until you just brought it up, but I it makes sense to me.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

Okay, good. Yeah, done.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Um and then you know, the the latest zombie is this one with uh uh Pedro Pascal, The Last of Us.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 7:25

And I didn't even hear anything about it until social media, and they're like, Oh, the second episode, nobody eat pancakes, oh, it came from the flower. And I was like, flower, I was like, is this like invasion of the body snatchers? Like, what's going on? I was like, this might be interesting. So we started watching it, and I was just like, are you fucking kidding me? It's just a bunch of lemmings with the hashtag New Fear Unlocked on social media, and we watched, I think I watched three episodes of it, and then after the Nick Offerman episode, I was like, no, I'm done. Because first of all, like the character that Pedro Pascal was playing in that scene where he was having the conversation with Nick Offerman was so overtly scripted as Uber masculine, like your hand, I'm not good. I'm gonna talk to you. It's like I just like, is that who we need uh people to be in order to feel safe or interested or entertained? It just it felt all in all, my experience with it, it felt like a very quick, fast, glossy reinterpretation of something that we have seen many times before. Once again, in a series format, to milk it out as if it were something that hasn't been spat at us many times before.

SPEAKER_01 8:51

Well, it actually had been done before as a video game and really successful. And I haven't played it myself, but I've watched plays of it, and I think the story works really well in that media because you can you can make decisions to decide what's going to happen next. The story isn't played out in front of you.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

In the game.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

In the game, yeah. So in the TV series, I feel like it doesn't play off the same way because not only are you not making decisions, but you're sitting there waiting for someone to make a decision over the course of 10, 12 episodes. Uh, and in the meantime, yeah. It just it I don't like that these shows drag intentionally. I feel like they're doing it on purpose.

SPEAKER_00 9:34

They're doing it because they know that people are so desperate to belong to anything that the rest of the people are into that no one's gonna actually poo-poo it enough for them to realize that they're just making another glossy hunk of shit.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

There is a lot of cult culture.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

Yes. Um, and there's nothing wrong with cult culture when you're talking about something that was poo-pooed in the beginning, and then a group of small group of people just latched onto it, and through them, other people were able to realize the importance or the message or the comedy behind what it was. And we're talking movies like Clue or Rocky Horror Picture Show or Death Becomes Her, not something that's quote unquote cult status right off the bat. That's not cult, that's main fucking stream, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:22

Well, and I would also caution people to not make something that you like your personality.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

Uh, that's a whole nother podcast with my husband.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Like, just enjoy the thing for enjoying like I love The Mandalorian, I think it's a really fun show, and I like the stories and I like the characters, but I'm troubled sometimes by the Mandalorian people who are obsessed with it and like follow the characters around the parks and are constantly talking about Baby Yoda, and they have it all like who's not Baby Yoda, and I know that as someone who's not a Mandalorian fan. That's because you're a smart person who cares.

SPEAKER_00 10:58

Thank you. Well, and I'm also tired of seeing Pedro Pascal everywhere. I like Pedro Pascal. I enjoy Pedro Pascal's work as an artist. I don't know who he is as a person, but I feel that this influx of attention is also manipulating his behavior at this point. And there is something to be said for overexposure. Like when you like something, you don't want to burn out on it so quickly. But I mean, for like two weeks straight, there was a period where I could not scroll through one story without seeing that stupid fucking meme of um Pedro Pascal eating that crunchy grilled cheese sandwich. And it's so out of place when it's used in that fashion as well. Like people think they're being so clever because they're using something that's generating engagement for someone else's post. But it's just it's lemming, it's overexposure, and like that's that's the world that we live in now, though.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

Trends, um we were I was looking at market research showing that trends don't happen over the course of months anymore. Like we don't see a summer trend, we don't see a spring trend. We see trends over the course of weeks.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

So I'm sorry, I thought that was the era.

SPEAKER_01 12:13

I mean, that that is what that is, that's where that came from. The idea that you can change the trend, you can change your lifestyle, you can change what you're interested in at a whim, which is fine. But again, when you make that part of your personality, when you have to exclaim to everyone that I'm in my social area, I'm in my skeleton area, I'm in my podcast era. Like, if you have to say those things, you're instantly devaluing what you're doing and why you're doing it. And I I love Pedro Pascal too, and I think he's doing a lot of great work, but I don't need to see his face slapped everywhere. No, and not because I feel like he's doing anything wrong. No, I just don't like the fact that people are using him in this like daddy zaddy hot uh Pedro. It's like just stop. Why are you over sexualizing this person who's just a really great actor?

SPEAKER_00 13:03

You're all independent women who can earn equal pay and open your own door, but you gotta you gotta and fanalize some guy in your mind and call him daddy at the same time. It's like people have forsaken mindfulness, and it's really starting to get to me at this point in time. And I think that that is the zombie apocalypse culture that we are in. People no longer revere individualism, they no longer revere things that are custom to them, they don't revere free thinking, they revere that vapid, airhead, Kim Kardashian going along with what everybody else is going along with. And it's like dealing with a bunch of sixth-grade kids who have no idea who they are, so they're just doing what everybody else is doing it, whether they like it or not.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

Well, everyone's desperately acting on it as quickly as they can, too, because they know that the trend isn't going to be around for very long. And if they don't do it now, it's gonna be too late.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

Well, and that's the thing with trends. Even if you're able to hop on the trend, you do all that work to get on the trend bandwagon, and then 15 minutes or less, you're off of it. So, unless you are the original content creator, unless you are a part of a team that is continually working to put out original content month after month, which is not a trend, it is a way of life, you're working in counterproductive measures anyway. And I think that's what frustrates people and turns them into zombies, is they end up running in this trend social media hamster wheel and getting absolutely nowhere because the few people, like in any industry, in social media is an industry, the higher up you go, the less space there is for people up there.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

Yeah, and people are burning themselves out.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

They're burning themselves out, they're locking doors, they're gatekeeping.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Well, that's how I feel at work sometimes. Like I feel burnt out because uh we are throwing like 20, 30 different marketing campaigns out at the same single product, hoping that something sticks, rather than like focusing on one strong approach, knowing that it's gonna do what we want it to do. We're just like, okay, and go and just throw the shit up in the air and hope that someone catches it and pays attention to it during this three-week trend cycle. And it's it's uh exhausting. I do feel burnt out because I feel like I now this is my job, so like I do it and I get paid, great, thank you. But I feel like we are exhausting ourselves chasing this level of attention, knowing that it's gonna disappear.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

Well, it's gonna disappear because it dilutes brand message. Who are you? What do you stand for?

SPEAKER_01 15:51

If whatever everyone else does.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

If you're a taco place and the burger place next door is doing really well selling burgers, so you start selling burgers, you never give your tacos the chance to be as good as the burgers, but your burgers will never be as good as the person that became great for selling good burgers either. So it's like it again, it goes back to education and ignorance and this lemming mentality that if you see somebody else do something and they're successful at it, all you have to do is mimic them to achieve the same level of success. And it doesn't happen that way. There are very few people that are able to get the same amount of success doing something that somebody has already just done because those people already have the eyes. Those people are already known for producing that content first. They're the ones at the front, they're the engine leading the train. You're at the caboose.

SPEAKER_01 16:45

And the insidious thing about that is that there are plenty of people who will tell you the exact opposite in order to further their own financial gain and clout.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

Yeah, but look at the people who are in those positions to make those decisions today versus the people that were in those positions 20 years ago. Because once again, we've gotten into a place in our society where education, experience, expertise, credentials are not what makes someone qualified for the job. Studying something as a specialty so that you can be the best at that one thing that you bring to the table, that's no longer it. It's just who do you know? How many followers do you have? Can you get us Instagram engagement, which they think will then drive dollars into the doors? And how good do you look while you're doing it? And that's not what drives business. So you've got a bunch of kids with GED level experience filling the shoes of people who had master's degrees, and wondering why no one can get a solid footing in any kind of marketing or advertising anymore because the companies are firing four people that all did one job really well, giving it to one person who can't do any of them well, paying them less so that the CEOs can take home more money, and then relying on social media and influencers to do all of what would have been their high-paid advertising and marketing goals. These influencers on social media do not understand marketing and advertising. They don't understand what they're doing. They see the surface, they see what's expected of them, they create some schlock, they put it out there, they paid whatever 20 grand to get 2 million followers. So it looks like they're getting all of this engagement and driving business, but they're not. And if companies want to jump out of this zombie apocalypse culture, they're gonna have to go back to some tried and true and regulated measures to get back on track and to create a strong sense of brand so that people are coming to your company because they love what you offer and how you offer it to them. Not because all the other zombies on social media said this is the place to go. Because as soon as the wind changes direction, they're going to be talking about another place. And then where are you if you don't have that brand loyalty? And it's not about wanting everybody for your brand. It's about knowing who loves your brand, marketing to them, advertising to them, and getting them to become your repeat customer. You spend all your time looking to acquire new customers, you're neglecting the ones who are already supporting your business.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:31

It's a zombie mentality, and social media is perpetuating that. And we see it in our entertainment, we see it in our customer service, we see it in our social media, and we see it how companies are run.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

Because it's easy and it's lazy.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

It's easy and it's lazy, but it's destroying the culture and the fabric of how our companies are supposed to be operating. Like the whole idea of business has so radically changed. And it's because you get all of these really hot-headed whippersnappers who are saying all of these controversial things on social media, trying to get everybody's pussies wet out of some sort of shocking this or shocking that, thinking that it's gonna garner some sort of engagement and attention that translates into dollars, but it doesn't translate into long-term dollars. It's not a long-term plan of action. It's when you're living every business moment month by month or quarter by quarter instead of year by year, you're constantly gonna be in the state of flux and stress. And then that turns everybody into a zombie because you can't do that forever. You burn out, and then people just give up. And when they give up, they get nasty, they don't produce as well, they call in sick all the time, they start fighting and gossiping and you know, talk about brand culture. It's like, where is it? Yeah, the one common denominator that I see in all businesses now is that they think that Instagram is what's going to make and save their business, whether you're talking about a fast food restaurant, a design house, a department store, a movie theater. It's like, come on, like, when did this thing that we all plug into and scroll and scroll and scroll until our thumbs break off like a zombie thumb? When did we decide that this was the holy grail of our existence?

SPEAKER_01 21:25

When it started making money for people.

SPEAKER_00 21:27

But who is it really making money for? Zuckerberg?

SPEAKER_01 21:30

No, it still makes money. Like you we still make a lot of money using these ads and these placements through social media. But like I said before, it's lazy.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

But it also costs a lot more, it costs a lot more.

SPEAKER_01 21:46

It it can. It depends on what you're doing. Like, like you said, the with the influencers tied in, it definitely costs a lot more.

SPEAKER_00 21:51

And that's cheap labor. But the it's cheap labor because they're not doing what they they're not getting what they could be if they were actually doing what everyone thought they were doing. And the price of acquisition becomes more and more expensive when you've got to go from influencer to influencer to influencer rather than just having a tried and true marketing team that understands the Business of marketing, how marketing works in terms of emotional connection with your client base and nurturing that client base rather than thinking you can be everything to everyone.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

It's just trend chasing now.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

It's trend chasing versus love branding, and I will always be on the side of love branding.

SPEAKER_01 22:33

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:35

Not every business is for everyone, nor should it be. And then you just look like the zombie who's running around chasing anyone that you can get. So I think that the zombie apocalypse culture, as we see it in entertainment, maybe is on point because the way that we are as a society and how we've decided we're going to adjust our behavior and our actions and how we do what we need to do for ourselves is based solely on what we see other people doing via social media.

SPEAKER_01 23:08

I think that Romero has always instilled that idea of reflection in his films, in his zombie films, showing that, like, yes, this is a horror film, and yes, this is the undead that we're looking at. But really, I'm just telling stories of how people react in these situations, whether they're dead or not, because civilization is kind of shitty in this way.

SPEAKER_00 23:30

Um and Dawn of the Dead specifically is a commentary on consumerism.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

Yeah. I just don't need 10 seasons to tell me that story.

SPEAKER_00 23:39

Bingo. I mean, nothing is ever going to be perfect because there's too many moving parts with how many people we have living on this world trying to do what it is that they think that they are supposed to or entitled to do. But I do strongly believe that we can do better. And once we decide we can do better, that level of self-awareness and mindfulness that we have to exercise in order to do that exponentially becomes easier and easier. It is much harder to be an asshole in this world. It is much harder to be aloof. It is much harder to be a vapid valley girl because it takes so much work to be an affected person like that. And the whole goal I see with a lot of these people is victimization. If they victimize themselves, then they don't have to work as hard in this world for what they want because victims get compensation.

SPEAKER_01 24:39

So are the zombies that we're watching just us?

SPEAKER_00 24:46

What do you mean?

SPEAKER_01 24:48

Like, am I just watching the whole world implode? I mean, that's part of the reason why I I stopped watching The Last of Us too, because it all just felt like it was hitting too close to home, and I started having nightmares about it, not because of what was in the story, but imagining what was actually happening is actually happening or potentially going to happen.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

Well, I definitely feel like we are in an implosive track. Yes. The I I just feel like again, the media, social media, the government, there are so many aspects that we rely on for perspective that understand that and are corrupting that and are creating this very, very bad sense of self within all of us in our culture and in our society. Because once again, the dumber we are, the more violent we are, the more chaos we create, and the harder it is for us to band together so that we can fight the true evils. It's it's weapons of mass distraction. If we're too busy fighting ourselves, we're not paying attention to the real issues that are happening on Capitol Hill. We're really not paying attention to the issues that we need to be paying attention to, that we need to be voting on, because all this other salacious crap that they're throwing at us with like Bobo the Clown and Margarine, it fires us up and it gives us an outlet to satiate that violence and that aggression that they've been instilling in us by telling us we're being taken advantage of by this party or that party.

SPEAKER_01 26:25

You said margarine. We're talking about margaritation. Okay. I just want to make sure I knew what you were talking about.

SPEAKER_00 26:31

Yeah. No, it's time for some radical reform and regulation, and people just need to take the responsibility that they can't they have we have to start practicing some more critical thinking. We have to band together as a people and stop letting the government divide us because the more divided we are through these antiquated parties, the more power the government has to blind us, to pull the wool over our eyes, to separate us, to divide us, and to turn us against each other like a pack of crazed zombies who are doing what we're doing without even thinking about it. And you can see it when people just regurgitate the same taglines over and over again that we hear from these insepid parties.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

Like, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:15

So I think zombie apocalypse culture in media is boring, but zombie apocalypse culture in our society as I see it is dangerous because it is leading us to an implosive end.

SPEAKER_01 27:29

I actually don't mind it. I I I think it's good for entertainment value. It just depends on how it's being put out there.

SPEAKER_00 27:37

They get paid so much fucking money they can come up with some original content now.

SPEAKER_01 27:41

I mean, you would think so.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

No, that's it. That's it. Whoever's running the show is not qualified. Get them out, get us some original fucking content, tell us some new fucking stories, stop giving us these horrible examples of human beings so we think that that's then how we're supposed to be.

SPEAKER_01 27:57

Or I'm just gonna go back to watching reruns of Love Boat.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

Oh, Loveboat. Anything Aaron's spelling, really.

SPEAKER_01 28:04

I just don't, I don't really generally like watching people be terrible to each other anyway. So that's tends to be where I go.

SPEAKER_00 28:12

Unless it's dynasty.

SPEAKER_01 28:13

But even then, they're not really being terrible to each other, they're just being um petulant. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:20

Yeah. Petulant, selfish, entitled.

SPEAKER_01 28:22

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 28:23

Yeah, they really represented the 80s, though. They made capitalism look good. Nice. But it is time for us to get the zombie antidote, which is mindfulness and self-anare, self-awareness. Wake the fuck up and stop letting other people tell us who we are supposed to be, how we're supposed to behave, and how we're supposed to treat others.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

Yeah, listen to Nomi.

SPEAKER_00 28:51

Because Nomi's got something to say.

SPEAKER_01 28:53

Actually, don't like think for yourself, but she has some good ideas.

SPEAKER_00 28:57

Listen to me as far as I tell you to think for yourself. Like critical thinking. It is the only way we are going to get out of this, is critical thinking. Because only through critical thinking will we be able to make the decisions that are best for ourselves. We will vote that way, and then we can start to have this reform and we can start to instill regulation so we don't have these criminals and these thieves trying to turn us into the wild, wild west again.

SPEAKER_01 29:23

That'd be nice.

SPEAKER_00 29:24

And that's my two cents on the zombie apocalypse culture. Thanks so much for listening. I have to go attach some limbs now.

SPEAKER_01 29:33

Fun. Bye. Bye.