Is 28 Days Later 'anarchist propaganda'?

Bollocks.

Still it shows up those animal rights muppets!

Admin - split from Last film you watched... thread

But John.... surely showing up animal rights muppets is anarchist propaganda.

I missed 28 days later turning into anarcho prop But it hada cycle courier as a hero, and that's always gotta be good. Scared the crap outta me, that did. Probably shouldn't have watched it at home, alone, stoned whilst feeling really anxious about leaving home and moving to London

thats more like it. fear of egg sarnies got to you?

basically i'd argue, pretty much making it up as i go along and from memory, that:

jim's initial fear of anarchy ("what do you mean theres no government, theres always a bloody government!") and selina's internalisation of hobbesian bourgois human nature initially leads to the pursuit of a social contract - safety under the armed monopoly of the soldiers' proto-state.

however, it becomes clear that such a state is always a war on its's subjects, jim's one man insurrection overthrows the state (there's hardly a class left to struggle ), and they all run off to a happy anarcho-communist future.

or something? now if thats not convincing, i don't know what is

I'm so glad it's not just me who spends their time over analysing the possible political subtexts of movies

though i am at work, and it beats number-crunching

actually i could probably flesh this theory out ... the director danny boyle had to woo the rather excellent and rather anarchist band godspeed you! black emporer to get them on the soundtrack and in the process learned a bit about their anarchist objections to being part of the spectacle/capitalist media (i read somewhere). over analysing again, but still at work

28 days later is wicked!

While Joseph keeps undermining his good points on the acting white thread (both here and in social centres...) I will comment on this:

I liked it, BUT it pissed me off. The premise was stupid - that virus just would not spread effectively.

For starters it could never leave the country, cos you'd never let someone on a ferry or plane in that state. And even if the characters were too dumb to realise this they could've just turned on a fucking radio or TV, or looked at the net.

It also couldn't have spread to any military barracks really, it could've been wiped out quite easily. That was my main problem with it...

well, yeah, but suspension of disbelief and all that. its a premise innit and we're all inherently terrified of apocalypse in 'the post-911 world' [/bollocks]

actually, another random interpretation ...

Rage is Empire, damn those trendy autonomists, their theories get everywhere ... its almost - imperialist ...

now hows that for undermining myself

I haven't seen this cos I don't like too much gore/disease close-ups. Would I be able to tolerate it do you think?. Did any of you see/have heard of the BBC drama called "Survivors" (- I like my retro 70's tv!) on this very subject. Sounds like 28 days was inspired by it among other things.

its not too gory, its more suggestive. watch it and agree with my half-baked theories!

edit: i also think 28 days later was influenced by that tv series 'the last train' - anyone remember that? prolly 7/8 years ago?

Joseph K OK, I'll give it a go and if I have nightmares I'll come running screaming to you! I vaguely remember The Last Train - quite obscure wasn't it? Character led and not too much special effects - anyone would think the Beeb didn't have a proud history of top notch special effects! (Early Doctor Who anyone?)

yeah I reckon you could take it LW.

I remember the last train, it reminded me of that too. Better though...

John., can you add a poll?

28 days later is anarchist propaganda

>yes. yes it is.

>bollocks!

>don't know/don't care/don't read so much into it

i can take ya! its definately more anarcho than the 'radical' Romero '...of the dead' trilogy (i haven't seen the new one, which looks class struggle ) - they're just a liberal critique of consumerism. though apparently Romero made a film where the govt seal off a town and massacre the people for their own good as quarantine on some dodgy pretext, sounds anti-state but i haven't seen that either. and believe it or not i've never done film/media/cultural studies

just goes to show that you see what you want. Since you are anti-animal fanatic, you didn't see the clear abuse of the chimpanzees involved and the twisted fuck scientist developing this bullshit thing which just happened to wipe out the whole of UK.

TBH i think it showed up both.

The guy creating the disease is obviously a moron. So are the people breaking out the animals.

As zobag has already said tho - the courier-hero is wicked!

28 days later was alright, at least they made a disease rather than pretending that zombies can run like the dawn of the dead remake. but the ending was so unbelievably shit, they should have used the alternative ending that channel 4 showed when it was on a few weeks ago.

all of the dead films are 'radical': night of the living dead is about the social upheavals of the sixties (hence why the black lead, who was the only voice of reason throughout, gets shot at the end), dawn of the dead is a humourous critique of consumerism, day of the dead is about the cold war, and land of the dead is about the class struggle and i guess the current anti-terror crusade. and they are all sooooooo much better than 28 days later, as each one is a classic, whereas 28 days... is just quite a fun film that will be forgotten by most in 5 or 10 years.

hmmm my theory has one adherent ... me.

i could reach for some nietzsche quotes about defying the herd, but its mostly aristocratic nonsense so i'll have to resort to pursuasion ...

obviously, the main characters realise through common struggle that mutual aid and solidarity are far better than hobbesian everyone-for-themselves-ism, and better than putting your faith in a 'benign' authority (the soldiers' mansion-fortress-state). i think it was intended as a liberal parable about 'flawed human nature' saying 'look, we can just get along', but it ends up both anti-capital (selina's initial hobbesianism) and anti-state (the soldiers).

what was the alternate ending?

theres one where jim dies from his injuries (it goes full circle as his body is left in a hospital, alone), and another one i can't remember on the dvd. i don't know which one was on C4.

the alternate ending they showed on c4 had him dying then they go off saying they had to keep moving, so none of this uplifting ending nonsense. good horror should leave you with a sense of profound unease, not just have a few jumps while you're watching it. that's why romero's films are so great, although the last one less so.

Right, i've searched the net for some reviews and come up with this psuedo-academic twaddle to sway the bullshit boosters... (then i'm going to do something worthwhile ) ...

Where there is an abundance of mutual aid, solidarity and co-operation in 28 Days Later, liberal critics see only “an ultra-Darwinian message” or “subtexts of Darwin's ‘Survival of the Fittest’”. The social characteristics are so fundamentally normal that they are completely invisible to those who’s worldview is based on Statism holding at bay a war of all against all - they undermine both the alibi and the mode of Statist, and particularly liberal, political philosophy. In fact Darwin didn’t actually coin the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’, a free-marketeer did (Herbert Spencer), and even then Darwin only incorporated the term in Origin of Species with the explicit caveat that it did not apply to Homo sapiens. With the Hobbesian-social Darwinist myth exploded, the liberal’s ‘necessary evil’ State becomes superfluous, destructive, misanthropic. It can be seen to cause the very antisocial behaviour it claims to ameliorate, as the narratives in the film imply (the soldiers’ rape attempts/mass grave, the virus created by the State-pharma complex in the first place). Thus, in conclusion, 28 Days Later is actually anarchist propaganda .

plus, obviously theres a working class hero

re: the dead films, i prolly should rewatch the two middle ones and watch the new one 'cos i watched the 2 off bittorrrents with the wrong codecs and it was shit quality. therefore, as always the caveat that i'm probably talking bollocks. did i say that? I mean, vote for me! (future politico in the making, me )

I think there's an inherent possibility of anarchist themes in any fiction which deals with the "collapse of civilisation" and the struggle of the few people left to survive... co-operation in the absence of a state, having to achieve economy/ecology in the absence of the financial system, etc...

Having said that, 28 days later is a total rip off of John Wyndham's "Day of the Triffids"*, except with a zombie disease instead of man eating GM plants...

I did have an idea for a sequel called "28 Years Later" in which there was an anarcho-communist society trying to re-establish (a "new, improved" sustainable version of) civilisation, with the characters from the original having settled down, gathered other survivors, had kids etc, in some remote bit of wales or scotland or wherever it was they were heading, but having to defend itself against the army which had basically reconstituted itself into a fascistic "warrior monastery" kind of thing, ensuring its survival by kidnap and rape/imprisonment of women... and then, after decades of its apparent absence, a new form of Rage returns...

*which actually is a bloody good satire of the collapse of class-based civilisation, with a few good swipes at cold war era US/UK and Russia too...

apparantly a sequel is planned *vote "*Is* it? - of course!"* though your idea sounds better *vote "*Is* it? - of course!"* than the probable hollywood liberal nonsense they'll churn out as a money-spinning sequel *vote "*Is* it? - of course!"*

I voted for the wrong one, how silly of me.

No, it's not but it's a decent film.

i know the oppressive peer pressure of anarcho-orthodoxy makes you say that, but inside i know you voted for me 8) My half-baked reading just doubled in popularity

I seriously think the politics of Romero's movies are read into the films against political events that happened after the movie's release. The film was already in post-production when King was murdered, its release after these events assume some inspiration from this event that didn't exist. Inf act anything I've read suggests Duane Jone was cast as Ben, the lead role with the most stress attached to it in a performance sense, because he was the only strong actor amongst a gang of amateurs and had already doen several movies. Romero asserts this himself. The females in his movies are always fairly helpless, Barbra in the first was originally written as a strong female character, but Romero ended up opting for the direction given by the female lead and turned her into a hysterical, screaming girl. With critical acclaim falling from the sky on him as critics heaped the rambling stoned metaphors they read into a standard schlock B-movie piece, Romero obviously resorted to exploiting this accidental niche by shoving desperately crude political overtures onto his movies to the gloating delight of horror fans everywhere who could turn to their mates and deliver monologue rants about the deeper meaning attached. Hence the rejection of consumerism in the follow up, and the moral searching about what it means to be human in Day of the Dead. Land of the Dead exhibits all the same desperate grasping for political metaphor. Shaun of the Dead certainly takes the piss out of this in its opening scene of alienated labour. If you want political movies from this era, I'd argue that Leone does a much better and subtler job than Romero.

Don't get me wrong, I have no problems with digging deep into texts, sure I did fucking English for three years and certainly had fun sitting around stoned pondering the phallic nature of the stake in Dracula and the relevance of Marx's line on the vampyric nature of capital. But Romero's movies are tosh, boring shite, the only one I like is surpisingly Day of the Dead as its nice and dark.

28 Days Later is a classic horror, a fantastic re-imagining of the genre with a awonderful score, fat chance it'll be forgotten - its already a cult classic.

well yeah, i don't watch romero films for the politics, that's just a bit of fun on the side, i watch them cos i like grim zombie movies. and leone did a better job than anyone on anything, because he was the god of cinema, you can't compare his films to anyone else's because they are in a class all of their own.

I was going to say that, my thunder has been well and truly stolen.