Ye olde memory banks get jolted by holiday gatherings. This season I experienced a festal flashback while communing with the extended kin.
There I was, reclining with fellow elders in epicurian bliss. My companions and I were conversing merrily on comfy leather sofas in an all-American living room in McMinnville. Actually, I had dozed off a bit, as has been my holiday habit since before I was old enough to have an excuse.
Suddenly, a familiar impulse moved me to take leave of this good company and make my way down a nearby hallway to a room with a great big screen. I bet you know the place. Niece Kate was already sitting there, remote in hand, eagerly awaiting her brother James.
“We’re going to watch ‘The Walking Dead,’” she said. “I can’t look at it alone because I get too scared.”
Ever the supportive uncle, I offered to join my nice niece in viewing an episode of the AMC television series. Seemed like a holiday thing to do, just sit back and watch a show about survival in a post-apocalyptic world filled with cannibal zombies. Inside me, a dark elfin voice shouted “yipeekiyay.” I uttered inward blessings to Kate and fate for providing what the doctor ordered — a little screen-time with the youthful pop-fringe.
When I was a lad, back when screens came with cathode-ray tubes, the cavemen in my family would plop down to digest in front of the TV whilst the women-folk washed dishes. I would have been a happy camper if my uncles had been willing to watch zombie flicks with me. Alas, the closest they came was football, which for me was only a tad more fun than watching paint dry or baseball.
So down I sat with Kate, in the spirit of cross-generational solidarity. Soon we were joined by James, who seemed to find some amusement in the show.
Truth be told, I thought the Walking Dead episode we saw was sort of pedestrian. However, I did like a scene where the undead broke into a department store in Atlanta, drawn by the smell of living flesh and the chance to munch on real people who were hiding beyond the merchandise. Watching the zombies beat against the storefront glass made me think of hungry shoppers on Black Friday.
I told my niece and nephew that I’d heard George Romero got the idea for his formative ‘Living Dead’ movies while watching people in a shopping mall. A subsequent Google search confirmed that Romero did indeed film his second zombie classic – “Dawn of the Dead” – in a suburban mall in Pennsylvania. Survivors barricaded themselves inside a big retail center to escape the mindless consumers.
At some point I left the room for a few minutes to use the facilities. Down the hallway I could hear the cheerful chatter of other party guests, and was suddenly hit with a rush of déjà-vu. My mind was transported back to a parallel occasion, some twenty winter’s earlier, at another holiday soiree hosted by my beloved in-laws. I was twenty-something then, about the same age as Kate and James are now. They were cute little single-digit something’s. The three of us bonded in a basement watching episodes of “My Little Pony” and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” as the adults waxed eloquent upstairs.
“I bet you’ll write something about this,” said Kate when I came back into the TV room. I thought it was unlikely, but my niece has a knack for being right about things. Kate reminds me of the character Glenn in “Walking Dead,” played by a young actor named Steven Yeun, who’s her same age. One thing that marks the good judgment of the show’s main character — an older bloke named Rick — is his willingness to follow Glenn’s lead.
Which speaks well for the writers of “Walking Dead”. Today’s younger set seem far more mentally adept than us elders. Surely Kate and James could figure out how to survive in a post-apocalyptic McMinnville. They’d know which stores to hide out in, how to block the doors and sneak out without getting caught. Kate could inspire fellow survivors with her poetry. James could entertain us with his wit.
Now if they could just help me integrate with the social circuitry of their younger cousins, including my daughters, I’d be a grateful uncle. Screen-time for the next generation involves things I can’t quite understand – like lots and lots of cell-phone texting and Facebook messaging. Tweets, for goodness sake.
Kids these days. Their communication skills could kick-start a new American revolution, or even stop the apocalypse. But instead they make little noises with their thumbs while I’m trying real hard to use my Scrabble letters. They even get distracted with those tiny screens while we’re supposed to be watching cool movies I’ve rented for the family. They leave the room while they’re still sitting there beside us.
O.K., maybe the young’uns are just honing their super-powers, and I’ll come round to seeing the genius of their speedy social networking. If so, I want to hot wire that wisdom into this website. It would be a welcome step forward if the new year brought threads of insightful young commenters here to the Edge.
Time is precious, we must prepare. The stuff in the stores will only last so long. It’ll take inter-generational teamwork if we hope to steward resources and prevent the zombies from consuming all of creation.
I love your columns, Watt – they’re so folksy — and I mean that in a good way! Though not the main point of your article, I heartily endorse Season One of THE WALKING DEAD as one of the better written series on TV. Has some gore and shocks, so not for the squeamish, but it’s really about people — not corpses — and how they truly live among the dead and dying. Arresting series. Fun article.
Aw shucks.
Thanks for reading and commenting, RW! Tickled and honored to be a fellow contributor to life on the Edge.
Hey Uncle Watt! I really enjoyed the article and your reminiscences of our time spent together–both recent and long ago. I think you are rightfully ambivalent about the technological revolution happening around us. I don’t think we kids even get what’s going on–at least I know I don’t. In fact, one scary thing for this 25 year-old has been observing my technological proclivities–which were once cutting edge–recede to the distant memory of those a few years younger than me. At my quarter-century mark most of the technology I grew up with has become obsolete.
Perhaps there is a way to tap into facebook or twitter to create something profound and moving. I guess I’m skeptical. There’s only so much profundity that can fit in 160 characters. I just read another article by a novelist who suggests that my generation might find escape from our fast-paced and vacuous technological life to be the greatest luxury (linked below). That’s probably an insight you know well. It’s one I’m just beginning to comprehend.
Thanks again for the great article, Uncle Watt. I’m sure it’ll provide for more conversation the next time you, me and sister Kate gather around the tube.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/opinion/sunday/the-joy-of-quiet.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general
Your words go to the heart of the matter, JAK. The article by Pico Iyer hit the bulls-eye. The fact that I read it on a screen after being prompted by a comment thread makes it even more profound.
I pray quick talk in texts and tweets will draw people toward more fleshed-out online exchanges like the one(s) we’re having here. You carry the prayer further with your comment, which communicates to me that screen-time should work in tandem with the needs of the living world. The following quote from Iyer’s article foretells a near future in which a balance between technology and nature is reborn.
Bless you for sharing this. Uncle Watt is grateful.
Today I took a break from writing at the screen to go out and walk in the watershed. While out there I contemplated what might have happened if Thomas Merton had been born a few decades later, lived a few decades longer, and the abbey had provided him with a blog site.
http://www.monks.org/thomasmerton.html
I’ve been chewing on your article for the past few days and it sparked another thought I wanted to share with you. This past semester I took a course on Heidegger and we spent a good deal of time covering his work on nature and technology. His 1949 lecture/essay “The Question Concerning Technology” is an incredible and unusual contribution to the question I sense we are asking. It’s difficult to capture his train of thought in full (or at all) but here’s a excerpt I found particularly compelling:
I’ve already quoted too much, but Heidegger seeks to drive us beyond the familiar means/ends discussion and toward a more primordial question of the relationship of technology to it’s Greek root “techne,” which included poesis and art. The “techne” of an age tells us quite a bit about its spirit, and the present relationship between man, nature, and the Holy. Perhaps from a Heideggerian vantage point, Facebook/Twitter/etc, are a mirror reflecting back on us, telling us how truncated our world has become.
In any case, worth a read. And thanks again for posting such a thought-provoking article!
There’s a whole lot of thinking packed into that comment, JAK. Heidegger’s writing does not reach out to me, yet you quote him in a compelling context. Now you’ve got me thinking about the enlightened use of technology in poetry and art.
Apparently professional philosophers consider the making of ideas to be a kind of technology. I assume the idea of zombies fits this bill. Are the undead a shuffling means toward an end, or an end in themselves? If we could re-animate Heidegger, perhaps he would weigh on such questions in ways you could help me to understand.
In the meantime, I hear the drama department at Seaside High School will perform the musical “Zombie Prom” in February. Methinks public obsession with earthquakes, tsunamis, and economic apocalpyse may be finding a cathartic artsy outlet. Hope to watch the show with my family. Would love it if you could join us, JAK. Kate too.
Speaking of whom, Uncle Watt hopes the link below will lure his first niece into this comment thread.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzVX9_9ueMo