This past summer Ukrainian film distributors were supposed to receive a movie with the attractive title Land of the Dead, directed by George Romero. The film is about a dreadful and unfriendly world in which dead people become zombies and proceed to hunt down live human beings. The latter, in turn, hunt down the zombies. Anyway, this kind of movies has its fans. The film was released and then disappeared from the theaters. It simply vanished. Someone banned it, it seems. There was an aura of secrecy and dread. Naturally, moviegoers, who are fond of horror movies and all kinds of other films, were not happy. They staged a Moviegoer Protest Action at the film club of our celebrated and always revolutionary Kyiv Mohyla Academy. As soon as the screening of the film ended, half a dozen zombies materialized in the club’s doorway. But they were wearing uniforms, and they had received a strange, not to mention stupid order, which turns people into zombies. They said they were there to check what was going on after receiving a vigilant citizen’s report (in a word, an anonymous report) and to see who was there watching a movie banned by the authorities. A statement was given and everyone there had to sign it, whereupon the film was impounded and supposedly handed over to experts.
Later it transpired that the demonstration was banned by a commission that had something to do with ethics or aesthetics at the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The commission is supposed to have 19 members, but it does not take a full quorum to pass binding decisions. In other words, the presence of a single member suffices, for example, a Stepan Stepanovych, who has never seen anything since the first Soviet sound film Start in Life made back in 1931.
Well, the hell with Stepan Stepanovych — or whatever his name is — and his commission and start in life. There’s another interesting aspect to this story: two days before these events, George Romero’s first “dead film,” Night of the Living Dead (1968), was screened at a movie theater located only two blocks from the Kyiv Mohyla Academy. Incidentally, this low-budget black and white picture paved the way for every other film on the zombie theme; almost every scene from this film has been cited dozens, if not hundreds, of times. The authorities never tried to interfere with that screening, perhaps because the vigilant citizens weren’t paying attention. Or maybe because they weren’t aware that even at that time, in free America, people wanted to ban this film, and that the resulting scandal was a big one. As for the 1,500 people that attended the premiere, their reaction was a standing ovation. films, the first and last one, are not just horror movies. They are political dramas that start out as horror movies. Gradually and unobtrusively, the director’s able hand shifts the accents, turns the plot, and alters the heroes’ condition. In both cases, in Night of the Living Dead and Land of the Dead, Romero inexorably leads us to the demoralizing conclusion that the living are the worst enemies of the living. In other words, all the means and systems designed to protect life can be easily used against life as such. All it takes is a shout: “The dead are coming!” or “Our homeland is under threat!” or something along those lines. And then you can calmly go about destroying those fellow humans who are in your bad books — with active cooperation from the media — precisely what we see in Romero’s films. Those poor zombies are just an excuse or an illusion — something that has never actually occurred.
At this point I must let the reader in on a terrible secret. Two of Romero’s
Two conclusions follow from this story. The first one lies on the surface. Even now the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is very much alive in the minds of many people, even those who hold important posts; it has nothing to do with “Kuchmism” or “Bilozirism,” it’s a sure sign of the surviving Soviet mentality. A closer look, however, brings us to the present day. For some reason we have zombies who chase after and catch living humans, once again with the active collaboration of television. It’s not a nightmare, because a number of our politicians have personal zombies in their heads — and these zombies have full control over their minds.
Zombies are mostly fond of biting. A single bite turns a human being into a zombie, who starts thinking things like, “I won’t eat him, I’ll just take a bite.”
And when a stupid voter watches television and sees how they are crunching each other up, I don’t feel like asking, “What’s biting you?” but telling everyone from the bottom of my heart:
BON APPETIT!
I wonder who will be the first to throw up.
