Warm Bodies – Bitch Flicks

Dystopias: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts from our Dystopias Theme Week here.

Terminator Genisys: Not My Sarah Connor by Liz LaBrocca

Sarah meets Reese (Jai Courtney) knowing that she will need to have sex with this man, regardless of how she feels, to save the human race. It’s an awkward problem that’s dealt with in Schwarzenegger one-liners about mating and a weak attempt at a narrative theme of free will versus destiny.

Failed Revolutions in Imaginary Cities by Olga Tchepikova

How do you solve a problem like dystopian science fiction? It’s been around for about as long as the film industry and yet, politics and society still won’t stop producing warning signs for the decay of humanity, providing directors, writers, and “artists” with almost inexhaustible opportunities for critiquing the current state of the world community, or showing what the present state of things might turn into if not handled consciously and carefully.

Killing Time: The Luxury of Denial in Dawn of the Dead by Jennifer Krukowski

While the men are shopping, Francine is left alone to fend off a zombie with no means of self-defence. As she attempts to escape onto the roof, the others return to save her from the zombie and bring her back inside. She is dismayed to realize that they intend to stay there indefinitely. While the men enthusiastically describe the mall as a “kingdom” and a “goldmine,” Francine describes it as a “prison.”

Advantageous: Feminist Science Fiction At Its Best by Holly Derr

Though this happens in a future in which cosmetic surgery has become much more than a matter of lift and tuck, Koh’s struggle with whether and how to change her body for the sake of her daughter and her career, combined with the behind-the-scenes machinations of the corporation, casts a complicated light on the present struggles of women trying to succeed in both career and motherhood while facing the social pressure to stay young and be perfect.

Death and Dating: Love, Hope, and Millenials in Warm Bodies by Emily Katseanes

Learn from the Future: Battle Royale by Belle Artiquez

And just as the film articulates these contrasting attitudes and dilemmas with regard to controlling powers and zero sum attitudes, so too does it address these issues within themes of gender, sexuality and authority.

Can a Dystopian Society Be Redeemed? Lessons from Mad Max: Fury Road by Gabrielle Amato

And, although The Citadel is ruled by powerful men with disabilities, we understand it to be a fundamentally ableist society. Immortan Joe is questing for a “perfect” son and has clearly chosen The Wives for their beautiful, unblemished, able bodies in an attempt to breed one. We understand that this is a patriarchy in its most extreme form where women have no personhood at all.

Advantageous: The Future Is Now by Leigh Kolb

“Are women really going backwards going forward?”

Mockingjay — Part One: On YA Dystopias, Trauma, and the Smokescreen of the “Serious Movie” by Charlotte Orzel

Though we get a sense of District Thirteen’s manipulations in the novel, Katniss savvily negotiates with them, resists their orders, and remains distrustful of their motivations, in contrast to her comparatively slight unease in the film. While these changes leave most of the major plot elements intact, they undermine our sense of Katniss as an intelligent political actor who is connected to and moved by the revolution itself, rather than just her personal stake in the events.

Reflecting on True Detective‘s First Season by Lisa Shininger

But, at the end of the day—at the end of a lot of days—I’m tired of watching these shows and seeing women as props and symbols used to push the hero along his way. I’m tired of watching these shows and seeing the massive chasms between what they present, what they claim to represent, and what their fans insist they represent.

The Margins of Dystopia: Darren Aronofsky’s Noah by Rebecca Willoughby

It certainly isn’t a feminist world she lives in, but she does her level best to undermine her husband in an enclosed space. As Noah himself veers away from his family tradition of life-supporting environmental husbandry, Naameh continues to practice what he (used to) preach, preserving her daughter-in-law, the animals, and the land once they find it again.

The Burden of Carrying On: The Currency of Women in Dystopian Films by BJ Colangelo

I can’t keep count of the number of times the fact that women menstruate has been used as a reason to render us incapable of doing something. However, the fact women can have children (while cis-men cannot) is arguably our greatest power in a time of crisis.

When Skies Fall, Bodies Fail: Gender and Performativity on a Dystopian Earth by Sean Weaver

In rejecting Lexi, Anne perpetuates the false solidarity and universal acceptance Butler points out in the above passage. Anne sees Lexi as failing to perform the necessary gender of her body. Lexi is the very symbol of a failed body, the failed universal woman Anne has expected of her daughter.

Totally Radical Girls and the Bitchin’ Burden of Civilization by ThoughtPusher

I mean, she doesn’t wrap her arms around some guy’s waist to hold on for the ride of her life or even jump onto a Vespa or something weak. Nope, she’s a zombie-fightin’ shoulder-padded biker who escapes danger on her own and looks just as feathery-haired good when she gets to her destination as when she put down her attacker in the alley (although this was the early 80s while CFCs were being phased out, so big hair treated with a half-bottle of AquaNet always had some hold).

Dystopia Within Neon Genesis Evangelion by CG

What helps ‘Evangelion’ continue to grow its popularity is not the focus on religious or sci-fi elements, but its commitment to showcasing the fragility of humanity through its flawed and destructive characters tasked with saving the world and themselves. And how does the franchise show this? By literally placing the future of what’s left of the world in the hand of dysfunctional and emotionally fragile children.

Manic Pixie Revolutionary Awakenings by Julia Patt

Maria essentially makes Freder the chosen one—she inspires him to go underground and gives him his purpose when he awakens to the dystopian system in which he lives. Without her, the story does not proceed and the system continues unopposed.

Hell Is a Future We Make for Ourselves: The Many Dystopias of The 100 by Deborah Pless

As she has an older brother, her birth was unauthorized and when she was discovered she was sent directly to the SkyBox. And so on. While some of the crimes are legitimate, many are the result of children growing up in a totalitarian state. So clearly it’s going to be better here on the ground, right?

Ha!

The Hunger Games: Proving Dystopia Is the Best Young Adult Genre by Rowan Ellis

Dystopia, in its futuristic escapism and its contemporary relevance, is an ideal genre for the young adult demographic. By pushing the boundaries of disturbing content and reflecting on youthful idealism, dystopian narratives trust the YA consumer to be both literary in their consumption of the book or film, but also socially and morally insightful in their view of the imagined world they hold.

“You’re Not My Mother!” Bodies, Love, and Survival in Advantageous by Colleen Martell

In these moments, and in those unspoken moments when she savors placing long sweet kisses on Jules’s cheek, we see Gwen’s resistance. “Know your value,” Gwen tells Jules. It’s not found in good grades, not in getting into the best school, not in a newer and “better” body, but in sensory and emotional human pleasures.

The Making of a Caribbean-Canadian Sci-Fi: Brown Girl in the Ring by Amanda Parris

When speaking over the phone, Sharon’s enthusiasm for this pioneering adaptation of a Caribbean Canadian sci-fi novel emanates as though this was a fresh and newly discovered idea. In fact, Sharon has been working on creating this film for the past 15 years (while also establishing herself as a published playwright, writer, actor and award winning director) and although the journey has been long, she strongly believes that now is the perfect time to transition this well-nurtured idea into tangible reality.

Empowerment in the Imaginary Spaces of Zach Snyder’s Sucker Punch by Toni McIntyre

By creating her own worlds where she is a force to be reckoned with, Babydoll reclaims that very thing that was taken away from her by her stepfather and the hospital: her humanity.

Death and Dating: Love, Hope, and Millenials in ‘Warm Bodies’

This guest post by Emily Katseanes appears as part of our theme week on Dystopias.

George Romero’s 1978 zombie flick Dawn of the Dead opens in a newsroom. As the world descends into chaos, darkness and violence, two talking heads are deadlocked into an intellectual debating about the causes of what’s killing so many people and then bringing them back. The theme of humanity’s utter banality and pettiness is backed up as we meet our main character, Francine, who is trying to get her boss to stop broadcasting inaccurate shelter station locations at the bottom of their screen. Even the 2004 remake of this movie repeats this cynicism. Zack Snyder’s film of the same name includes a particularly gruesome scene in which a human husband restrains his pregnant, zombie wife, keeping her alive to birth an undead child, which of course, causes the outbreak to take down the rest of the remaining humans.

The message in both cases is overwhelmingly clear: the post-apocalyptic zombie landscape is one in which the violence of the undead’s feasting is small potatoes compared to man’s inhumanity to fellow man. It’s a familiar theme in both dystopian and zombie genres.

And that’s what makes Warm Bodies such an interesting dystopian flick: The film deftly defies expectations by presenting a world gone to hell that’s still full of humanity and, dare I say it, romance. The 2013 film centers around a charmingly vulnerable and mostly decay-free Nicholas Hoult as R, a zombie with a heart of gold and a reluctance to resort to the monstrous behavior normally associated with the undead. Partway through the film, he encounters Julie (Teresa Palmer), a tough, tender, and fully alive human girl. The two form a friendship and, later, romantic relationship. The star-crossed lovers’ relationship sets off a chain reaction that ends up rehabilitating most of the undead and uniting them with the living against the malicious, more-decayed Boneys.

The film first defies the genre by blending the zombie gross-out factor with a teenage romance, as if George Romero and John Hughes collaborated on a script. But beyond that, Warm Bodies stoutly rejects the pessimism that haunts the hellscapes that are Romero’s zombie America and Hughes’ Shermer, Illinois high schools. Instead, the film fully embraces all the messiness of the Millennial and manages to make an argument for hope in that most maligned generation.

Hoult’s character R is the narrator and driver of the plot. He’s a deadpanned young dude, given to quips such as this introduction to his best friend Marcus, played humorously by Rob Coddry: “This is my best friend. By best friend, I mean we occasionally grunt and stare awkwardly at each other.”

R’s blend of irony and sincerity—he really does count Marcus as a friend even as he pokes fun at the concept—registers well with the Millennial attitude. Hoult, who’s even Millennial enough to be the subject of a Buzzfeed listicle, is outfitted as well as any Brooklynite or San Franciscan can be who’s cool without trying to be too cool. He wears a red hoodie with skinny jeans and lives in an airplane bedecked with a record player and other irony-heavy objets d’art, such as a bobbleheaded Chihuahua and an old-fashioned viewfinder.

R, as befits the stereotype of the Millennial hipster, is sensitive almost to a punch line. He laments the loss of the pre-zombie world not for its safety or conveniences, but for a population that “could express themselves, and communicate their feelings and just enjoy each other’s company.” (In that most-Millennial blend of irony and sincerity again, the movie plays off a visual gag, showing a world of everyone sucked into smartphones, even as R’s voiceover remains serious.)

Julie, on the other hand, reads as a woman of the new Millennium, albeit differently. Although she’s not the bespoke-wearing, Zooey Deschanel, quirky girl who handcrafts and bakes, she’s a woman in the vein of Scandal’s Olivia Pope or The Mindy Project’s Mindy Lahiri. She’s traditionally feminine and yet stoic, independent and able to hold her own against any men (including her dad, played by John Malkovich). Whereas R is the perpetually awkward, sensitive boy, Julie is cool, competent and clad in plaid.

He may be undead and falling in love with someone alive, but like teens the world over, R still can’t pick up his clothes.

Beyond aesthetics, R and his fellow fresher zombies, called “u,” increasingly follow Millennial markers. They’re more listless than ravenous, underwhelmed rather than driven by rage and seem, more than anything, bored by the routines of middle-class life. R and Marcus meet to hang out at an airport bar and other zombies are seen going through the motions of their pre-death jobs. But, again echoing Millennials and the fraught economy they came of age in, it’s a middle-class lifestyle that’s no longer accessible to them. In an economic recession that renders a 9-to-5 with a travel expense account almost as mythical as a zombie, the lifestyle that Marcus portrays of the traveling businessman is as far away for Julie and R as it is for most 18- to 24-year-olds.

R and Julie also tap into the somewhat aimless creativity of the hipster/Yuccie generation. They’re creative, but it’s geared toward no particular endeavor. Julie and R aren’t poets, painters, or revolutionaries. Their creativity expresses itself as curators: of clever one-liners, tastefully decorated rooms, and arty Polaroids of each other. They’re lifestyle bloggers for the post-apocalyptic youth.

All of this makes the dystopia of Warm Bodies at once threatening and not threatening at all. While the zombie threat is a plot catalyst, the actual undead shamblers often take a backseat to the interactions between the two leads. And that’s where Warm Bodies’ genre subversion really takes off. Like all dystopian flicks, it’s a commentary on our current world. The difference is that while most films in this genre present characters who are oblivious or somehow unaware of the lurking catastrophe humanity’s bringing upon itself, Warm Bodies presents characters who are well aware the world’s already gone to hell. They’re just not going to buy into all that negativity, man.

“I guess I’ll improve the world or…whatever.”

And that’s not just a twist on the zombie dystopia. It’s a twist on how R and Julie’s generation is painted throughout media.

In addition to being the main characters, R and Julie are the happiest. In a world that’s fraught with danger and starvation, most of the other humans and zombies on screen seem to experience only fear and grim determination. In one of their early scenes together, R and Julie drive a red convertible. It’s a familiar scene of carefree enjoyment, whooping and hollering as they speed around.

But even beyond that, Julie and R are successful. They’re the ones who enact change in the world, creating a “cure” for zombie-ism by getting the undead creatures to feel love again. And they do it by proving the Millennials’ critics simultaneously right and wrong. R, Julie and their allies end up shifting the world by doing…not much of anything. It’s Julie and R’s simple affection for each other, born of those afternoons taking Polaroids and dancing to records, that gets the zombies feeling, dreaming and living again.

R and Julie have opted out of the capitalist conveyor belt that turns humans into braindead zombies and or war-mongering huddled masses. While it could also be read as a fundamental laziness to even stand up for themselves, the two succeed by not fighting. It is the peaceful revolution hippies of the 1960s might have wanted or it’s the ultimate move by a generation of wimps.

But whatever it is, it works. It changes the world, for the better. And that’s a narrative that’s not only missing from most dystopias, but from many depictions of the current generation. Of course, like a lot of narratives about Millennials, this remains problematic. The world of Warm Bodies is overwhelmingly white and the characters read as upper-middle class. In a film arguing for optimism for the youth, it’s both telling and disappointing that the youth included are white and affluent. There’s still a long way to go to get our representations to actually reflect the demographic of the world they exist in. It’s also easy to blow off the movie as teenage fluff and in a way, it is. It’s a cutesy romance that uses Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as a skeletal structure and adds a killer soundtrack and a budding romance to flesh it out. But like R, who (mild spoiler alert), becomes human by the end of the film, it’s a vision of humanity that grows less not more fetid as it goes on.

A native Nevadan, Emily Katseanes has degrees from the University of Nevada and New Mexico State University. She has done everything from cleaning houses to filing fatality information at a gold mine to reporting on city council meetings in rural Idaho. Currently, though, she works her favorite job of all: teaching English at Louisiana State University.