Rising Mediocrity and Zombie Apocalypse: Creating a Select Minority in Jim Jarmusch's The Dead Don't Die

Derin A.

Messengers from the Stars: Episode VI- Nature and Overnature in SF and Fantasy Discourses, Lisbon, Portekiz, 25 - 26 Kasım 2021, ss.10, (Özet Bildiri)

  • Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Özet Bildiri
  • Basıldığı Şehir: Lisbon
  • Basıldığı Ülke: Portekiz
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.10
  • Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

Rising Mediocrity and Zombie Apocalypse: Creating a Select Minority in Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die

 

Directed by Jim Jarmusch in 2019, The Dead Don’t Die is a dark comedy movie that depicts a zombie apocalypse which takes place in a small and generic American town, Centerville. Through zombie metaphor, the movie mocks the culture of consumerism and conformism in American society. It presents zombies who are desperately clinging to their beloved materials and places even after death. Interestingly, zombies do not enter the woods in the movie. Thus, the woods become a safe haven for those who live in there. In this film, there is a character named Hermit Bob (Tom Waits), who is a hobo that lives in the forest, and strikes us more than the others. In this paper, in order to elaborate on the rise of mediocrity in American society and its effects, Hermit Bob’s social character and his relationship with society and nature will be analyzed by using “The Crowd Phenomenon” theory by a Spanish sociologist Ortega y Gasset. Bob stays away from society because ever-rising mediocrity invades every aspect of social life and makes America “zombified”. Thus, the ones who would really enjoy certain spheres of social life cannot maintain their reign anymore with the rise of the “average men” and mediocre standards. It is clear that Bob is a “self-reliant” person who excluded himself from society and, with his exclusion, he becomes a “select minority”, differentiating himself from the crowd. As such, it will be demonstrated that staying away from the average standards and creating minorities are necessary in a society for people to accomplish themselves, as Bob does.

 

Keywords: American Culture, Sociology, Transcendentalism, Hyper-Democracy, Fantasy Fiction