Zombies on Campus
One of my favorite zombie movies is Return of the Living Dead (1985), It was one of those classic 80’s films that had all the camp, cool music and punk fashions.
Directed by Dan O’Bannon, who wrote the screenplay for Alien, it was just the kind of comedic horror spectacle that one would select at their local video store.
And of course, with the metal and punk soundtrack – The Cramps, The Damned, SSQ and T.S.O.L. – I was in gore heaven.
Yep, it was me yanking the VHS tape off the Erol’s video club shelf, pedaling my bike home, popping in the tape and plopping myself in front of the television, while and eating my cheddar cheese sandwiches on toasted raisin bread smeared with Hellman’s Real Mayonnaise.
It was also the first zombie movie (that I know of) where the zombies were focused on eating the brains of humans instead of flesh. And, they only run, but they speak! The zombies would holler “Brains! Brains!” as they descended upon the hapless victims. It was nuts.
Foreman Frank is showing the new guy Freddy around the Uneeda medical supply warehouse. He accidentally hits one of the four military drums stored there, and releases toxic gas. This reanimates a cadaver in a meat locker. Their boss Burt decides to incinerate the adjacent mortuary, but instead it causes the air to pollute, and a toxic rainfall awakens the sleeping dead in the cemetery. From then on, it’s about brains, brains, brains.
Of course, it also features teenage kids pulling pranks in a graveyard, getting into other kinds of mischief, only to find themselves knee deep in something for which they did not bargain.
It is a stretch to correlate this film with the anti-free speech, toxic campus culture wave that has struck college campuses? Maybe.
The toxic gas would be the ideology of shutting down voices that do not reflect the groupthink factions on campus. I am trying to resist calling them liberal or left leaning because its insidiousness transcends party affiliation. It just so happens that those on campus who are proliferating this kind of behavior are identifying themselves as progressive liberals, hell bent on devouring anything that sounds remotely “anti-them”.
I was that kid back in the day in the streets protesting injustice – South African apartheid, the US invasion of Iraq, anti-gay oppression (back then the term LGBT didn’t exist) – and I remember that we spent our energy organizing against systems and policies. Maybe I was naïve and my memory is cloudy, but I did not recall us trying to shut down individual voices. As far as I remember, we were trying to build consensus, trying to persuade the masses to join our cause.
I must say on a personal note, I became hypocritical and irrational myself, yelling that McDonald’s supports apartheid, while around the corner chomping down on their Big Macs.
Periodic confrontations nonetheless, I didn’t see activists trying to eat the brains of anyone who did not agree with them.
Of course, my youth and chaotic energy has given way to my quasi-sage wisdom. I am invested in seeing the whole human being, hearing a person’s narrative, being empathetic, listening to what they have to offer before I draw, I hope, logical and rational conclusions.
In my youth, I would have shown up to hear conservative talk show host Ben Shapiro on a college campus. I may have had knee jerk reactions myself, but I would have at least heard him out. I most certainly would not have shouted him down, and I would have been appalled that he would have been banned from appearing. My upbringing taught me that was impolite. Besides, we were all about displaying how sharp we were. In essence, if I could not intellectually debate him, then I should not speak at all.
That’s not how it seems to be now. Our young activists who embody this ideology, are lurking around college campuses waiting for a contrarian to munch on. Of course, it would be their brains – it is where their thoughts live. Either you are with us, or we will eat you.
No one should have to hire security to ensure their safety when they go to speak at a college or university. The exact purpose for an institution of higher learning is to provoke thought, critically reason and analyze, expose oneself to other positions, learn to intellectually joust with others, and in the end, shake hands and walk away.
It makes me cringe when I hear students shouting over each other, shouting over invited speakers, shouting over administration, just because challenging views have appeared in human form.
It has deteriorated to the point where I was even contemplating whether or not I want to continue teaching college. If we cannot hold mature, open, honest, difficult conversations that require listening and deep reflection, then what are we doing?
I believe it is an unquenchable need to be validated, accepted, heard, understood by the outside world that is propelling these factions of young people to engage in this kind of destructive behavior. There must be some inner vacuum that prevents them from understanding that everything comes from within.
I don’t even think I can get through to them in a way that they will listen to me. They may view me as outdated, obsolete, an anachronism, someone who needs to be relegated to the archives. In other words, it is our time now, pops. Sit down.
Meanwhile, there are no responsible souls at the helm ensuring that the toxic gas does not get spilled, and cause brain-eating zombies to rise from the earth.
I really don’t want to fall into the mantra of “these kids nowadays”. I don’t believe in lost generations. If they are lost, who lost them?
Maybe the state of this generation is the result of the decades of nationwide abuse, neglect, ignorance, conspicuous consumption, and escalating polarization. Children will replicate what they see and experience.
Maybe it is the result of the last two decades of helicopter parenting, allowing children to hunker down in their rooms and spend hours on social media and gaming, instead of making them go outside and play, get in the dirt, and learn how to resolve conflicts without killing each other.
As the old saying goes, a tree grows stronger in the wind than behind the barn.
Maybe it is we who created the toxic gas, then left it in sociopolitical warehouses, with little to no supervision, never thinking that there would be a reckoning.