My presentation was on the communities of the apocalypse and how different causes of an apocalypse would create a different realm, a different collection of people and ideas in order to survive in their own personal post-apocalyptic world. My first topic of discussion was that on the last humans and how in Earth Abides, they have a dream of restarting humanity in their little community. The Road was an example of where everyone was out for themselves living in a world with no trust. Also, Waterworld has the classic bad versus good scenario; it depicted a future with gangs, rebellion where their appearance consisted of tattoos, piercing’s and body modifications. With no authority, law and social standards to follow, the gangs could rebel openly.

I then discussed the Zombie narrative, this fear of disease and infection has leaked into such films like Resident Evil where the ‘Umbrella Incorporation’ have made viral weaponry via the T-Virus which brings the dead back to life, thus creating the zombies. Night of the living dead is an example of traditional zombies, slow and dumb just wanted to feed on human flesh. The old zombie narratives were inspirations of gypsy curses, now days its disease that creates the zombie population as you can see with the Dawn of the Dead remake. The Zombies are now fast and out for the kill, suggesting the public is harder to scare, also the traditional zombies are seen as comic now with satire film’s being made such a Zombieland and Shawn of the Dead. There are also a couple of metaphors included in the zombie narrative. One being consumerism, they other being Religious punishment, for turning away from faith. The Dawn of the Dead tagline “When there is no room in hell, the dead will walk the earth” is a quote from The Book of Revelations. It’s also used in Steven King’s novel The Stand, which is another post-apocalyptic tale.

I also briefly discussed the robot take-over apocalypse using the Terminator franchise as an example of where artificial intelligence became to strong and became hostile towards humans, destroying most of humanity with a nuclear holocaust, followed by a war between the machines and the survivors for the control of earth.

All bar the Zombie narrative have a happy ending, illustrating there is still time to make a difference in this world before its too late, yet with the endings of a zombie movie always ending with no way to escape and with the zombie’s being so closely linked to humanity, this is suggesting that our modern way of consumerist living is doomed.