My Zombie Has Two Genres

During Superb Owl Sunday I was talking to someone about the Walking Dead, because I'm not going to waste my time dealing with sports. He was criticizing it for a number of reasons. Some of it was arguable on a purely on a stylistic level, he claimed that he thought a zombie series that never solved the problem of zombies was too bleak and unrelenting. While I think that's off the mark I can understand where that feeling comes from. Content wise I think the show is on the inspiring side but the tone is bleak.

His other complaint is what threw me, though. He said that for him it failed as a horror show. Here's the rundown:

• It has zombies and therefore is a horror show
• He is not afraid of zombies and therefore doesn't find the show frightening
• It is a horror show that is not scary and therefore fails as entertainment

The impasse that we became stuck on was that he was seeing it only through the lens of the horror genre. While I suppose it wouldn't be unfair to call it a horror show I never thought of it that way. The tropes in it don't follow the horror genre. Generally the point of horror is to elicit emotional negative reactions from the audience. When done in a more refined manner we tend to think of things as classic thrillers (these bring out the reaction of tension, stress, anxiety), and as they become more graphic they are thought of more as horror (shock, disgust, cringing at empathetic pain). American Horror Story, while obsessed with delivering disturbingly saccharine endings, does aim to elicit disgust during the early part of their seasons. But The Walking Dead doesn't really go for the horror side of things. Sure, the thriller emotions are there, but the use of zombies and gore is actually in service to world building and not emotional manipulation. Like all good zombie movies it leaves that to the humans to do.

Am I arguing that Walking Dead isn't horror at all? I would. The show (and the comic, for that matter) doesn't try to evoke the negative emotional reactions that horror as a genre aims to. Instead it employs massive world building and a wide cast of characters to analyze human complexity and create parallels between this abstracted alternate reality and our own. Social issues are parsed through the lens of this world in order to avoid preaching while still dissecting human values. And all of these tropes actually indicate that The Walking Dead functions more like...

Science fiction!

Yup, if you want to know whether the show has zombies then it does. If that is all you want to know then there you go. But if you want to know what features of genre storytelling it uses then the horror label will do nothing to inform you. It's more like science fiction.

The mistake is understandable. A number of other shows have done the "technically one genre but fulfilling another". Battlestar Galactica is the first one that springs to mind. It's a fantasy show but people always forget that and then get mad when mystical aspects have a real effect on the world. People forget because it fulfills the genre functions of science fiction. Lost was on its way to be a technically science fiction show on the road to fulfilling the world-building explorations for the sake of exploration, as well as rising to the call, of the fantasy genre until it broke down in the writer's room. M*A*S*H* subverted the sit-com into a character study. This one is clear to such a degree that the laugh-track is actually optional on the DVD audio menu (and I wait for the day this is done for Sports Night as well).

End result? That maybe there certain genre stories need a genre label and a subtext label. In this case the horror label actually stopped someone from getting into The Walking Dead. To be fair, he's not much of a science fiction fan so a subtext label wouldn't have won over another Walking Dead-head, but the reason behind the avoidance is still problematic. He didn't keep on with the show because it failed as a horror show. That's kind of OK since it isn't trying to be a good horror show. The only reason it's a problem to fail at something it's not trying to be is because of that genre label. And I do think genre labels are important. I won't say that I like the majority of science fiction out there it is still safe to say that I'm a science fiction fan. There's something about the fulfillment of the genre that clicks with me, and that's also why subtextual science fiction shows also work for me.

Maybe we need to add meta-genres the same way we do sub genres. Instead of Steampunk or Urban Fantasy we should have "by way of" after a title. Horror by way of science fiction. Labels are important. Labels are words and cutting out words from storytelling will get you nothing but interpretative dance. But maybe as our genre stories are getting more complex we also should think about putting more nuance in their labels.

The BIG PICTURE or The Angel Innovation

And so the first phase of the Great Whedon Experiment has come to a conclusion: I have finished Buffy and Angel. It's been quite and experience. Seasons have flown by in mere days and so much has been learned. Here are some fast facts:

• The best way to watch these shows is interwoven. Due to the fact that they split networks, and therefore schedules, this takes a bit of work to get right but I used this guide and it served me well. There are a few crossovers that seem cheap and out of place without context from the other show.
• Buffy switches from 4:3 to 16:9 aspect ratios between the 3rd and 4th seasons.  The editing never quite caught on and so there are a number of slip-ups and unfinished effects. I'll show you some later.
• Angel is not Buffy 2. If you go in expecting it to be more Buffy you won't be happy.

And that actually brings me around to something I discovered. Buffy and Angel change the world. Well, at least their world. The problem with a lot of fantasy TV is that the characters end up dealing with gigantic forces (gods, ancient creatures, spells of immense power) and that these shows often use them interchangeably. Possibly only power level of the threat is ramped up for the season while continuing on a template. Supernatural was lousy with this; Demons replaced by Angels replaced by Leviathan. Each was "bigger and badder" but functioned in essentially the same way. This is completely understandable. If the antagonistic force changed significantly then the show would have to as well. Want Sam and Dean to keep roaming the country, stopping to fight evil? Then keep the forces against them essentially the same, just leveling them up each year. If things really did change then the whole show would. Instead we usually get the new version of fill in the blank and that leads to a gradual change in tone and little else.

Buffy tried and, much more significantly, Angel tried and succeeded in changing that. Buffy's problem was that the show was stuck in a bit of a morality tale trench. The first two seasons are strictly high school metaphor and the number of "sex is bad" episodes gets a bit silly after 3 of them. The main conflict and villain ties directly to Buffy (in order we have the finales comprising being in high school, boyfriends, graduating, the mess of season 4, family, drugs/the mundanity of life, leaving home. There's the attempt at an escalation but it's not fulfilled. Somehow she goes from fighting weird and mystical individuals to full bodied demons, gods, and the incarnation of pure evil and it never leaves her home town. There's no big picture, just big feelings.

Angel is where Joss Whedon lets loose and actually attempts to push the conflict up each season. Angel goes from fighting individuals to averting the apocalypse but the show changes as well. The first season is a police procedural, season two ends as a questing fantasy, three spends a lot of time world-building so while things grow they grow a bit backward, four is a soap-opera mess and what the hell is with the fourth season of these shows?, and five is a world-spanning sit-com that just goes for it in every episode.

Why was Angel so different? It's probably a mix of changing networks, constantly trying to find a new voice while not losing Buffy fans, being able to experiment because of its low ratings, and having to experiment because of its low ratings. It wasn't low risk, it was all risk. Of course most shows can't take that sort of chance and change their genre each season. But watching Angel makes me wish that some shows did. I will admit that many shows that seem to overstay their welcome simply do that; they go on far longer than they should. But then there are the shows that don't explicitly go bad but just become unengaging (Supernatural). These are the shows that could do with a major overhaul rather than a little freshening up.  And maybe shows shouldn't be afraid to do that. Angel was constantly on the verge of cancellation but it lasted five years. That's not a flop. So if a show on the edge could keep it up for half decade then what could a show doing well manage when mixing it up?

And now a gallery of some of the best "What do you mean we're in widescreen" moments from the show. Feel free to share yours if you have any more.

I’m going to actually look directly at my un-manacled hand.

This guy was supposedly cut in half but I can clearly see his green screen pants.

Hard to tell because it’s so dark but that hand on the left side? That’s shaking a vine because the plant is alive.

The Body was a pretty heavy episode. Apparently the crew was to depressed to either finish the set behind the door on the right, or even close the door.

Wave high to the crew member chilling on the bottom of the screen.

Were this not widescreen I’m sure we wouldn’t see Spike’s modesty man-panties.

No one trained the animal trainer not to step into the scene.