12/22/2008
Rage The End of Civilization Indistinct Boundaries Between Monsters and Humans Moment of Recognition and Boundaries
Rage: Rage is the zeitgeist of our time, exacerbated by the first world's need to make everything go faster and faster, with the end goal of increased celerity rather than greater efficiency. But to go faster means that we lose our connections with humans, with nature, with our surroundings, so that they all appear as nothing more than impediments. The isolation resulting from speed breeds a sort of insanity that creates rage, a virus that causes the infected to be mindlessly angry to the exclusion of everything else, driven only by the desire to kill the living, not for sustenance, but because they are not infected and are therefore different. The first infected that Jim kills, a boy, utters the only words spoken by an infected person in the film "I hate you." This sentiment is what fuels much of the footage shown on the nightly news, inspiring rage and fear and despair in us all.
Not surprisingly, rage is a product of the first world rather than the third world. When the film shows us the rage virus being unleashed upon the world, it comes from a British laboratory. The result is that civilizations topple, particularly first world civilizations. We see London inhabited by mostly infected, and Manchester has burned to the ground. Soon after Selena rescues Jim, she tells him that before the television and radio stations stopped broadcasting, there were reports of rage outbreaks in Paris as well.
In some ways, the rage virus is redundant. The first scene of the film is of the various television screens depicting scenes of civil unrest from all over the world. Unknown to the viewer, these scenes are not in the real time of the film that is setting the scene for yet another post-apocalyptic zombie movie, but are instead television news file footage from our own real time, and are being used to induce rage in a primate who is strapped down and forced to watch. If the film depicts the end of the world, then it was well on its way even before any of these scientists started experimenting with their primates.
The End of Civilization: Because civilization has come to an end, many of the structures that characterize it have been torn apart as well. Infected kill their loved ones, and Jim's parents killed themselves holding his picture rather than succumb to the virus. Frank and Hannah are the only intact family we see in the film, and they too are soon torn apart. Major West wants to get women to give his men hope for the future, but his plans don't include replicating the old family structures and bonds of affection that were in place. Instead, people will be bound to one another through bonds of force. In fact, it's difficult to tell Major West's men apart from the infected at times as they too are so full of rage. When Hannah, Jim and Selena escape at the end of the film to a cottage by the sea and try to summon help, there is at least some hope for the future.
Indistinct Boundaries Between Monsters and Humans: The rapidity with which the rage virus is capable of infecting people demonstrates how permeable this boundary is. Within seconds, a normal human can become suddenly and dangerously Other. This blurring is further demonstrated by the Manchester military outpost. These people are supposed to be the saviors of society, and in a sense they are, but they are also monstrous in that they wish to re-establish civilization by re-establishing all of the old hierarchies of gender and race and class. Even before Hannah and Selena arrive, it is clear that this hierarchy has been thoroughly established. Not coincidentally, a black zombie is the one that they are experimenting on. According to West, this zombie teaches them that he will never plant crops or raise cattle, and so he is completely Other and useless, and as representative of all of the infected, he must be destroyed. But this zombie's rage is the rage of all of the subordinate classes, who have been deprived of the wherewithal to do even these most primitive of things in order to survive, and this rage is not seen as an understandable reaction to external stimuli, but as a sign of his Otherness, and therefore lack of worthiness to have any claims on civilized people whatsoever.
Jim further demonstrates these indistinct boundaries. When he is cast out by Major West, who sends his men to execute him and Sgt. Ferrall, Jim goes over the wall, the boundary supposedly separating the uninfected from the infected. And when he crosses this wall, he behaves like the infected. At first, we see him only as a blur, the way we often see the infected. Later, when he arrives in the house to rescue Selena and Hannah, first Selena and then Hannah mistake him for one of the infected.
Moment of Recognition and Boundaries: In other zombie films, the moment of recognition when the human is confronted by a zombie s/he knew in life leads to death since that zombie can not as easily be viewed as an Other and killed. Selena survives in this film in part because she is able to not let this moment of recognition get to her. When Mark becomes infected while they are staying the night in Jim's family home, Selena doesn't hesitate to hack him to death before he can turn into a raving thing. However, both Jim and Selena are nearly undone when Frank becomes infected outside of the military base. This moment of recognition is important since it reveals to what degree the boundary between zombie and human, between us and the Other, is an imaginary and therefore permeable boundary, an illusion rather than a reality that we can count on.