This posting is mostly another shout-out, with the theft--ahem--borrowing of a really great idea tacked on the end.
First, I wanted to praise one of the Tor.com bloggers, David Whitley, for a really great post about the role of empathy in fiction, and specifically the way that we are drawn to fantasy because it walks the line between evoking the emotions and experiences we recognize from real life and giving shape to the powerful visions of our imagination. It distilled really well a lot of my more incoherent feelings on the subject, and reaffirmed for me some of the reasons I read specfic.
Also, buried in the middle of it, was this fabulous flight of fantasy, which I liked to much I will quote at length:
"[Jonathan] Swift [is] creating a whole off-kilter world in order to make his case. He was a far subtler writer than he first appears, and deserves better than becoming the base material for Jack Black vehicles. (Seriously, how did giant mecha find their way into Gulliver’s Travels? I think that might be enough for Swift to come tearing out of his grave, frothing with pure bile. Now, zombie 18th century satirists attacking film producers... that is the plot of a movie!)"
This is brilliant, and somebody should take the idea and run with it. I never really "got" the whole recent zombie craze--the have always seemed more than a little gross, and limited in their narrative and dramatic potential. They really just stagger around and try to eat people. Dialog is at a minimum (bold repartee is really not their thing). With a very few exceptions, it doesn't seem to have inspired any terribly original stories. There are not very many places you can go with a zombie narrative, besides a blockaded basement or a ravaged cityscape.
Another thing I have little patience with is the continual attempt to "update" and "reboot" the classics, particularly in movies. I have my favorite movie adaptations, but classics are classics for a reason, and I have a fan's snobbish loyalty to original book versions. I think that there is a saturation point beyond which one more adaptation or parody is just going to make the original seem over-exposed and deformed beyond all recognition (DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ABOUT JANE AUSTEN....)
However, as soon as I read Whitley's riff, I started thinking....I have seen enough use and misuse of classic plots to make the expression "the author must be turning in his grave" lose all meaning. What if all these authors get tired of turning in their graves, and start to leave them to take revenge on a world that has bastardized their legacies. This could give a whole new meaning to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I am imagining a story in which the media establishment is overrun by the staggering, vengeful, undead figures of Austen, Dickens, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Victor Hugo, Jonathan Swift, Hugh Lofting (don't think I have forgotten about you, Eddie Murphy--your adaptation of Dr. Doolittle was a sacrilege of my childhood memory), and others, intent on punishing those who have taken their words in vain.
I think this story would be great in comic-book form. Now all I need is an artist who is inspired to help me make it happen. Any takers?
Of course, the last, loaded question: in this scenario, should Peter Jackson be running for his life or not?
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