 Originally Posted by DEAD BEAT
what do you suppose makes the living dead want human flesh?
As to their feeding, I’m trying to think of what we do know about GAR’s living dead. Correct me if I’m wrong on any of this, as I’m doing it from memory, and I may have missed crucial info…
1 – Zombies don’t eat you when you go cold. Now, we do see several shots of feasting on parts, and I can’t recall a scene where the part was rejected for being cold, but we do see the zombies ignoring some dead corpses that have not reanimated. So, it seems they eat the freshly dead, but not the dead, dead…
I wonder, just how cold does the body have to be for rejection? Body core temperature doesn’t drop that quickly, but the dead seem to be repulsed from dead tissue very quickly.
Also, they aren’t touching the body, so somehow they know the stuff isn’t desirable anymore. How?
2 – Zombies won’t eat their own kind. The best example is the way the hungry crowd, which is clawing to get into the elevator for a chunk of Flyboy, immediately turns away from the elevator, when they see him new-and-improved undead Flyboy.
What are the implications of this? Would the right Tom Savini make-up be enough to fool them? It’s like the walk through the crowd to get to the pub in Shaun – if you’re a good enough thespian, you can pass through undeterred.
Dianne: Just look at the face: it's vacant, with a hint of sadness. Like a drunk, who's lost a bet…
3 – Zombies will eat animals. The only evidence I can come up with is a line from GAR’s working script for Dawn:
“From the fire stair, we hear the sudden yelping of the puppy as it falls victim to the creatures.”
Maybe the zombies trampled the dog getting in the hidden stairway, but when GAR says “victim,” I assume he means they ate the dog. Now Dawn04 contradicts this in the sequence that involves the dog running over to the gun shop without being attacked, but I think that’s just a franchise split-off, one of many the sequel made.
4 – Zombies will eat people of former significance in their lives. Lot’s of evidence to this in my mind: the little girl in the basement in Night (well, not eat, but hoe to death), the woman in the tenement building in Dawn who goes to hug her risen husband and loses a good chunk of shoulder meat for her troubles, and Flyboy returning to the hidden room.
What other rules have I missed? What else do we know?
Trying to stay within the rules of the GAR universe, I try to think of possible reasons of why they feed they way they do. In regards to why they only eat warm flesh. Homo sapiens are hard-wired to avoid carrion, due to health reasons. Unlike scavenger mammals, like dogs, who can eat dead animals and remain healthy, humans get sick from the bacteria, and thus have a natural antipathy towards corpses of all kinds. The biological encoding that makes us dislike feces is very similar in effect; the purpose of it is to make us avoid disease-bearing biological products like the dead and human waste.
It has been suggested that zombies are merely operating at the lowest levels of human capability: ambulation, balance, aggression, feeding… (makes one wonder about the sex drive being left out of the mix). Perhaps this is how a brainstem behaves without the higher brain functions. Food is warm. Must get food, because it may not always be hunting season. Eat, Eat, Eat!
Others have suggested that the zombie is Id without Superego nor Ego. I think that’s more of a metaphor, but perhaps the subconscious left to it’s own would consume and consume and consume.
Thoughts anyone?
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