In Which We Talk About This Like Men

Isms of the Dead

by DICK CHENEY

The Walking Dead
creator Frank Darabont

Not a single person has had consensual intercourse in this abbreviated mini-season of The Walking Dead. There was some sexual violence in the diegesis, which incidentally was the title of my first novella: Sexual Violence in the Diegesis. After society breaks down, things begin to revert back to how they were before people like Simone de Beauvoir and Mariah Carey changed the world as we knew it. There are lessons to be found in the grain.

In my last look at the series, I was heavily criticized by those who disagreed that the show's only African-American character, the so-called "T-Dog", was portrayed by veteran comic Anthony Anderson. No. I was making a highly subtle point about inability of The Walking Dead's writers to care about a character of color. I don't know if I exceeded Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal in the process, but how many comments did he get on his blog posts? None. Also, my name-dropping of Anthony Anderson allowed him to get a gig with The Golf Channel, and I wish him the best of luck in that venture.

the way they were

It's unclear what T-Dog stands for, or if Frank Darabont just looks at his script for The Shawshank Redemption and takes all his names from there. Glenn (Steven Yeun) has gotten slightly more attention this season, although his main storyline was "being a coward" and that he was spiritually weakened by the love of his new, white girlfriend Maggie (Lauren Cohan). Her father Hershel, the owner of the farm the castaways survivors came to in a time of need, has warmed up to his future Asian son-in-law over time. When a man earns your daughter's love, he is permitted your most valued pocketwatch.

Last week's show ended with the death of Dale Horvarth (Jeffrey DeMunn), the group's oldest member, when he was surprised by a stray member of the undead while observing a deer carcass. Since Dale had spent the previous 40 minutes of the episode whining about how they shouldn't kill a member of a rival gang they had taken prisoner, his passing was a welcome development, if a bit anticlimatic. The only irony that sustained the moment was the fact that 12-year old Carl could have killed the zombie earlier in the episode, but ran away. Then again, it took them this long to learn that mercy is the second most useless human emotion, after empathy?

it's good to see Mark Hamill still finds work where he can

There is a LOT of talking on The Walking Dead. Men and women rarely talk to each other, but within the sexes, there's a lot of dialogue. It mostly sounds like this:

"What kind of example are you setting for your boy?"

"Keeping your humanity - that's a choice!"

"Where's Carl?"

"Um, how are we lighting this house?"

"You guys."

"Do you want to become like THEM?"

a world without Juicy Juice

"She has to find her own way."

"Glen, get me a pregnancy test but don't tell my husband, you meek little fuck."

"Where's Rick?"

"I can no longer live in a world without juiceboxes. You guys."

"What was it like, before all this?" (Answer: It was Georgia.)

just another dead Democratic voter

Rick's wife Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) has an extended argument with Andrea (Laurie Holden) about the latter's dismissal of the housework and cooking. "It puts a bigger burden on all of us," she tells her blonde rival, perhaps picking on her because of her increased closeness with Lori's former paramour, Shane (Jon Bernthal). Conflict between women is all fine and dandy - The Bold and the Beautiful ran for a long time, didn't it? - but not one of the women seems particularly concerned that the men are making all the life and death decisions while they hold society together. For this reason, The Walking Dead is a constant reminder not of how much it sucks to be a woman, but of how blissfully indifferent men are to anything that doesn't concern them directly.

Then again, as I type these words, Lynne just put some clean underwear next to me with a note that said, "Love you."

this turned into the food fight from "Hook"

To save costs, the vast majority of this season has taken place on Hershel's slave plantation family farm. The Walking Dead has badly missed the feeling of the open road, the possibility of happening onto some new and exciting relationship between the undead and the humans they hunt. Coming across other, more doomed people gave the show's main characters Shane and Rick (Andrew Lincoln) hope to go on. Now they just seem super pessimistic, their faces covered with the blood of friends and loved ones. I could make a joke about the Republican primaries, but then I would be no better than David Brooks.

"please God let my dad give Glenn a pocket watch"

I have been asked again and again to give up blogging and return to the political world, where amazingly I was able to get a majority of Americans (don't start) to elect me to the office of president. But I keep on doing what I do for the people that I love. Rick is the leader of this group for some strange reason, and whenever he's questioned, someone quietly whispers, "Rick's our leader." Shane's more prominent jawline and protruding schnozz seems to weigh in his favor, but I guess he's their G. Gordon Liddy?

sexist foregrounding

Given the ratings success the show has enjoyed a little more money in the budget should allow this awkward little family to get out on the open road again. There they will see the same old malefactors arranged in new settings. The real plague is the resurgence of racism, sexism, ageism. The weakness of the body is the only thing to prey on in these times, the facile and malleable nature of the body's features. Each time the undead reveals itself in the uniform of the mortal container it inhabits, we receive a delicate reminder, as here:

not casting seth green was a missed opportunity

So much time is spent reflecting on shared tragedy that the events themselves lose meaning. What we were before the bad thing happened is no longer of any relevance. Reminders of it take us back to that time and place, but the journey our mind takes is completely a fantasy. I am no longer the Vice President, and no matter how many times I see myself on the news I can never be the man who fit in that tiny little suit.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is a writer living in an undisclosed location. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here.

"Tiger Shopping" - Tim Fite (mp3)

"Because I Was Scared" - Tim Fite (mp3)

"Telephone Booth" - Tim Fite (mp3)

In Which We Were Pretty Much Dead To Begin With

White Flight

by DICK CHENEY

The Walking Dead
creator Frank Darabont
Sundays at 9 on AMC

Only white characters are permitted backstories on AMC's The Walking Dead. If you are white, you have a beautiful child who looks exactly like you and a charming meet-cute story about how every other person you know died from a bacterial infection but you made it out alive. Should you be hurt in the days that follow, never fret. Your pallid Caucasian exoskeleton will survive direct gunshot wounds without complications. You are basically invincible and impervious to pain. If you're a person of color on The Walking Dead, you'll probably just end up killing yourself by accidentally slashing your wrist.

the buddy system

The show's currently surviving characters of color, who have never exactly been named, are portrayed by Anthony Anderson and the little Chinese kid in the second Indiana Jones. He even has the same hat. Anderson, for his part, seems to have done well in recent years. (He also hosts a show on the Golf Channel.) These young men aren't allowed to go about with the other white characters. They have a buddy system, like little kids on a field trip to the aquarium. Someone asks them condescendingly, "Did you close the gate?" as if they would forget and leave it open to the undead.

be there for her, Glenn

The Korean fellow, Glenn (Steven Yeun), can't even close out an attractive woman's attentions on him as she mourns the passing of all her male friends. All her dead ex-boyfriends are immortalized on her refrigerator in a haphazard shrine to her loneliness. Glenn just sits there, he doesn't even put his arm around her. When the saddened young woman Maggie (Lauren Cohan) showers him with attention, he refuses her advances and suggests she take up sex with a whiter member of his party. Not since Newhart has open racism been given such a prominent forum on American television.

You can't have pity sex on The Walking Dead, but you can get excited by Georgia's amazing values on new homes. A raised ranch in a nice neighborhood is absolutely free. Should you desire actual meaning from watching white people shoot zombies in the head with bullets and arrows, don't bothering looking in Robert Kirkman's comic books. They look like they were drawn by a four year old, with a litany of "BAZOOOM" and "GURGGGL"s in place of actual dialogue and drama.

SEE! he closed the gate

In fact, The Walking Dead is drama devoid of all its modern components. It's just people, not usually in conflict, walking around in woods that could be anywhere on Earth, trying to find something interesting to talk about. A full ninety percent of their conversations begin with either the phrase "Dark's coming on soon" or "It'll be dawn in a moment." Talking about the weather is truly the lowest form of conversation. Perhaps what these desperate survivors really fear is the rising and setting of the sun?

We think of the bubonic plague as a singular outbreak, but in reality the black death emerged for the first time during the age of Justinians. It took a break of a few thousand years, waiting for people to experience new sins. No one was white then, they were mostly tan. As in The Walking Dead, every survivor spoke in exactly the same vernacular, with identical intonations, despite wildly disparate backgrounds. We were all alike, witnessing the onset of something we could not fathom — except the Korean kid and the black man who finds himself unable to deviate from the dialogue Danny Glover was given in the first Lethal Weapon. 

The cliffhanger in The Walking Dead's season premiere consisted of the white boy named Carl getting shot in a hunting accident. It's a law of the jungle that if someone gets shot, they probably had it coming. As if a young boy's bullet wound weren't upsetting enough, the incident is re-lived constantly by every single person involved, as if no one else had died in this Georgian landscape.

"Approach me, white boy!"

Rick Grimes (the British thespian Andrew Lincoln) muffles his accent with a throaty growl, his wife (Sarah Wayne Callies) doesn't have to fake an accent; she puts all her energy into overacting. Her anguish is so over the top at this point, given that she is hardly the only person to have lost someone, that we find ourselves wishing her face eaten off.

Last night's episode featured the far more disturbing image of a man (Jon Bernthal) with hair shaving himself bald, a disturbing sequence which should have merited a TV-MA warning in and of itself. Bernthal's character is not only stricken with guilt for sexing Rick's wife Lori when he was in a coma, but he's also genuinely upset about losing an intra-cast overacting competition to her. On top of that, he had to sacrifice his fat friend Otis to save her son from that hunting wound. Killing hundreds of diseased people merits no sorrow or sadness, but allowing one healthy person to die is a haunting, inescapable crime.

soap is inexhaustible during the end times

In fact, the unfortunately named "Shane Walsh" (the handle doubles as Jon Bernthal's porno name) has nothing to be ashamed of. Sure, he originally made a mistake that caused his best friend Rick to become catatonic. Correct, after that he made sweet love to Rick's wife and treated the man's child as his own. And yes, after Rick showed up from the dead he got very drunk and scared the shit out of Rick's wife. And then to save Rick's son from death, he had to sacrifice another innocent. So basically, yeah, nothing to be ashamed of.

The man I shot while hunting quail was 78 years old — he also survived, although he now has about 30 pieces of birdshot lodged in his chest for the rest of time. When you shoot someone by accident, to show the slightest bit of regret or disappointment gives the entire game away. And don't shoot children when you're out hunting — it's frowned upon, even when there is no intent. Don't hunt deer, either. That deer could be someone's mother; a fresh quail tastes like Linda Hamilton.

So what is there to enjoy about The Walking Dead? I have no idea, can only speculate. From time to time it is emotionally profitable to become lost in a place and time not of your own making — that is the therapeutic importance of the dream world. The men and women of The Walking Dead have wandered so far from civilization that they can identify no useful landmarks. One highway begins to look like a lot like another road.

At every destination, they find the same leering disappointment — no matter how useless their new lives are, they experience each sadness as if it were the first, as if everyone they knew had just then become undead, instead of things having been that way for awhile. The advantage of remaining tragic, instead of gradually feeling better about yourself, is that when the next bad thing happens, you are no worse off than you were before.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is the former vice president of the United States. He last wrote in these pages about Boardwalk Empire. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here.

"Tomorrow is a Long Time" - Elvis Presley (mp3)

"Blue Jeans" - Lana Del Rey (mp3)

"Space Junk" - Wang Chung (mp3)