 | Quote: Just a few months ago, we all agreed, Gordon Brown was a dead man walking. Any trace of fire had been extinguished from the eyes, which had sunk deep back into his puffy visage, his jaw hanging dumbly open as he lumbered towards electoral oblivion. Even such basic physiological functions as smiling seemed to be beyond him. One by one his detractors lined up, not to praise but to bury him.
But something odd happened. The would-be assassins found their reputations and careers splattered off the walls of Westminster while Gordon lumbered on. He stomped without blinking through the gory entrails of Clarke, Flint, Purnell, Hoon, Hewitt and the rest, all the time inching gradually closer to his ultimate foe and the impossible prize.
Even allegations of bestial temper, uncontrolled aggression and violent malice towards innocent furniture failed to dent his recovery. The very cream of political punditry scratched their heads in bemusement; their every prediction confounded, their augury embarrassed. That was because they missed the obvious explanation: for the last year or two, Gordon has been an Incredibly Strange Creature Who Stopped Living and Became a Mixed-up Zombie. I can't pinpoint the exact date this happened, but can it be coincidence that a certain Dark Lord rejoined the central coven in October 2008? I think not.
Yes, we have our very own zombie prime minister and a quick sniff of the wind will tell you that people like zombies. We'll indulge them a lot. So what if Gordon bites the heads off his advisers and furiously disembowels the upholstery? Zombies will be zombies.
While some fools may be sceptical of my diagnosis, there can be no questioning the popularity of zombies. Since George A Romero's unsurpassed Living Dead trilogy of the 1970s, the zombie has been undisputed master of the monsters. While the seductive predation of the vampire may offer a thrilling frisson to the teenage virgin, and the simple savagery of the lycanthrope still resonates with our inner primitive animal, it is the zombie that has provided creative auteurs with a near-bottomless well of metaphor. Over the years, our undead friends have conveyed the mindless frenzy of consumerism in Dawn of the Dead, and the brainless absorption of reality TV in Charlie Brooker's Dead Set. They have played the stormtroopers of fascism in an entire subgenre of underground shockers and even the tragic, innocent victims of voracious global capitalism and big pharma in Wes Craven's obscure classic The Serpent and the Rainbow. Later this year, hedonistic youth culture will get the treatment, thanks to Warp Films and Noel Fielding, in I Spit on Your Rave. With the celluloid barely dry on Zombieland and The Crazies, there is no sign that our love of zombies will be abating any time soon.
Within all of those, however, there is one overriding symbolic theme, and that is the relentless creep of mortality. As Simon Pegg argued brilliantly, the zombie is the literal personification of death, an ever-present, creeping stalker, which can be dodged for a while but which might pop out and munch on our vitals at any moment. That surely explains our ongoing fascination with the creatures, but something else too. It explains why, of all monsters in human imagination, none is quite so funny as the zombie. As any comedian will tell you, there's nothing more hilarious than death. We cannot defeat it, we cannot avoid it, and we can only dodge it for so long. Our only defence is laughter.
David Cameron might well despair at the true nature of the task facing him. However, a lifetime's study of zombie avoidance strategy has put me in a position to offer him some advice. Step one should be to immediately sack Andy Coulson and replace him with the incomparable Bruce Campbell, a man who has surely defeated more zombies than anyone alive. New Labour might be pretty damned evil, but they still score lower on the frightmeter than the massed Army of Darkness. Just.
Secondly, nobody ever stopped a zombie with a billboard campaign. Forget the slogans and the party political broadcasts and go straight for the power tools, the sawn-off shotgun, or ideally the lawnmower, as demonstrated in Peter Jackson's Braindead. I've checked the Representation of the People Act, and while there are clear sections on campaign contributions, false advertising and bribing candidates, there is nary a word on decapitation, dismemberment and immolation. So poll what you like, Mr Ipsos-Mori, Dave's got a chainsaw.
Finally, Cameron should probably come to terms with the most profound aspect to the zombie story, the one shocking, self-evident truth: zombies always win in the end. Yes, you might think you've seen them off and finally found your safe space, behind a heavy black door with armed guards outside. But somewhere out there the virus is still leaking, the survivor's bite is still festering or the cursed amulet sits innocently in a junk shop. Whatever else happens, there has to be a sequel.
I don't know about anyone else, but I'll be keeping a close eye on those Milibands. | |
(I must dig out the Evil Dead films)
