This one's for fighting, this one's for fun
July 31, 2018 6:54 AM   Subscribe

 
> A soldier-turned-war-reporter asks why child’s play is starting to look more like combat, and vice versa.

I wouldn't say "starting to"...children of the '80s might remember the TV ads for Entertech squirt guns. "The look, the sound, the feel, so real!"
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:12 AM on July 31, 2018 [6 favorites]


And of course cap guns, Airsoft, etc. But Nerf was always a bastion of transparent fakery against the more "realistic" versions of play firearms, so their long slide towards making technicolor-tinged versions of military weapons is still a bit concerning.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:20 AM on July 31, 2018 [5 favorites]


I remember when my dad and I first brought that rifle home: Running my hands over the smooth, dark-stained wood stock, and the fascination I felt whenever I slid it out of its khaki-colored soft case, the delightful clack of the bolt sliding home and locking down. There was no kick, and wearing earplugs, the shots sounded like bursts from an air compressor—but all the same, the rifle was not a toy. When I put the stock to my shoulder and the scope in front of my eye, I immediately felt more grown-up. Jack clearly did as well, treating the gun with respect and seriousness.
This is fuuuuucked up. I haven’t finished the article yet, but from the genre and set up it seems like maybe the author will come around to questioning this, leaving it to the reader to draw a conclusion.

Dude. This was fucked up when your dad gave you the gun. It’s fucked up now.

It is fundamentally toxic to choose a weapon of mass murder as your talisman of adulthood. And let’s be real: it’s not a talisman of adulthood, it’s a talisman of manhood.

Equating masculinity with the ability to kill things, with literal power over life and death, is the most poisonous thing I can think of.

Some time ago I read a comment on one of Josh Marshall’s posts on whatever the most recent mass shooting was. The comment was from a liberal who was defending guns as a traditional, cultural thing. The gun culture guy explained, patiently, that to wield a weapon of death changes you. You have to accept the responsibility of power over life and death. He said this as though that were a good thing.

It is not a fucking good thing.
posted by schadenfrau at 7:22 AM on July 31, 2018 [31 favorites]


An enjoyable article (and the pictures are great, yay for the two ladies who used a nerf dart proposal!) but I had the same nagging question as The Card Cheat: Is this really new/different than what kids, or people even, have been doing for the last couple hundred/thousand years?

I'm not saying that war/shoot/kill/menacing type play is inherently healthy or good, that's above my paygrade by quite a bit, though I could ask MsEld who has a PhD in just that field... but I don't think it's necessarily new or some type of gateway-drug. It's a worthwhile question to ask though.

I certainly enjoyed my Nerf Bow N Arrow from when it was the hot new thing. That thing was great and I can't help but envy modern kids who wouldn't be out one third of their ammo if an errant shot put one of their darts on the roof (Bow N Arrow had 3 big darts and I never saw/though/heard of replacements).

so their long slide towards making technicolor-tinged versions of military weapons is still a bit concerning.

Yea. I can get behind that concern. I do recall their older stuff being more in the vein of bows, slingshots, or cannons. They've passed the bronze and iron age it seems and are moving into the modern age.

There was no kick, and wearing earplugs, the shots sounded like bursts from an air compressor—but all the same, the rifle was not a toy. When I put the stock to my shoulder and the scope in front of my eye, I immediately felt more grown-up. Jack clearly did as well, treating the gun with respect and seriousness.
...
This is fuuuuucked up.

It is fundamentally toxic to choose a weapon of mass murder as your talisman of adulthood.


We may have to agree to disagree here, and I'm ok with that because everybody is different but this is pretty spot on to what I'd call a good result. A .22LR rifle (he mention's it's a Marlin from his childhood, which probably means a lever action so not even semi-auto) is as far from a weapon of war as you can get and still be able to kill a rabbit, squirrel, varmint, snake reliably. That equating of 'weapon of mass murder' with tool to be respected and treated with extreme care isn't helpful when it comes to discussions like this. As to the fetishizing, I felt that a bit from the writing style/quote but honestly if I had a kid that I was introducing to hunting or firearms that didn't act like an grown-up/adult and treat it with seriousness and respect the moment we got to the range to learn about them then I would turn right around and go home, end of story, that person is not ready, able, or safe to have around firearms.
posted by RolandOfEld at 7:31 AM on July 31, 2018 [24 favorites]




That equating of 'weapon of mass murder' with tool to be respected and treated with extreme care isn't helpful when it comes to discussions like this. As to the fetishizing

Hmm but you see how these things are connected, right?

You can’t elevate a varmint-killing gun to talisman of masculinity status without elevating all the other guns, too. Because if the lever action .22 that sounds like an air rifle is such a talisman, surely an assault rifle is an even stronger talisman.

If it’s just a useful tool, treat it like a useful tool, not like some right of passage to manhood.
posted by schadenfrau at 7:42 AM on July 31, 2018 [15 favorites]


I used to be a Boy Scout, and spent some time at the rifle range at camp. The way firearms were treated at camp was with the utmost seriousness. Yes, you're going to be shooting your .22 caliber bolt-action rifle for fun, because it can be fun to shoot things (paper targets in this case), but safety, proper use, and respect for the gun was drilled into us from the get-go.

Despite this, by the way, I'm a pro gun control leftist, who wouldn't shed any tears if private gun ownership were completely banned, though ideally, I'd prefer an Australian style system with limited and highly-regulated gun ownership. I do not own a gun, and I do not intend to ever own a gun.

I think somewhere along the line, gun ownership and gun culture shifted from a gun being an object of respect, something that has the power to kill and that needs to be managed and treated as such, to an object that confers respect to its owner. You don't go to Chipotle for lunch with an AR-15 strapped to your back if you don't want people to see it and think something about you. Gun marketing has always been lifestyle marketing, but it's now the lifestyle of "you will be respected and feared if you have this" and not "you will be a rugged outdoorsy type if you have this."

I don't think Nerf guns are part of the problem, though. Same with video games that involve guns, or with laser tag, or Super Soakers, or paintball, or any of that stuff. I think there's a clear delineation between the fantasy play that Nerf and other gun toys provide, and the real dangers of real firearms.
posted by SansPoint at 7:49 AM on July 31, 2018 [25 favorites]


Equating masculinity with the ability to kill things, with literal power over life and death, is the most poisonous thing I can think of.

Hell of a lot of traditional cultures you're dismissing there. Which may be your intent, I don't know.
posted by Leon at 7:49 AM on July 31, 2018 [3 favorites]


You can’t elevate a varmint-killing gun to talisman of masculinity status without elevating all the other guns, too.

Right, but you're operating on the premise that you must, or that they did based upon some wording in an article, elevate said gun to talisman status. It just gets really murky when, ya'know, guns are tools that have to be respected, which all reasonable people agree upon and that, almost by definition, talismans are objects that command respect. I think using that Venn diagram overlap has problematic aspects that could easily be extrapolated into infinity.

If it’s just a useful tool, treat it like a useful tool, not like some right of passage to manhood.

Personally, the viewpoint as I was raised was that firearms are useful tools that you aren't allowed to interact with until you have developed many features of adulthood. That's just the nature of things when it comes to the danger/utility chart of anything and, being totally honest, firearms are a large step up on that danger/utility curve from pretty much everything that comes before it on the 'tool' scale (pocket knife, saw, axe, hammer, etc) so... yea, it's another Venn diagram that can be problematic.


Could gun ownership/introductions benefit from a reduced level of masculinity overall? Of course. Wholeheartedly agree. But anyone that didn't say they command respect and not a little bit of reverential handling wouldn't be welcome around me with one.

Not to mention that I like well built mechanical things that I can understand and have a tactile aspect. Be it watches, fountain pens, VW Beetles, a nice wooden axe handle or what have you. I think missing that aspect of this person's commentary on a heirloom firearm from his childhood, who again got a bit into the weeds with his vernacular, saying the feel and sound is enjoyable is perhaps reading a bit far into the plate of beans.
posted by RolandOfEld at 7:53 AM on July 31, 2018 [12 favorites]


I’m not dismissing anything. I’m saying that shit is poisonous. It sure as hell is poisonous to women, and that becomes way more obvious when weapons of mass killing are cheap and plentiful.

Also? Being “traditional” (this is an unfortunate phrasing) is not a defense against being terrible. Like I am a-ok with calling violent misogyny terrible and shitty wherever it occurs, not just when a dominant culture does it.

But I am also sensing a massive derail here, so I’ll drop it for now unless that’s where the thread wants to go.
posted by schadenfrau at 7:54 AM on July 31, 2018 [6 favorites]


Right, but you're operating on the premise that you must, or that they did based upon some wording in an article, elevate said gun to talisman status.

Well, he quoted that part:
When I put the stock to my shoulder and the scope in front of my eye, I immediately felt more grown-up. Jack clearly did as well, treating the gun with respect and seriousness.
posted by Etrigan at 7:56 AM on July 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


I don't think anything thus far is a derail insofar as it's kind of the points being made in the article. Maybe I'm wrong though.
posted by RolandOfEld at 7:56 AM on July 31, 2018 [2 favorites]


Well, he quoted that part:

When I put the stock to my shoulder and the scope in front of my eye, I immediately felt more grown-up. Jack clearly did as well, treating the gun with respect and seriousness.


Yep, and I'm saying there's a big plate of beans to be read into depending on that quote. I take it as a positive statement. Others disagree. I can see a bit of that side, I hope others can see a bit of mine.
posted by RolandOfEld at 7:57 AM on July 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


I don't watch a lot of cable or broadcast TV, so seeing a commercial depicting COIN/CT using MOUT tactics the other day was a little bit of a shock.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:06 AM on July 31, 2018


I like where this article almost goes. It ramps up like it's going to be a deep dive into the ethics of playing with gun-adjacent things and then just kind of... ends? While I don't have the same views as the author in that I don't want anything to do with real guns, I appreciate the reflection he does offer on the generational hopscotch of attitudes. That seems to jibe with my personal experience.

The two people I know who served in some capacity in Korea and Vietnam are horrified that kids today play games like Call of Duty and the like. Specifically, it's not the idea of guns themselves, but the fact that you are shooting people with them. I think at least one of them still has a rifle that gets used for target shooting from time to time.

For my parents, they would never want to be within miles of a real gun, but enjoy playing/watching war games and movies.

I guess I'm projecting my disappointment in the article from my own current dilemma. The prospect of starting my own family is fast approaching (provided we get our finances in order) and I really have wrestled with the question of Nerf guns and war games a lot, especially since they are both things that I enjoyed so much growing up. Even though I hate actual guns and will never let them into my house, and won't let my kids into houses that have them, I get that there's a certain element of cultural appeal that comes with being an American. Maybe that can be changed, but for now, it just feels so inescapable.

Playing Halo with my sister, shooting Nerf guns at my friends, and playing the Medal of Honor games with my Dad were really happy bonding experiences and carry a lot of good memories, but I'm torn because it just feels like it was helping propagate gun culture, in retrospect. I'm not sure I want my kids to participate in that. And it's not that I think it will make them violent or crazy! I trust kids in general to know the difference between fiction and reality and good from bad. Indeed, I don't think kids get enough credit for their thoughfulness on stuff like this. Still, I feel like if America is ever going to kick its suicidal gun obsession, the end of playing at war as kids and glamorizing guns themselves whether real or fictional is definitely going to be a huge step. Maybe I'm wrong?
posted by Krazor at 8:07 AM on July 31, 2018 [3 favorites]


> Is this really new/different than what kids, or people even, have been doing for the last couple hundred/thousand years?

Absolutely not. I used to "play guns" all the time with my brother and/or neighbourhood kids, and it was great fun. I also used to play with my collection of plastic army men for afternoons on end. I don't know if or how or why play like this is or should be different from violent video games (which I also got my fill of throughout childhood and early adulthood), but as I got older I just got more and more dispirited by how much of our collective imagination we devote to tableaus consisting of human beings killing each other. This applies to a lot of action movies of the type I used to enjoy, too.

My nephew has a collection of Nerf rifles and pistols and shotguns and whatnot, and I used to play with him, but grew increasingly bummed out by the whole thing (I mean, I know it's just make-believe, but what we're pretending to do is shoot and kill each other). The last time I was over at his house he asked if I wanted to play guns and I just straight-up told him I didn't, and when he asked why I said I don't like toy guns because in real life guns are used to hurt people and I don't like pretending to hurt people. He just shrugged and suggested playing soccer instead, so I counted that as a win.
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:08 AM on July 31, 2018 [6 favorites]


Is this really new/different than what kids, or people even, have been doing for the last couple hundred/thousand years?

Yeah, it's not, but that's not, like, a good thing necessarily?
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:16 AM on July 31, 2018


I mean, it’s fun, yeah, and the sporadic nerf fights that used to break out at the office used to be fun too in a goofy hey-let’s-be-cliches-of-people-who-work-in-tech way , but I took all that stuff home a while back because when you’re getting mandatory company wide emails about the latest atrocity in the news and what to do if there’s a real shooter in the building it all feels a hell of a lot less appropriate and fun.

The kids will still play with them.

I guess you can have fun playing nerf or have an accute awareness of America’s mass shooting epidemic but doing both at once is hard and ultimately doesn’t feel worth it.
posted by Artw at 8:17 AM on July 31, 2018 [6 favorites]


People should treat guns with respect and seriousness: they can kill people. That’s serious. One minute somebody is there and one fuck up a minute later means they aren’t there ever again. That’s a big fucking deal. Now extrapolate that concept out to children whose parents have died due to gun violence, or their friends, and I think some of them may be even more adult in their understanding than some of us here.

Guns aren’t a joke, and that’s sort of what the article is attempting to get at, but in a roundabout way. Nerf guns are meant to be toys, and there are cultural and marketing issues involved in that, but what’s a bit more egregious is the marketing of real guns as if they were toys: the fun colors, the customization that makes it so you can have a Hello Kitty AR-15. It’s like when there were those candies that looked like cigarettes and were meant to mimic them.

“Guns as toys” has obviously been going on for a long time, and I think at the crux of it it is a weird masculinity issue alongside hero worship as well as soldier impostering. It’s the connection of “be a man, soldiers are always heroes, and you can be all 3 if you buy this real-looking gun for $39.99!”

Here’s an ad from Mattel from the 60’s. This is a toy gun that was being marketed to kids, ostensibly while our government sent a bunch of kids to kill other kids for no good reason.
posted by gucci mane at 8:18 AM on July 31, 2018 [7 favorites]


soren_lorensen: Yeah, it's not, but that's not, like, a good thing necessarily?

Well, of course, that's why I continued as such in the next line of that exact comment:

Is this really new/different than what kids, or people even, have been doing for the last couple hundred/thousand years?

I'm not saying that war/shoot/kill/menacing type play is inherently healthy or good

posted by RolandOfEld at 8:34 AM on July 31, 2018


There's something about shooting a gun, be it an actual firearm, or something that shoots a foam dart, water, balls of paint, or chunks of potato, that's fun. So are bows and arrows, pea shooters, shooting rubber bands with your fingers, flinging rocks, or throwing a ball around. I think it all taps into the same part of our brain.

And all of these actions, even throwing a ball, have the potential to harm someone in ways I don't need to illustrate. We're supposed to teach our children when it's acceptable to do stuff like this, and how to do it safely and responsibly. If you've never been told not to throw a ball in the house, or at your sibling's head, you've either never thrown a ball, or you had really negligent parents/guardians.

There are a number of gun owners who treat their firearms with that same level of responsibility, but there's also many who don't. The article mentions the 1,600 children killed, and 6,000 wounded by firearms "accidents" each year. How many of these are because the firearm wasn't adequately secured? Kept unlocked, kept loaded, kept somewhere a curious child could access without being noticed, because the owner didn't bother to treat their gun with the respect it needs. Most of them, almost certainly. Part of why I'm so adamant for gun control and regulation is that we need some method to drill into gun owners the importance, the necessity of treating a gun as the deadly weapon it can be, and how to manage it responsibly. And that includes keeping it out of the hands of children until they can be taught how to use it responsibly.

Of course, anything that makes it harder to buy a gun is going to cut into firearm manufacturer profits, and in late-stage capitalism, profits rule all, so they make sure the NRA, their marketing and lobbying arm, does their best to make sure they can sell more guns, faster, which is another part of the problem.
posted by SansPoint at 8:36 AM on July 31, 2018 [5 favorites]


Buy a gun for your son right away, Sir.
Shake his hand like a man and let him play, Sir.
Let his little mind expand, Place a weapon in his hand,
For the skills he learns today will someday pay, Sir.

"Buy A Gun For Your Son" Tom Paxton, talking about the issue of military toys in the US in the context of Viet Nam and then singing his protest song, 1965
posted by The Bellman at 8:37 AM on July 31, 2018 [2 favorites]


Yes, we all have happy memories of playing with toy guns and gun-oriented games, and that's a tradition in many cultures that goes back generations, but we lose absolutely nothing by moving away from that. Those happy memories will be replaced in the next generations by other activities that don't promote a gun culture and will be just as much fun.
posted by rocket88 at 8:39 AM on July 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


rocket88: There's always going to be a form of play combat among children. Whether it's done with sticks as swords, or with toys that shoot water or foam darts, kids are going to have play combat. I also don't think guns in some form or another are ever going to go away, either. The ideal solution would be to use play combat, and gun toys, as an entry into learning how to treat real guns with the respect they require, on top of actual regulation that makes it harder to irresponsibly own and misuse guns.
posted by SansPoint at 8:51 AM on July 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


Here in Chile, we often get condescending looks and declarations of the 'huh, I don't let my kids play with guns' type from our bourgeois leftie no-tv waldorf-schooling intellectual friends.
It's funny to see their kids grab my kid's nerf guns and proceed to have an awesome time with them.
posted by signal at 9:09 AM on July 31, 2018 [2 favorites]


I think there's a degree of difference between nerf guns and actual firearms that is being waved away in this discussion. One is inherently non lethal and the other is potentially very lethal. I think we are shying away from a child's ability to differentiate between the two.

I understand that if you give a nerf gun to a 3 year old and then give a pistol to them they wouldn't understand the difference, but that's clearly an adulting problem; who the hell gives a 3 year old a live pistol?

But older children and teenagers get this sort of thing. Mario jumps on the heads of turtles, but my kid doesn't go around abusing the local fauna, even though he can't stop raving about him.

Children compete with each other; it's in our genetics. Nerf guns and water pistols are a way of play fighting that establishes relationships, in the same way that baby chimps wrestle with each other.

The gun realistic look of some of these nerf guns is unnecessary, but ultimately they are NOT firearms.
posted by trif at 9:16 AM on July 31, 2018 [6 favorites]


I remember coming across the "Nerf Team Fortress" video a year ago and seeing the over-the-top weapon they build at the end and thinking "Only in CGI". Having now seen the pictures in the article, I'm not so sure.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 9:29 AM on July 31, 2018


Mod note: Couple comments deleted; if you have a question about moderation come to the contact form; pompomtom check your mefimail.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:31 AM on July 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


When I put the stock to my shoulder and the scope in front of my eye, I immediately felt more grown-up. Jack clearly did as well, treating the gun with respect and seriousness.

This really resonated with me but not really related to guns.

I felt the same way the first time I used a powertool under my father's close supervision and again in Junior high the first time I used a table saw. Mr. Johnson, the shop teacher, had related how the table saw was one of the most dangerous tools in the wood shop and had enough power to kick a piece of wood back at the operator and if they were standing in the wrong place, punch the piece of wood they were cutting right through their stomach. I still feel the same way every time I use a really dangerous tool like a table saw or chain saw.

I felt the same way the first time I put my hands on the handle of the lawnmower and pulled the cord to start the engine.

I felt the same way the first time I got behind the wheel of a car.

And yes, the one time my uncle let me shoot a few rounds of his .22 pistol was the same feeling. These are powerful and dangerous tools that can seriously hurt and/or kill yourself and others and must be treated with the utmost care and respect to keep that from happening. It's power over life and death, yes, but the point is that one must respect and accept that responsibility to prevent harm coming to anyone else. Adults are always the ones in charge of keeping everyone safe and by putting that tool in your hands, you're accepting that very adult responsibility.



I'm pretty okay with kids playing with nerf guns and even military style shooters. My friends and I all "played guns" when we were kids. My friend Max typically got the one that looked like an M-16 with an orange tip and I used the one that looked like an Uzi. They made some noise but the only way someone knew they'd been "hit" is the person shooting told them so. We had to imagine most of it and we would have gladly traded our very real looking toy guns for ones that looked like toys but that we could actually safely shoot each other with. Laser tag never really lived up to the hype we build around it in our minds.

Even today I like playing tactical military shooters and would totally be down for playing paint ball. I kind of think that for most people, it's kind of the same mechanic at work that keeps cannabis from being the gateway drug that some fear it is. It's pretty safe and feels good enough that it scratches the desire for an altered state and/or a high that the vast majority of people never have a desire to try anything more serious.

In much the same way, I play a lot of video games with some really hardcore shooting mechanics and I'd rather do that than go play paintball or participate in any other kind of military LARP'ing or whatever. I don't even really care to go target shooting that would cost a few grand to buy a gun to shoot, a safe to keep it in, safety training, travel to the range, etc. I can just mozy on down to my PC and murder virtual people in the countryside and it's so much more convenient.

The thing I can't wrap my mind around is how my fellow gamers are anything other than uniformly pro-gun-control. These games have, maybe even more than shooting real guns and getting shot at is loud, scary, extremely violent, and that it's easy to go from everything feeling quiet and safe to painful death in an eye-blink. The more advanced these games get and the more I play them, the more vehemently pro-gun-control I've gotten.
posted by VTX at 9:51 AM on July 31, 2018 [10 favorites]


Laser tag never really lived up to the hype we build around it in our minds.

Preach on Preacher. You speak the truth.
posted by RolandOfEld at 10:00 AM on July 31, 2018 [4 favorites]


I think there's a degree of difference between nerf guns and actual firearms that is being waved away in this discussion.

Hmm, I think it isn't being waved away, but simply there are different perspectives on what guns represent. So, it would make sense that people would also have different perspectives on representations of guns (toy guns).

Also, people can recognize the difference between playing "cowboys and indians" (which was one of the games that kids played with toy guns back in the day) and the actual history. Yet, there are not many kids who play "cowboys and indians" these days for obvious reasons.
posted by FJT at 10:01 AM on July 31, 2018


I grew up playing with toy guns, almost obsessively, but never transitioned into real guns because my dad--conservative though he was--was vehemently anti-gun. I never really made the connection about the way toy guns prime boys to be wrapped up in gun culture later on until I had a boy of my own.

DOT Jr. has a good friend who is positively obsessed with the blasters in a way that seemed okay to me, based on my own youth playing with guns. To my kid, though--who is a decidedly pacifist kid--it was somewhere between unseemly and flat-out unnerving. "Why does he think pretending to hurt and kill people is such a great game?"

Now that he's pointed it out, I can't stop seeing it. In moments of high stress, his friend wields his blaster like a stand-in for a real gun. He's even leveled it at his mom's head and pulled the trigger when he was mad at her. His dad--who I generally think of as a wonderful dad--has started taking him to gun ranges "so the boy can learn to treat guns properly and with respect." That might even be the right way to handle it, but honestly, I find that even more unnerving; you've got a kid who is explicit about having unhealthy feelings about shooting people so you transition him to live firearms?

I just shared this on my FB specifically hoping the kid's mom sees it. I won't shove it at her, but I hope she reads it.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:17 AM on July 31, 2018 [3 favorites]


In case anyone might think that it's not clear if I'm saying jokily that rodents are actually that bad, or if I'm saying it's ridiculous to normalize lethal violence for such an insignificant reason., my point is the latter - that I'm against normalising lethal violence, especially for fun for children.

Yes, my dad gave me a rifle when I was a kid - but he was, in fact, an arsehole.
posted by pompomtom at 10:21 AM on July 31, 2018


I do think there's something about the Nerf guns actually shooting projectiles that changes the psychological significance of them over simply pointing a toy at someone and saying "Pew! Pew!" It's like it changes the game from a game of pretend/chase/tag into more of a proxy for actually physically shooting people. You go from watching your buddies clutch their chests and pantomime silly death scenes into seeing your "bullets" strike someone and thinking about the physical harm that would actually represent with real bullets.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:23 AM on July 31, 2018 [2 favorites]


I do not believe that rodents are so bad that we should arm children.
posted by pompomtom at 10:23 AM on July 31, 2018


Thinking back on my 10-year-old self, I think the main reason we didn't play "cowboys and indians" was simply that it wasn't very relevant anymore and didn't seem as cool or as fun as pretending to shoot each other with more modern looking toys.

Perhaps the perception of it not being cool anymore is partially derived from the problematic elements of the scenario but if so it certainly wasn't a conscious part of it for my idiot younger self.

Come to think of it, we usually just had two sides and both understood that neither was really the "good guys" or the "bad guys" just that both sides thought of themselves as the "good guys" and the other side as the "bad guys" but again, I don't think we were particularly woke about that aspect of warfare or anything, just that it wasn't an important part of what made it seem fun so we didn't give it much thought.
posted by VTX at 10:26 AM on July 31, 2018


VTX: I think the real reason kids don't play "cowboys and indians" anymore is that it got supplanted in the popular culture. There hasn't been a popular Western in the "cowboys and indians" since Gunsmoke, probably. "Cops and robbers," on the other hand, hasn't been dislodged.
posted by SansPoint at 11:16 AM on July 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


There's always going to be a form of play combat among children.

[Citation needed]
posted by adamgreenfield at 11:26 AM on July 31, 2018 [3 favorites]


I do not believe that rodents are so bad that we should arm children.

Not everyone can (or is willing) to pop into the local Whole Foods when they need something.
posted by sideshow at 11:27 AM on July 31, 2018 [2 favorites]


> Come to think of it, we usually just had two sides and both understood that neither was really the "good guys" or the "bad guys" just that both sides thought of themselves as the "good guys" and the other side as the "bad guys" but again, I don't think we were particularly woke about that aspect of warfare or anything, just that it wasn't an important part of what made it seem fun so we didn't give it much thought.

This is some fucked-up shit, but I remember playing as the Allies and the Nazis with neighbourhood kids; we didn't know anything about the war, we just needed two sides and I guess that was the conflict we were most familiar with from movies and TV.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:00 PM on July 31, 2018


There is something inherently fascinating about guns and like objects for many people in how they allow one to render an effect, usually destructive, from a distance. It's provides a feel almost like magic which can be bettered by some application of skill and practice. There can be something quite appealing about having that kind of ability in one's "control" that can give one a real feeling of power.

It is of course absurd to actually believe that being handed a gun, no matter how it makes you feel, adds one bit of better judgement than you had the moment before you took up the weapon. Your judgement remains exactly the same, and for kids that means its vastly underdeveloped. Children will, however, mirror the manner in which others hold respect for a weapon, sometimes that may be their parent, other times the larger culture. That can act a buffer to their judgement, if their model holds guns as truly dangerous and demanding of the utmost care and safety precautions, then the children are more likely to do the same. Looking at the article though points to how deeply ingrained the more fanciful images of gun culture are in the society.

More disturbing to me than the play with Nerf Guns themselves is the elaborate fantasy identities people had constructed around gun use as their make believe identities for their play. Some, to be sure, were being tongue in cheek about it or otherwise not signalling a deep investment to their gun identities, but others showed example of the kinds of imagery kids are saturated with and how that creates its own borderline reality for weapon use.

Talking of guns as tools is mostly outdated in their former sense. Most people have no more need for a gun tool than they would an ice auger, but the belief they may in fact need a gun to "protect" themselves from some unspoken horror is an animating principle of many gun owners. In popular culture, "indians" have been replaced as a fantasy threat. Zombies aren't the only version of new menace, but it is a popular one. Zombies, essentially, are your neighbors gone bad and the fantasy is in surviving by destroying them before they get you. The potential threat then is universal, frightening enough, but in more common application it is mostly identified through "otherness", creatures that may appear human, but aren't given their difference from yourself as measure. The news and general prejudice can help serve to convert those pop culture ideas to a different conception of other, more like that of "indians" from many years ago.

That kind of measure is what appears to animate many gun owners fantasies about their "need" for a weapon, the fear of "others", but others in the real world aren't zombies, just those who don't fit the owners view of "normalcy", which is why so often people of color end up the targets in panic shootings as well as planned attacks. Popular culture provides the shape of the fantasies, the idea of mastery of weapons being the path to control and safety for you and those you see as like. The weapons tie the cultural fantasies to physical reality and can give an underlying, perhaps not fully realized, shape to how one reads one's environment and threats.

Of course not everyone who plays with toy guns or has real guns will respond to them in the same way. There are responsible gun owners who treat the weapons with great care and even those who own weapons out of fear for some encroaching other mostly won't use them, but the values associated with that fear exist and do inform the decisions of many gun owners ever encouraged in their beliefs by popular culture and sensationalism and it only takes a few gun owners caught up in destructive fantasies about power or safety to cause grave social harm.

Those are my non-expert observations on the matter anyway.
posted by gusottertrout at 12:13 PM on July 31, 2018 [3 favorites]


This is some fucked-up shit, but I remember playing as the Allies and the Nazis with neighbourhood kids; we didn't know anything about the war, we just needed two sides and I guess that was the conflict we were most familiar with from movies and TV.

Yeah, it's sort of warped, looked at in a certain light. But it's not like kids are really going to be able to say, "We're playing war. Neither side is really 'good' or 'bad'. We just represent countries that have different and conflicting national goals, resorting to violence after diplomacy has broken down." I mean, "War" as a game only works with good guys and bad guys. Kids with a more sophisticated vision of right and wrong and conflict probably wouldn't play war anyway, right?
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:16 PM on July 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


There was, briefly, an escalation period among certain friends of mine involving nerf guns, until somebody 3d-printed an adapter for the guns that shoot those ridiculous "mega-missle" things that let them take standard (much, much smaller and lighter) dart. The result - a lot more air pushing that tiny dart a lot harder - resulted in a quote-nerf-unquote gun that could leave a bruise on somebody 20 yards away.

That was pretty much when it stopped being fun.
posted by mhoye at 12:16 PM on July 31, 2018


Zombies, essentially, are your neighbors gone bad and the fantasy is in surviving by destroying them before they get you.

(Psst: It's not "your neighbors". That's code for "poor brown people". This is why zombie-apocalypse prepper nerds are the worst, they don't even realize they're speaking in code, or about what.)
posted by mhoye at 12:19 PM on July 31, 2018 [6 favorites]


I swear that there was an article here on MeFi a while back about the history of Nerf blasters, and particularly the more recent ones, as being part of a shift away from the younger demographic that the toy companies pursued in the 80s and 90s, and towards older children, teens, and even adults.

The best I can find is this: History of the Nerf Gun, which attributes the modern "N-Force" blasters basically to one guy, Brian Jablonski, who took his inspiration at least in part from the aftermarket "mod" community.

I think it's pretty clear he must have flipped through a bunch of old firearms patents as well, although I can't really fault him — if your task is to build a thing that a person can carry around and fires a whole bunch of darts quickly, you'd be pretty daft not to. I mean, it's a solved problem. (I kinda wish they had iterated through the whole history of firearms design, mostly because I'd like to see a Nerf 1862 Gatling gun with loose-feed hopper, but they just fast-forwarded past it.)

Their demographic pivot towards older kids and young adults is consistent with other toy companies—Lego comes immediately to mind, which now has a variety of products that seem aimed at a teen+ market. (And if my friends are any indication, a lot of them are being bought by adults. I don't know how many kids are that interested in a Lego replica of the Saturn V, but a hell of a lot of people old enough to remember the real thing are.) Similarly, I suspect a lot of Nerf blasters never really get carried around by kids playing outdoors, as their advertising seems to suggest, but instead spend much of their time getting used by one cubicle-dweller to stalk another around an open-plan office.

There's always going to be a form of play combat among children.
[Citation needed]


There is, of course, no way to predict the future, but simulated combat seems to be a common thread in toys throughout much of history, as far as can be determined. Roman children played with toy swords; Apache children (well, boys anyway) had toy bows with reed arrows, presumably to learn hunting and martial skills. Cap guns date to the 1860s, although I think wooden toy guns are much older. (Exactly how much older I can't find any sources for, and I'm curious how long after the invention of real firearms did it take for toy guns to emerge. Probably not long.)

FWIW, I'd be much more reluctant to give a kid an actual slingshot than a toy gun; I can think of many more examples from my youth of kids getting hurt, or doing harm to others (especially pets), with slingshots (or slings, or bolos, or nunchucks—which were inexplicably an acceptable kids toy for a short period in the 80s) than with a toy or cap gun. The risk of the latter mostly derives from their similarities to actual guns, and even there, the actual harm is from the real guns in the hands of the police than from the toys themselves. I don't fault anyone from not wanting their kids to have toy guns, given that risk, but I think the problem is really the cowardly shoot-first attitudes of modern policing than toys.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:29 PM on July 31, 2018 [5 favorites]


Psst: It's not "your neighbors". That's code for "poor brown people".

Hey, c'mon mhoye, I know I went on a bit, but I got there in the next paragraph. I had to leave some space for the old school Romero zombie fans who still think of them as mall shoppers.
posted by gusottertrout at 12:30 PM on July 31, 2018 [3 favorites]


adamgreenfield: For a citation, I point you to trif's comment upthread, and how baby chimps wrestle with each other. Play combat doesn't necessarily have to involve guns or weapons, it could be wrestling or other forms of unarmed play fighting, but it is normal and common behavior among children.

--

gusottertrout: I generally agree with your entire post, though there are still some uses for guns as tools, particularly if you live in a more agrarian environment. Livestock farmers use guns to protect their animals from being preyed on by local predators, for example. I'm not generally opposed to sport hunting, but there are still parts of the US where hunting for food is common, and necessary practice. These uses, of course, would not meaningfully impeded by any sane gun control legislation.
posted by SansPoint at 12:32 PM on July 31, 2018 [2 favorites]


(Psst: It's not "your neighbors". That's code for "poor brown people". This is why zombie-apocalypse prepper nerds are the worst, they don't even realize they're speaking in code, or about what.)

This is not the only reason I stopped watching the Walking Dead after the first two seasons, but it was the reason that I became pretty zero tolerance about even talking about it with friends. The show, eh, it's art, it can say what it wants and I can choose to leave it alone. But I got real uncomfortable real fast about the other people watching the show who clearly were getting off on the fantasy of a world where you not only can but must shoot other humans (both zombies and non) and still be a good guy. It's fucking creepy to get off on that even as a fantasy.
posted by soren_lorensen at 12:33 PM on July 31, 2018 [2 favorites]


Zombies, essentially, are your neighbors gone bad and the fantasy is in surviving by destroying them before they get you.

(Psst: It's not "your neighbors". That's code for "poor brown people". This is why zombie-apocalypse prepper nerds are the worst, they don't even realize they're speaking in code, or about what.)


That's a more recent corruption of the genre. In Romero's works, the zombies are a macguffin that are used to show how people fuck up. There is no fantasy of survival or revenge in the works themselves -- the viewers who bray about how they would do it right are missing the point.
posted by Etrigan at 12:34 PM on July 31, 2018 [7 favorites]


I have never fired a gun.

When I was young though, I did play with cap guns, and plastic guns that shot plastic darts, and toys like airplanes that shot plastic missiles and squirt guns (and a water balloon is really a squirt gun grenade) and I even had that (very very cool) automatic squirt gun from the first comment. I also played lots of games about war. We set up army men and had battles. I bought as many GI Joe figures and weapons as I could afford. Some met 'tragic' ends through the use of fire crackers.

I distinctly remember my mother being upset that the free science magazine we got in elementary school featured prominent Air Force advertising. I just thought the planes were cool. I built several model airplanes, all war planes. I played Risk and then Axis and Allies and my father's copy of the flat box Avalon Hill game Stalingrad. When computers were available I started playing at war on them too. When my friend was given foam bats for "stress relief" in junior high school we promptly made a live action real combat fantasy game with them, adding thrown tennis balls and paint still wrapped in foam nunchucks to the arsenal. They all hurt if taken to the head of face - so we had a clear target.

By the end of high school I was being actively recruited by the Marines and Navy - and I couldn't even imagine a scenario where I would join. By college I was visiting my future wife's uncle. This was the mid-90s and he was distraught about Clinton. He was a gun collector. He'd been reading about Clinton from the NRA. Clinton was going to come take his guns, he was sure of it. Guns, he explained to me, were an essential way for citizens to be able to resist government. He had guns which could kill a man from a mile away. He'd be ready if there was ever a need for armed rebellion. I realized then that never having lifted a gun in my life, I understood far more about what war really was than he did. I'd internalized the German Eastern Front of World War II. He just had heroic personal fantasies.

I would have loved those Nerf guns, and there are valuable questions to be raised about verisimilitude. But, the guns I played with as a child were far more realistic looking than anything today. They didn't have orange tips or plastic parts. Somehow we still learned to tell the difference. Some of us even learned from them how and why to push for peace.
posted by meinvt at 12:43 PM on July 31, 2018 [5 favorites]


My kid's friend's mom (mentioned above) with the blaster-obsessed kid did in fact read the story when I posted it and said it was something to think seriously about. So maybe that wasn't in vain.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:57 PM on July 31, 2018 [4 favorites]


I grew up with guns - mostly recreational shooting, a bit of hunting with friends. Like the author I spent some of my career in a war zone. I instinctually flinch whenever a toy gun swings in my direction. I never, ever point any kind of gun-shaped thing at a person - it feels wrong. Whenever I'm holding a toy gun, the muzzle points at the floor.

I never kept the hobby. I think guns are neat and fun to shoot, but I don't need one any more than I need a motorized post digger. Plus neither my spouse nor I want them in the house.

My kids and their group of friends are universally no-toy-guns. Not even nerf blasters. Sometimes water pistols sneak home in party favor bags from an acquaintance's house, but they're usually discreetly disposed of by embarrassed parents in favor of pump-style soakers.

The other day I went with my kids to a new doctor's office, where there were realistic toy guns in a basket. Ooooing and ahhhing, they made a beeline for them and started dry-firing them at everything and everyone. My daughter put it in her mouth and pulled the trigger. Multiple times. Until I took them away.

I'm taking them to the range the minute they turn 10. We live in a society saturated with guns. Much as I wish they didn't, they need to learn to respect them and handle them properly.
posted by xthlc at 1:34 PM on July 31, 2018 [4 favorites]


SansPoint, the whole point is that humans are precisely not chimpanzees. We have the capacity to exercise a degree of choice in the way we acculturate the young.
posted by adamgreenfield at 1:56 PM on July 31, 2018 [2 favorites]


adamgreenfield: There's a lot of academic work on the role of play fighting in fostering group cohesion, both in animal and human societies. It's important that we establish rules, limits, and understanding of how to deal with real conflict in a peaceful way whenever possible, true, but kids are going to play at conflict and combat, and it's good to do so within reason. Even if you, as a parent, deny them access to gun-related toys, that conflict play will still happen. And, of course, even if you keep them from gun-related toys, they still have a thumb and an index finger.
posted by SansPoint at 2:07 PM on July 31, 2018 [3 favorites]


That's a more recent corruption of the genre. In Romero's works, the zombies are a macguffin that are used to show how people fuck up. There is no fantasy of survival or revenge in the works themselves -- the viewers who bray about how they would do it right are missing the point.

Exactly. Zombies are a metaphor for death. Sometimes it's sudden and surprising, sometimes ou see it coming a long way off, try to get away or stop it, but it relentlessly, tirelessly, pursues you always everywhere and forever. At best you can get lucky and stay a step ahead for a while but it will catch everyone in the end no matter what. And if all the living people would quit fighting each other and band together against the real enemy (death) we would all fair much much better. Instead people are selfish and compete against their fellow man.

The other big draw is that death has actual physical agents against which you can take action. You can physically fight back against death in the zombie apocalypse and indeed it's moral to do so. Violent against zombies is violence against death itself. Characters may as well cry "NOT TODAY DEATH!" they unload destruction upon death's agents and gain a brief, if futile, victory. In this setting I think guns represent human advancement and science as they tend to be the best tools for staving off death. Well, that and banding together with your fellow living humans.

I've never gotten the impression that zombies are somehow supposed to represent "the other" in any sense and that includes The Walking Dead (thought I've not watched the latest season). I think it might be that "my privilege is showing" and I simply don't see that theme through the lens of my white-maleness. Is there a particularly egregious example that comes to mind for anyone?
posted by VTX at 2:16 PM on July 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


> I guess you can have fun playing nerf or have an accute awareness of America’s mass shooting epidemic but doing both at once is hard and ultimately doesn’t feel worth it.

This is really well put... You mentioned NERF in the workplace, and that also came up where I worked, as that same tech stereotype of impromptu nerf wars in the workplace. And since we were a bunch of engineers, we somehow switched from just attacking each other with them randomly (which was really not as much fun as we thought it would be) to sort of a "who can modify theirs into the most far reaching nerf gun" competition... I think that seemed more OK to us than shooting each other in the workplace, which was never as fun as it was "supposed" to be.

That was over 10 years ago, and the nerf guns were still pretty goofy looking. I also didn't really know shit about guns back then. I think I'd be much more uncomfortable with it today, with so much more awareness of mass shootings than I had back then.

Friend of mine offered to take me to the shooting range many years back, and I felt I should at least learn how to operate one. I was acutely aware of the power that I wielded - it's a power that I think some would find addictive. I went a few more times, and satisfied myself that I didn't want to actually own a gun, that there's admittedly a bit of a rush to firing one that I think could really be addicting (and I think that's part of why I went a couple more times, TBH), and that I could absolutely handle one if required.

Ever since then, I've been a bit more and more uncomfortable with NERF weaponry - it seemed considerably less fun after I had actually experienced firing a weapon. Not because "its more fun to fire a real gun" or anything like that, it was more that after having experienced what the real thing was capable of - feeling the kick, understanding the raw power behind the bullet - I wasn't comfortable with anything remotely resembling it being used as a model for "play".

Now I'm not saying that if you play with nerf guns that you are more likely to be a mass shooter or anything like that at all. There's just something about the degree of realistic detail and attention that's being given to weaponry in "play" settings that I find completely unsettling, and that I'm super uncomfortable with. And it's really hard to articulate a lot of it.


When I was actively playing with nerf stuff as a kid, we played a sort of "infiltrator vs defenders" sort of game that was a lot of fun at the time. Looking back on it with perspective as an adult, it seems awfully screwed up - because it almost seems like we were drilling tactics without knowing it. And that's maybe just the harsh lens of adulthood and perspective looking back at a kid who didn't see it as anything other than a slightly different capture the flag... and that same lens is probably how I'm looking at the rest of this. I mean if you told me at the time I was drilling tactics, I wouldn't have known what the hell you were talking about... I was just thinking it was projectile-based capture the flag.

And I guess that's why I think the kids are ultimately OK - I don't think there's quite the same perspective or understanding of what all of this was derived from, it TRULY is a game for most of them, and there IS a disconnect from actual weaponry. I don't think that's necessarily a good thing, but I think it really is just projectile tag for most of them. But I still find it unsettling in ways I cannot articulate, and I am particularly bothered by the escalation of NERF and other forms of "play" weapons - it all seems really "off" in a way that I can't let go of.
posted by MysticMCJ at 2:26 PM on July 31, 2018


Yeah... you know. I have to say that looks like fun. So does laser tag. So does paint ball.

If you think of a Nerf gun as some kind of prosthetic replacement for killing people... Think about the essential difference: Guns kill people. Nerf guns do not kill people.

Humans have been into projectiles since the late Pleistocene, and as these things go, I'm cool with the ones made of foam.

As for the sense you may or may not feel about something being wrong with how other people have fun, even though it doesn't affect you in any way: Well. Need I say more.
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 3:45 PM on July 31, 2018 [2 favorites]


You'll shoot your eye out, kid.
posted by banshee at 4:29 PM on July 31, 2018


Well, that's certainly one way of reading what I was attempting to say. To your point, and in fairness - me and "fun" and "childhood" have always been incredibly complicated things, and I came from a family in which the word "play" virtually didn't exist. Which is why I think I have a hard time talking about this. So you are certainly making me reflect on that. :) But really, that particular take isn't really what I was getting at at all... Being unsettled by the increasing escalation of nerf weaponry in ways you can't articulate and thinking something is wrong with how people have fun are two very different things, and the latter is something I generally won't do unless someones version of play causes actual harm.

While I am generally uncomfortable with pointing a fake gun at someone, I'm not going to judge others for it - but I may be a bit unsettled by how these fake guns seem to be approaching the point that a nerf catalog is mostly distinguishable from Guns and Ammo by the colors and the presence of foam. It's the tactical-ization of it all - it seems like a celebration and normalization of a particular sort of militarization that I find unsettling, and maybe that's because I cannot detach that sort of "tactical" styling from all of the negative contexts I've seen it in my life.

Like, I'm not thinking so much "man it's fucked up that these kids are shooting each other with toy guns," it's more "man it's kind of fucked up that these toy guns have tactical rails and modular stocks and they kind of look like a swat team"

As I said I'm really not good at articulating what I'm trying to say here - I'm horrible about using 10000 words that aren't expressing what I want when 10 well chosen ones would do, and today, it seems more the case than usual, so I should stop here and bail out before I see how else I'm capable of saying not entirely what I mean. :)
posted by MysticMCJ at 4:38 PM on July 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


nunchucks—which were inexplicably an acceptable kids toy for a short period in the 80s

Ninja stars.
There was always one parent who was like "Sure, order whatever cheaply made weapon you want out of the back of Black Belt magazine."

Of course, they were "dulled for safety" but that was nothing a motivated 10 year old couldn't fix.
posted by madajb at 5:27 PM on July 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


Note that there is not a single person of color shown in the FoamCon pictures in the article. Only white people can run around with toy weapons without risk of being killed by the police.
posted by monotreme at 8:44 PM on July 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


Zombies are a metaphor for death.

Respectfully: nope. Zombies, at least since Romero, represent our fear that the unthinking masses will be the death of us. In Night of the Living Dead, they represent how our own class consciousness and prejudices can make us tear each other apart. Then in Dawn of the Dead, they represent the fear that consumer culture will end with us destroying each other. The Walking Dead is the grimmest and worst because it shifts the fear into what will happen to us and our loved ones if we don't have the gumption to shout Fuck you, got mine! while it's early enough to still count. This is why there is such a tremendous overlap between gun nuts and zombie apocalypse role players: both groups see a moral high ground for those willing to kill and hoard to make sure they and theirs come out on top, a sort of moral imperative to throw aside community, empathy, and common decency when you think it's on the immediate best interests of your personal peer group.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:38 PM on July 31, 2018 [3 favorites]


Grew up in Northern Ontario - My dad is a waterfowl and game bird hunter, and he would regularly take us along on his hunting trips. We were never allowed to touch his .22, or his larger rifles. We were permitted to have one or two bolt-action rifle style toys, that were explicitly only allowed to be used for pretend shooting at either targets or "wild chickens" (partridge/quail). [From there, you'd better be planning on eating whatever was shot, from tip to tail. My dad would use all the parts of each bird, and it was made clear that nothing was allowed to go to waste. I have eaten a lot of gizzards. As kids (3-8 years), we would help clean the birds as well.]

Absolutely no nerf guns, water guns, or any other form of play gun was permitted that involved aiming at people/anything we didn't plan to eat. We were not allowed to play war-style games with play guns, or anything that would involve aiming a play gun and "pretend" killing people/pets/neighbour kids - and we didn't.

All 3 of us (2 girls, 1 boy) were sent for firearms training and subsequent licensing at age 12 - 14. My brother still hunts game for full use/consumption, not for sport.

From my perspective, unless your family is doing subsistence hunting, there's no need for a gun in your hand. Moving forward from that, if you're hunting game, there's really no reason for anyone to have anything bigger than a single-shot .22 or a .308. You only need one of those to do the job. Registration is the norm in Canada - people crab about doing it, but no one actually minds registering.

You don't go deer hunting with a pistol. Pistols and automatic weaponry are only for someone who is planning to hunt and kill another person. Given that cannibalism is not really the current rage du jour, I don't see why anyone needs a pistol/AK-47. There are plenty of grocery stores everywhere...

So it's a bit redundant in my mind to take kids to a range, with full-body targets to point at and shoot with a pistol - you're just reiterating that the goal of that firearm is to kill people.

(Thus endeth the spontaneous Northern Canadian sermon on guns.)
posted by NorthernAutumn at 10:39 PM on July 31, 2018 [3 favorites]


Yeah, DirtyOldTown captures the gist of it regarding zombies. Individual zombie movies have tried to do a variety of things with the idea, which became a genre, but collectively modern zombie movies are fantasies of a break down of society where a contagion or communicable agent can turn those one knows against you necessitating the individual taking violent action in order to survive. It's the element of contagion that differentiates zombie movies from other disaster films, where the people one knows may die or otherwise vanish. In modern zombie movies people don't die exactly, they turn on you, the uninfected, and seek to make you like them.

I would suggest DirtyOldTown is a even a bit generous about the idea of the "heroes" of zombie movies being overly concerned with their loved ones as they too can turn on you in the end, making relationships more akin to temporary alliances that need to be dropped when the shit really hits the fan. Partners, parents, children all may potentially become zombies and need to be destroyed in order to save oneself. It's a tough job, according to the movies, but gotta happen for the truly deserving to survive. Emotional attachment is a weakness.

Romero's zombie movies were made under the belief that the US still retained some sense of liberal values at its core, the threat was as much against those values as the individuals fighting to survive. Since that time it's become increasingly clear those values aren't at the core of US identity, which gives the breakdown of society a different texture. You could try to make a movie linking conservativism to zombism, but there is little notable difference between the working of society and its breakdown in that case. I mean telling people of color that white folks might turn on them is hardly the stuff that requires fantasy and suggesting their own will join the hordes and turn on them doesn't work well.

There's been attempts, some relatively successful to broaden the ideas of neighbors turning against neighbors do to infection, Body Snatcher movies are much the same as zombie movies in their basic form and some did at least suggest a possible conservative threat reading, 28 Days later too is based on the zombie idea and at least hints at the threat being a male/female divide, and zombie movies have been made in other countries that have entirely different histories of race, so the individual movies needn't be "about" race directly so much as the threat of those you live near and with turning on you. It also should be mentioned that the historical basis of zombies and the earlier incarnations of zombie in popular culture were inherently tied to blackness, having their roots primarily in Haitian folklore and ties to West Africa and the slave trade in how the concepts reached the US. (The movie I Walked with a Zombie is explicitly about the connections between race and slavery in this regard, and is something of a marvel, even more so for being made in 1943 given how unthinking most current movies are.)
posted by gusottertrout at 11:14 PM on July 31, 2018 [4 favorites]


Back in the early Obama years it was widely discussed that zombie survival seems to be a conservative thing, presumably representing some mixture of the fear of the unruly mob / proletariat revolution, while vampires seem to be more of a liberal/left thing, and represent the opposite fear, largely of technocratic authoritarianism and literally parasitic aristocracy.

http://www.mrscienceshow.com/2009/05/correlation-of-week-zombies-vampires.html

I doubt this is a new theory, but it does seem to hold some water in my experience. Romero's movies are sort of an exception; he's at least aware enough of the genre to try to subvert some of the themes (as are some of the better vampire-themed media, which occasionally show the vampires-as-persecuted-minority rather than oppressor). But those themes have to be in place in order to be subverted, so I see Romero's work as sort of the exception that proves the rule.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:01 PM on August 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


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