Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Title Delivers (A Little Too Much)

by Romeo Luevano and Gretchen Trupp 

Romeo and Gretchen's movie review comes after our field trip to see the new movie, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016), as part of our Spring 2016 seminar, Languages of Fear, Racism, and Zombies at Swarthmore College. **SPOILER ALERT**

The film is so White that we can mistake it as one of this year’s Oscar nominations. 

Winners of *most memorable zombie duo* from the movie.

From the beginning of the movie, it seemed fairly clear that Pride and Prejudice and Zombies would carry a healthy dose of all the title promised, some of it being from the producers rather than content of the book itself. The zombie virus itself came from “the colonies”, and could be transferred by a bite. Having the virus come from European colonies and then affect the greater London area seems to indicate fears that the colonizers had about their own power and who they were trying to control. For the first few hours (up to days depending on individual circumstance), the zombie would blend in with humans-- only their decaying flesh would give them away. Most of the zombies bitten while alive retained their speech capabilities and memories-- a trait not often seen in zombie movies. A big part of this seemed to be for shock and horror value, as the violence appeared to be pretty gratuitous for a PG-13 rating.

While the Bennett sisters had been training for zombie combat since they were little, the way that fact was portrayed was not necessarily empowering. The camera shots themselves were ones that had a sexual air to them, such as slow-panning up from a shot of the girl's’ legs in stockings to their thighs, whereupon they strapped knives on before putting their skirts down.

“Everything belonged to him -- but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own. That was the reflection that made you creepy all over." - Heart of Darkness

The Bennett sisters gear up for battle.

The personality of the rich, dashing, and deadly George Wickham, who turned out to be the antichrist and zombie commander (a very intense choice for a zombie movie), seemed to be quite analogous to Joseph Conrad’s Kurtz: “Everything belonged to him -- but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own. That was the reflection that made you creepy all over”[1].

Wickham's family crest was St. Lazarus (which is enough of a biblical reference to know that he’s not a Good Guy). His characterization however was kind of lacking, with a lot of plot points not really explained (such as his capture of Lydia), save for the Darcy angst, of which there was plenty. Perhaps the saving grace is that he is certainly one of the few allusions to the original Haitian myth of the ‘Zombi,’ in which one of the ways Zombis are formed are “to serve the master who created them”[2]. Since Wickham was the antichrist, he became the leader of these zombies since he continuously produced them and held them captive in a church. This is a very loose allusion, but it still is refreshing to find somewhat of an homage to the original Zombie myth.

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Wickham and the Four Horsemen are getting creepy again.

The movie also seemed to be under the impression that only White people lived in England in the 19th century, which is just simply not true. The film contains at least two people of color, both of which had miniscule screen time. Additionally, the film plays with the storyline of having children sent to train in either China or Japan to help gain the skills to fight off the zombies, yet there are no Chinese or Japanese characters throughout the entire duration of this film (although a couple of the characters attempt to speak Chinese and Japanese at various points). The film is so White that we can mistake it as one of this year’s Oscar nominations.  

All in all, this movie delivered on its title promise: Pride in the story’s history and narrative in all of its seriousness, prejudice against women and people of color in many forms, and a horrifying amount of zombies.

Notes.
[1] Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. New York: Dover, 1902. Print.

[2] Kordas, Ann. "New South, New Immigrants, New Women, New Zombies The Historical Development of the Zombie in American Popular Culture." Race, Oppression and the Zombie Essays on Cross-Cultural Appropriations of the Caribbean Tradition. Jefferson: McFarland, 2011. 15-20. Print.

About the Authors.

Romeo Leuvano is currently a freshman at Swarthmore College (best college in the U.S.!) and is currently studying Sociology/Anthropology and Peace & Conflict Studies. He loves puppies, pizza, and pretzels!

Gretchen Trupp is a sophomore at Swarthmore College pursuing a special major in Languages and Linguistics. They enjoy talking about language, social issues, and dank memes. See her previous contribution to #languagestory blog here.