Zombie Cliche Lookout: Digging Deeper
Once again, today’s cliche isn’t unique to zombie stories. It’s something you’ll run into in real life. In fact, I’ll bet you know someone who does this. I’m talking, of course, of the type of person who can talk and talk without actually getting into much of substance. They’ll use hundreds or even thousands of words, but will only give the most nebulous of pictures of what they’re saying. If you want to know more, you need to ask very specific, targeted questions. And if the subject at hand is the violent warlord you might just have to fight against? Well, you’d better get asking questions.
About this Episode:
Apologies again for missing last week. I got my setup back Friday afternoon and was able to shoot episodes this weekend, so we should be back on our normal schedule until the comic ends. I will have to rebuild my buffer, which is completely exhausted, so if anything else comes up in the next couple of weeks I may need to take another brief break. Hopefully that won’t be an issue.
Discussion Question: Prejudice and Villains
When I was a younger lad, bikers were a common stock bad guy to show up in cartoons, movies, and books aimed at kids. I think this was an effect of how the idea of an outlaw biker changed over time. I was way too young to be around during the high water mark of violent biker gangs, and as they became less of a real threat, they began to migrate into a pop culture version of themselves. The idea being that they would inherit a lot of the scariness that the real outlaw biker gangs had built up in the post-war era. It’s now 2018, and Harley’s are mainstream. In fact, it’s almost a trope in itself that a man going through his midlife crisis would gravitate toward one. How does this change the idea of a biker as a stock villain?
Bikers, in Australia, at least aren’t feared because they’re some kind of bad guy or villain, they’re feared because they dare to do things most people wouldn’t care for much. They’re antisocial towards those not in their group, typically associate with a particular tattooed logo, and are pretty much feared because of the violent nature they usually have. if you see a biker gang member, it’s best to avoid any contact at all with them.
I don’t know what they’d make of zombies but they’d probably figure them out pretty quickly, and just shoot and whack their way through an entire horde of them, if zombies came to be.
Bikers are okay, sometimes, even friendly, if the want to be. But most are antisocial and not particularly wanting or caring of social contact beyond their group. There are ex bikers or persons who are the last of their group, some choose to live quietly in society. Mostly, though they don’t take shit from anyone or anything.
Very interesting. Sounds like your outlaw biker culture lasted a lot longer than it did here in the States. Not that there aren’t still biker gangs, but there’s also a lot of middle-aged, mild mannered bikers to balance them out.
Well, there is still the remoteness in Australia, there’s space for bikers to be who they want to be and providing they don’t run foul of the law, they can do pretty much what they want. Most bikers I’ve talked to either don’t want to talk much about it or just don’t like certain parts of biker culture and history.
It’s a very distant culture to me, as I didn’t grow up much around it, and it can get confused sometimes with the tattoo culture that also developed partially to cater to bikers who happened to like certain tattoo designs. But the two weren’t always intertwined, it just came to be that they merged because of popularity.
I imagine this biker to be built like a tank, with tatoos, a nail bat with chains drench in oil so he can set it on FIRE…
And have a friendly Canadian accent.
He likes to make brownies too.
I like it!
I believe you have gotten some of this wrong. The most famous biker in America “The Fonz” was not seen as a bad guy. Bikers in the 40s and 50s were non-conformists which was almost a crime in those days and some were painted as criminals but mostly as vets who had trouble adjusting back to civilian life. The 60s and the Hell’s Angels and especially the Rolling Stones concert changed everything and led to the idea in pop culture of criminal biker gangs. Nowadays you have the three main types of dedicated hard core bikers both criminal and non-criminal (check out Anarchy and the Miracle Riders) the weekenders who work normal jobs and get together for rides and those who have a bike and take it out for big biker events like Daytona. Most are pretty harmless.
My memory might be off on this one; it’s been a while since I read/watched anything about outlaw biker gangs. I had thought the Hells Angels and whatnot started with WWII fighter pilots struggling to get back to civilian life and things spinning into extremes.
If you search on “biker” or “biker history” or “biker culture” for the region specific to where you live and grew up in, that will most likely give you a Wikipedia link to a stub article linking to various biker definitions.
YMMV, depending on what exactly you experienced in your youth. It’s not as bad as it seems although a lot of biker culture has been portrayed as outlaw or gang types, when this is not always the case.
Sorry, but “Beardo the big, bad biker” just makes me lol.