Shaun of the Dead (Case study by Whitmore High)

• UK/US collaboration (Working Title / Universal Studios)

• Hybridised Zom / Rom / Com

• £4 million production budget

• Shot in 9 weeks

• Wright’s 2nd film after ‘A Fistful of Fingers’ 

• Borrowed actors from comedies

• Dylan Moran / Tamsin Greig (Black Books)

• Martin Freeman (The Office)

• Reece Shearsmith (League of Gentlemen)

• Shot on location in North London & Ealing Studios

Post-modernisation & Narrative

• Bricolage (construction or creation from a diverse range of available things)

• Evident through pastiche (an artistic work in a style that imitates that of another work, artist, or period) of generic codes 

• No real experimentation in narrative structure

• Narrative is linear, single stranded and closed

• Character led with ensemble cast

• Todorovian Narratology (claims that all narratives contain the same five formal elements: equilibrium, disruption, recognition, resolution, and new equilibrium)

• Equilibrium - Shaun & Ed’s shambolic existence

• Disruption - Disrupting Zombies

• Recognition - Realisation Shaun has act against it

• Resolution - Zombies defeated

• New Equilibrium - Shaun & Ed back together under different circumstances 

• Classic Hollywood 3 act structure

• Exposition  - Characters, problems, setting introduced

• Development - battle against zombies

• Resolution - Defeat, Boy gets girl

• Binary oppositions (majority of narratives in media forms such as books and film contain opposing main characters)

• Gender notions

• Social class

• Morality vs immorality

• Outsider vs insider in society

• Consumerist vs capitalist aspiration

• Hedonism vs Individualism 

Gender

• Reinforcing & challenging stereotypes

• Liz has expectations of relationship, but then becomes strong & determined in stance and an active protagonist

• Shaun & Ed suggest stereotypical “Boysey / Buddy” friendship

• Prevents Shaun from having “normal” life with Liz

• Shaun is sensitive, caring and ultimately does the right thing

Politics

Edgar Wright interview by Jason Gorber (ScreenAnarchy) (The World’s End)

“Do you consider yourself a political filmmaker?”

• “I would never use that term”

• “When we made Shaun of the Dead, the initial idea at least, if it had some social, political points to make, was to put ourselves into a George Romero film.”

“On which side of this political divide do you come down upon?”

• “Take something like Invasion of the Body Snatchers - [the reason] why that film's so potent, the Don Siegel one particularly, is that the metaphor is so rich that both the left and the right can claim it as their own.  The left say that it's the dangers of the McCarthy witchhunt, and the right say it's the dangers of communism.”

• “In World's End we actually deliberately played both sides of the argument.  Because it's a comedy and a satire we do draw a very sharp line in the sand, saying "do you want to be one of the alien robots, or do you want to be the high school dropout flipping the bird to the teacher?"  In reality, me and Simon and all of us can exist in this happy middle ground.  But because it's a satire, we like to give you a harsh choice”

Character of Gary King in ‘The World’s End’

• “A character that with each revelation throughout the movie you think this man can't hit rock bottom any lower. Yet we still want him to find some kind of triumph in all of this.  In a way, this movie is about a man that escapes therapy to trigger his own intervention” 

• “People like Gary King thinks of his adult friends as "wage slaves".  He actually says "you've got your jobs and your cars and your wives and your security but I'm free to do what I want any old time".  They say to him, "but is this what you really want?" 

• “A man that's deeply flawed and likes to see himself as the high school rebel forever.  And he eventually becomes your drunken representative of planet Earth”

Political Sides (Interview + Medium Article)

• “We make jokes about Starbucks in the film.  It's easy to rag on Starbucks.  It's the evil face of some folksy, global homogenization. And yet we drank a lot of Starbucks during the shoot”

• “The baddies almost represent Apple.  Are you going to be with Apple or are you going to not be with Apple?”

• Concept of slavery through digital media

• Gary King remains outside digital collective by not trading in old Nokia for smartphone

• Portrays pros & cons of modern person’s reliance on digital media & technology

• Failure to join mainstream culture results in being excluded from society

• Appears to make life easier when giving in to inevitability of digitalisation

• The Network state that term ‘Robot’ (Old Czech word meaning ‘Slave’) is an incorrect term because they are “very happy” and “not slaves”

• Notion that humanity has become slaves to unknown force through technology and digital media usage eerily similar to reality