As most of you know, I’m a big fan of vampire books and movies. Given as how the last couple years Hollywood has been cranking out bloodsucker flicks more than ever before, I’m a happy camper. I also used to like horror movies a lot when I was a teenager but grew out of it because the genre seemed to become stale: the same old cliches were repeated over and over; few directors did anything new and exciting. One of the exceptions to that was George Romero.
The first movie I saw of him was Day of the Dead, which I still enjoy today even though many people think this one isn’t his best work. Since then, I’ve watched a number of zombie movies but eventually also stopped watching them.
And then came The Walking Dead.
Before you read on, there are minor spoilers up ahead. I tried to give away as little as possible but that’s impossible if I want to point out certain things.
Here goes: When I first heard about the series, I was a bit skeptical because just the title alone sounded like a bad TV-movie. But after several friends recommended it, I started watching and got hooked right away. I think it’s one of the best series on TV right now. Even if you’re not a fan of the horror genre, give it a try because the zombies are just an excuse to place the protagonists in difficult situations. And the gory scenes are actually relatively limited in comparison to all the rest.
So what’s the relevance to self-defense in all this?
It’s pretty simple:
The Walking Dead describes a world where our society has broken down because of extreme external circumstances. The protagonists have to adapt to this new reality or die. Their daily lives depend solely on their self-defense skills, in the largest sense of the term.
Pretty much every hairy situation you see in the show is something that can (and actually does) happen in reality, in a different context than a zombie apocalypse of course: [Read more…]
