Women V Zombies

So there is a post on tumblr going around that has women in cute 50's style dresses, mostly neck to knee shots. This alone is pretty. But the artist makes it better. They are all carrying weapons of some sort. Chainsaw, crow bar, kitchen knife, lead pipe. Now the last three items could be from Clue or something but the chainsaw makes it change direction. In the comments below the picture there is a discussion of a zombie survival game set in the 50's where only the women survived. They even gave it a little background of a super serum fitted to the male gene overloads the human body and turns men into primal needs incarnate, aka zombies.

The video game premise is interesting as one of the commenters brought up the idea that you should be able to design your own 50's dress and style and it would be interesting to see what male gamers would do. The play style would be interesting as well but more than that, the story you could write into such a premise would be fantastic.

Talk about having a variety of characters set into a perfect setting. The removal of men in the harsh 50's environment would create a power fluctuation and show case the strength of women. But you wouldn't just have strong bad ass women, you'd also have the range to have weak female characters. The range you could get out of a female only cast would be incredible. You get the strong characters protecting the weak but the weak ones could find their roles as the caretakers for the ones on the front line.

But you could also have story lines in which the weak character steps up temporarily for the strong character who breaks down from the stress of handling the zombies. Maybe the fighter comes face to face with a zombie who was once her husband and freezes. You could throw such emotion into the characters' actions that aren't usually showcased when the protagonist is male. You could portray women as humans with depth and character beyond their usual side kick or damsel in distress role while still including those roles. And the relationships that could be explored in a female heavy group would be fantastic. When have you ever seen the depth of female relationships between friends explored in detail? I know I really haven't because it is so complicated (and that is a gross understatement). You could explore the subtleties and nuances between women that stem from a social hierarchy unique to each woman in the network. The platonic relationships and entanglements would be fascinated to see played out especially in such stressful times.

There is also a gender reversal that could be showcased. Usually women are treated as precious commodities. You know, women and children first. But with this situation, you'd have an over abundance of women compared to the number of uninfected men. Suddenly men who are used to being the defenders and protectors are now the valuable resource and are seen as too precious to be on the front lines. They would be tucked safely away as the key to future generations. (This especially works when set in the 50's where they wouldn't have the technology or idea of in vitro fertilization using the genetic material from another egg instead of sperm.) The men's reaction to such restrictions would be so much fun to play with.

This would be an epic piece no matter what format it was presented in, game, story, comic, movie. Unfortunately it definitely wouldn't be made into a game with the way the gaming industry is horrendously gender biased from game creation to marketing to fans and gamers. You wouldn't be able to get the depth of story that this scenario offered in just a movie. A TV show might work if it was done correctly and if the public gave it a chance. A story would be perfect, I'm not sure if I could do it justice but I'd love to work with someone who could. Same thing with comic. Sigh. It's nice to think about though.