As soon as I saw the trailer for Zombieland, I knew the movie would be pertinent to my interests. Mainly because my interests include Woody Harrelson and zombies. I also enjoy humor and people getting hit in the face with banjos. So far, I've seen the film twice. After the first viewing, I gave the film an A- rating, but after the second one I'm going to bump that down to a solid B. Not because I didn't like it (I really enjoyed it a lot) but because the humor doesn't stay fresh. The film is naturally going to draw comparisons to Shaun of the Dead, and quite frankly, the humor in Shaun of the Dead holds up better after repeated viewings. But I'm not going to waste my time comparing Zombieland to its cinematic predecessor, because it's not really fair. But there are two points in which it is fair to compare them (besides the humor). They're both Zombie Romantic Comedies, and they both deal with the issue of agency--or rather, the issue of being the hero.

Early in the movie, the narrator (we know him only as Columbus) says that he's "More of a Sancho Panza character." I think most people would recognize that as a reference to Don Quixote and the hero's trusted sidekick. Throughout the beginning of the movie, Columbus seems to be positioning himself as the wry sidekick. Like Sancho, his job seems to be to comment on the follies, foibles, and delusions of the real hero of the movie, Tallahassee. Tallahassee isn't unlike the fabled Don Quixote. Like the knights of old, he's in the "ass kicking business" and as movie tells us, "business is good." Like Quixote, he's on a quest for the impossible and he tilts at his own windmills. In case you're wondering how long I can drag out this parallel, I just want to point out that Don Quixote also plays with the question of agency within a text. Can a character choose to be the hero? Can he choose not to be the hero? Can a character have his or her status of hero simply taken away? Nullified?

That august body, Wikipedia, defines a hero as

In modern movies, the hero is often simply an ordinary person in extraordinary circumstances, who, despite the odds being stacked against him or her, typically prevails in the end.

In other words, he is the protagonist. The most important person in the story. The hero typically has the most character development, is typically active rather than reactive, and the character that actually has an arc to follow throughout the story. The hero also generally gets the girl in the end. The white hat, however, is optional.

Typically, when the phrase "don't be a hero" is used, the speaker means "don't take any unnecessarily stupid risks in order to impress the girl." But as I watched Zombieland, I began to suspect that's not what Columbus meant at all. Especially since he self-identifies as "The Sancho Panza character." Because he viewed himself as the sidekick, he was essentially condemning himself to die. Sorry, Columbus, but sidekicks don't get to survive horror movies. They especially don't get to survive Zombie films. After all, when you start with a small circle of characters (and zombie films almost always do), you know that you're going to lose most of them. Zombies are unstoppable killing machines! Somebody is going to die! If Columbus wants to survive until the end, he has to position himself as the hero in his own story.

I met Jane Eppenson once. At the time, she was a write for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. She's also done work on Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, and most recently, Warehouse 13. While we were talking, she said something that stuck in my brain. Every person believes that they are the hero of the story. Columbus was very consciously rejecting that, convinced by the circumstances of his own life that he'll always be the sidekick. That's why he was so terrified of everything (essentially he was terrified of death), why he longed for a girlfriend but felt unworthy of women, why he immediately fell in with, and deferred to, Tallahassee.

Movies, but their very nature, explore the theme of what it means to be a hero. How a character responds or acts is another element to a much longer, much broader discussion. In Shaun of the Dead, Shaun learned to be heroic when he learned to be a leader and make the hard decisions. That movie told us that a Hero should be willing to do both things, even if sometimes it doesn't end well. In Zombieland, Columbus decides he has to "be a hero" to get the girl--in other words, he has to man up. That's a boring message. Hardly worth creating a whole movie for, even if you include zombie-things. I think that the subtext is far more interesting. Columbus repositioned himself within the text, consciously choosing to be a sidekick until he was ready to shed Sancho Panza, at which point, he consciously stepped into the role he had been avoiding. Tallahassee is a great character, but the movie was never really about him. It wasn't really about anybody until Columbus stepped into the void.

Rule #17: Be a Hero.

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