Warm Bodies: Longing for Something That Isn’t There

(2) This second part, I actually disagree with. Conscience [ego] makes us human. One peculiar trait about ‘R’ is his inner monologue and angst-ridden self-deprecation. In the first attack scene [when he is eating the boyfriend’s brains] he asks us to look away and explains that he doesn’t know why he does what we does, but rather that he needs to do it [aha, ideology!!]. A zombie with ethics and social awareness. It is his conscience [and of course, love!] that drives him to become human once again. Now, of course, one of many points here being that acute awareness to social cues and rules only draws us deeper into an undead-like subjugation. That the more we become accustomed to social customs the more we begin doing them without thinking. The more, in actuality, this social cues end up disregarding one another. Notice what happens to the first band of young human survivors [most of them forget the ‘training to survive’ that John Malkovich refers to] -most of them die, except of course, the love interest!

So, within the first 30 minute we already have commentary on the claustrophobia of education and social rules. What I want to deal with is this notion of conscience. Which is given to us. I am not speaking about consciousness here, but more about what drives us to be ‘social’ beings. When I use the word conscience, think of the character of ‘Jiminy Cricket’ – remember him, Pinocchio’s guide? Or how about the ‘Holy Spirit’ and how it convicts us. Or the pop-culture image of the little demon on the left and the little angel on the right shouting in our ears on how we should live our lives. But, I also want to use this word, how Freud approaches it – the ego. That part of us which is shaped by society; the part of us that learns how to be social and to ‘play by the rules’.

Note here, that the ego and ‘I’ are not the same entity. They are two foreign objects. The social relates back to us and attempts to shape the ego [the case surrounding the ‘I’]. The social rules [super-ego] tells us how we should act, what to say, who to believe, who not to believe, who to love and so on. In this sense, I disagree with this claim. That it is the ego/super-ego that defines whether we are conscience are not. Criminals are still just as human as the the next person – possibly too human. Those with special needs are just as equally human. Having the ability to play by the rules does not determine your humanity; yet, another possibly point of the movie – that we bring our assumptions with us when we make such judgement calls [there is a point ‘R’ tell Julia to act dead – and he corrects her by saying: ‘Too much’; she becomes a parody of pop-culture assumptions right there and then -a parody of the very roles we think we need to play to be a part of the social apparatus.  We assume certain criteria need to be in place before we can assess the value of another being – which in a sense, only quantifies another person into a machine.