All the Rage

So I saw 28 Weeks Later the other night. Alone. I really needed an escape from reality, this was the most appealing thing showing, and I did want a glimpse into the action (never saw 28 Days).

The opening sequence alone makes the film worth seeing. There is something immensely satisfying about the combination of thrashing rock music with excellent distortion and images of someone running their ass off, running for their life, running across the rolling green hills of England, being pursued by a throng of sprinting, tireless, blood-spewing and -chewing, insanely-angry-ass motherfuckers.




My sense is this sequel lacked the depth, nuance and character of the first, but still picked up on interesting themes that I assume have been explored by others: rage as parable for modern angst, alienated existence in the midst of crowds, anxieties about populations, immigration, epidemiology, etc. To these this film (perhaps ungracefully) added layers of militarism, police states and panopticism, the ethics of settlers, and the paradox of state violence as a public good.

The film theorist Jean Epstein argued that one role of the camera is to make available aspects of reality that are unavailable to the eye but are no less real. Through slow motion, acceleration, and lighting effects, elements of presence of being, alive and active--even animistically present in creation-- can be momentarily highlighted and brought into perception. Arguably, the film as narrative, with its thematic orientation, does this as well. It highlights and brings into focus aspects of our existence we might ordinarily miss. Acceleration and hyperrealization are obvious techniques, and the "28" franchise capitalizes on this exceptionally well around the topic of anger. Simply put, it seems to ask, what the fuck is anger and why the fuck are we so mad?

"This time the bullet cold rocked ya
A yellow ribbon instead of a swastika
Nothin proper about ya propaganda
Fools follow rules when the set commands ya
Said it was blue
When ya blood was red
That's how ya got a bullet blasted through ya head

Blasted through ya head
Blasted through ya head"

Employing the trope of a "rage virus," the film risks externalizing the sin, in a semi-gnostic disassociation with the evil of our flesh. The darkness comes from without as an invader, rather than from within (Are we to clean the cup, or is it out of the heart that the unclean comes?). But, in fairness, such symbolism is often the best way to convey a message, with a narrative performance using mythical devices as hooks to draw the viewer in to the deeper implications of what is unfolding. Zeroing in on and enlarging this aspect of our existence to such proportions at least allows the possibility of putting this limit experience of rage under the microscope for further examination.

" I give a shout out to the living dead
Who stood and watched as the feds cold centralized
So serene on the screen
You was mesmerized
Cellular phones soundin a death tone
Corporations cold
Turn ya to stone before ya realize"

This rage is not just an individual experience, but takes place collectively. There is an odd solidarity between the rage zombies. They don't seem to attack each other after they've been infected. But there is no logic to this. Why would rage discern? Why not tear the fuck out of whoever the hell is around, so what if they are enraged too? The madness of crowds is at play, so that the logic of mob violence works to direct these pissed off, radically isolated individuals in a choreography of destruction aimed at the "not-yet-angry".

"No escape from the mass mind rape
Play it again jack and then rewind the tape
And then play it again and again and again
Until ya mind is locked in
Believin all the lies that they're tellin ya
Buyin all the products that they're sellin ya
They say jump and ya say how high
Ya brain-dead
Ya gotta fuckin bullet in ya head"*

Finally, this sequel, as noted above, adds the possibility of conceiving rage institutionally. "Execute code red": the hackneyed, stock line, uttered by the steely military commander in an effort to contain the social distortion, sets in motion the manifestation of the state's own anger. The monopoly on the means of violence having been challenged, the codified and stored up pissed-ness of the law--politics as the continuation of war--unleashes itself in its own display of catastrophic rage. As the protest of the living dead unfolds on the streets, the arm of power sweeps like a tidal wave across the concrete plane of history so that "even the dead are not safe".

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* Rage Against the Machine, "Bullet in the Head"