The Crazies

Directed by Breck Eisner, The Crazies (2010) is a remake of the original 1973 horror release, both of which concern a military plane, laden with a bioweapon, that crashes into a marsh near a small town in Iowa. The virus causes the local inhabitants to become violent and, eventually, to start killing one another. At the end, the military uses an atomic bomb to destroy the virus and, indeed, the entire town.

The film presents a version of the pastoral at the start (Garrard could help us define precisely which type and the implications of it). Suffice to say that, for American culture, Iowa signifies “all-American,” “corn-fed,” “agricultural,” "rural,” “Midwest,” etc. Meanwhile, the government--as some masculine, militarized, malevolent force--both unleashes the man-made pathogen and then wipes out the town in order to contain the blunder. The film, then, clearly reinforces Buell's notion of "hegemonic control" in relation to the toxic event, with its typically conservative and skeptical view of government power. Still, the fact that "simple folk" begin to kill one another begs other questions: how does this film and its representation of a "Midwest town gone mad" speak to urban disdain for the country? In what ways, in other words, does this film's toxic discourse support or complicate the old "city versus country" binary?