Shaun of The Dead: Rifles, Masculinity, and Castration

So I watched Shaun of The Dead on Comedy Central over the weekend. I have to say, I never really liked the movie that much. It's like Napoleon Dynamite, everyone I know loves it, but I just find it kinda annoying. Anyways, As I was watching it, I decided to apply some of what we talked about in class to see if it works/applies, and holy crap, it applies and actually made the movie more enjoyable(to a certain degree).

So there's 3 main dudes, Shaun(main dude), Ed(fat dude), and David(glasses dude). We'll start with an analysis of Shaun, then Ed, then David.

Shaun at the beginning is similar to a boy, no sense of responsibility and overall, pretty immature; however, he seems to be pretty secure with his penis and has little fear of castration(has step dad issues though. Freud would probably say that he fears that his step dad will castrate him). When the zombies came, he was unsure of himself at first but quickly took charge of the situation. Stuff happened, he reconciled with the step dad, and enters a new level of maturity. Towards the end, Shaun was given the responsibility of handling the gun in the pub, and though he kinda sucked, he was still the only one shown to use it successfully(bullet through zombie brains). Now if the gun is a symbol of the penis, then that means that Shaun is the only male in the movie that was able to harness the power of the penis to deal with the situation, making him a real man. The fact that he does not rely on the gun alone though shows that he knows that there's more to being a man than having/using a big gun.

Ed, the fat guy, is pretty immature through out the whole movie. While Shaun is busy trying to save everyone, Ed is being a douche(some of his antics are kinda funny, but most of the time they just annoy me). His childishness is maintained through out the film until the end when he sacrificed himself for the sake of Shaun and his girlfriend. At that point, Shaun hands the gun to Ed, signifying his rise to manhood. Ed finally got a gun with 2 shells(seriously, there were only two bullets left).

David, the annoying prick with glasses, is pretty freaking lame through out the entire movie. He was pretty much "castrated" by Shaun when Shaun started dating Lizzy(this occurs before the start of the movie), the girl that David wanted to be with. When Lizzy broke up with Shaun and holed up in her apartment with David and his girlfriend, David regained some sense of his manhood as he was the only male in the apartment and no one was there to "castrate" him again; however, when Shaun showed up at the apartment and took charge, David was once again "castrated" by Shaun. These series of castrations are the reasons why David hates Shaun(I'd be pissed at whoever castrates me) and constantly questions him and antagonize him. David's hoping to some how "castrate" Shaun and assume the role of Ultimate Dude in the movie, but fails horribly. Towards the end of the film, David obtained the gun through what I can assume was suppose to be a semi humorous sequence of events. He attempts to shoot Shaun's dead mother in the head to prevent her from coming back as a zombie; however, Shaun, being the figure of Ultimate Maleness, once again knocks David down a peg and pushes him to the floor. David responds by pointing the gun at Shaun and pulling the trigger, only to find that there were no shells. So David finally got a gun, but it didn't come with any shells. David is a loser.

I apologize if any of it was unclear, but the deal with David I find very very amusing.

Also, if you notice the blunt objects the three guys used as weapons early on, Shaun and Ed had nice bludgeoning objects while David had a umbrella. Shaun had a cricket stick/bat made of solid wood. Ed sported a nice shovel. David, well, for some odd reason, he thought he could take on zombies with a dinky umbrella. Maybe he thought that umbrella is a symbol of those who created the zombies and the zombies might obey people with umbrellas, but that's just stupid cause zombies can't reason unless they were introduced to more advanced versions of the T or G virus. Then again, I doubt that the writers of the movie were thinking about Resident Evil when they wrote the script, so I say that David is a castrato, but without the awesome singing abilities.

maybe freudian influenced characters are the new "christ-figure" of modern media lol. . .