“Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it”
28 Days Later showed that love is the cure
We need to draw a line through the first movie up until this one for me to stay on track. 28 Days Later shows that the rage virus doesn’t just affect whoever is infected, but its hate and rage affects everyone. Hannah and Jim help Selena make the connection that love really is the cure.
The rage virus comes from society and its hate, its wars, its chaos. Even if there is love, the virus affects everyone and spreads fast. Just like IRL, hate online or in the street does affect us all. Selena struggles with this in the beginning - she rightfully doesn’t trust anyone, and it affects her relationships and kills her ability to actually live. When you’re surrounded by hate you have no choice but to protect yourself.
Hannah breaks this mentality. She shows Selena that they all need each other and that they all need to trust each other. And Jim shows her that “just” staying alive isn’t “as good as it gets”, but that openning up and loving is worth it.
Selena becomes aware of what it means to live
Samson, Adam and Eve
In part one of 28 Years Later, Dr. Kelson treats the infected like the humans they really are while the rest of humanity abandons them and treats them like demons. He shows Spike how to have a healthy view of death and life. How to love. Spike’s journey shows that even if we’re in a ‘safe’ society, shielded from the outside horrors, we will still always be affected by the horrors outside unless we face them. Society can’t be segregated. If one group falls apart we all do.
In the Bone Temple, Dr. Kelson begins to experiment with teaching Samson how to love. He shows him art, music, dance, and he speaks to him. Even if it feels that Samson can’t hear him, he tells him stories. We start to see Samson change: he doesn’t kill Kelson, but keeps coming back for more. We might be tempted to think that this is addiction, that Samson really just cares about the morphine that Kelson tranquilizes him with, but in the midst of his high, we see Samson remember.
Samson shows his first sign of awareness when he eats a blackberry (it seemed he was a meat eater prior to this) and wipes his hand on his cloth. And the cloth shows that he’s aware of his penis now and tries to cover it up. This is like the story of Adam and Eve where the devil tells Eve that if she eats the fruit she will not die, but she will gain awareness of good and evil.
But this time it isn’t a woman that gains consciousness. It’s a man. I think that is key to this new series; we’re shown that the old society values toxic masculinity; Jamie (although he is complicated and a caring father), kills without emotion, cheats on his wife, they call the infected things like “Alpha” because their muscles and big dicks.. and Eric the scandinavian soldier that tries to act tough saying he is a viking. Eric even shows how he feels about women, showing off to Spike about the woman he had and how he prioritizes her for her looks. Samson gaining consciousness here shows us that society needs to change its view of masculinity. And that women have already woken up, but now it’s men who need to wake up
Dr. Kelson, Jimmy, love, art, and religion
We contrast Samson’s Adam and Eve moment with Kelson saying he’s atheist and Jimmy losing touch with reality by trying to cling to religion, either by god in his childhood or by the devil after he felt that god betrayed him. He’a trying to cling to a higher power to find truth amongst the chaos and unexplained. Kelson found that, religion aside, it’s love and patience and constant effort/experimenting with how to show that love that can cure someone of hate. Yes, science cured Samson, but I believe it had to be mixed with Kelson’s constant love and patience. It could not have happened in a cold laboratory. And I’m not sure if this is a flat out denouncement of religion, but gives us hope that we don’t have to cling to a higher power (whether satan or god) to heal ourselves. We can solve this with love and patience, and a little science.
I feel bad for Jimmy. He was just as affected by the virus as the actual infected. There’s a moment when he opens up and tells Kelson he feels heard, that nobody has really listened to him like Kelson. If Kelson had more time with Jimmy, I believe he would have cured him like he cured Samson.
He needed a role model like Kelson so badly, just like men right now that need better role models.
Jim
The ending to The Bone Temple hit me hard. We find Jim teaching his daughter everything we’ve learned in the whole series.
“Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it,”
They discuss how fascism brought hate into the world and how we cannot forget, or else the cycle with repeat. Our toxic masculine culture breeds fascists. It isolates men, tells them to blame women and minorities, teaches them to hate. It teaches them that there is somehow “peace through war”.
And in the last shot, Jim’s daughter asks if we should help those in danger of being infected by the rage, and he replies:
“Of course we do.”