A gorgeous fall afternoon in Trinity Bellwoods Park as the sun’s glow melts into the crimson and gold fall foliage surrounding the natural hollow at the park’s north end. The pure, pale blue of the cloudless sky perfectly contrasts the flaming hues of the changing leaves. The idyllic conditions also accentuate the blood-smeared faces of a few hundred zombies. Yes, it’s a beautiful day for a Zombie Walk.
Patrolling the upper edge of the Trinity Bellwoods bowl a little before 3pm, I can see that there’s already an impressive collection of living dead enthusiasts. Descending the grassy slope, I get a closer look at just what kind of creatures will be parading from here to the Bloor Cinema over the course of the afternoon: punker zombies with matching gashes in clothes and faces; a chef zombie with a lobster clawing through his neck; a pair of construction zombies, their heads impaled with screwdrivers; a collection of kids gnawing on another zombie’s entrails; Heath Ledger’s Joker; a dead Lego man; many dead brides; even a zombie poodle topped off by a headless horseman figure.
Once I’m down among the crowd, walking around becomes a sensory overload of grotesquery. Everywhere I look is another ingenious depiction of a gruesome death. Zombies are complimenting each other; fawning over the zombie baby bursting from its mother’s belly and the gooeyness of one girl’s exposed brain. Of course, photographers are nothing less than omnipresent, snapping every latex gash with a fetishistic abandon. I overhear one photographer prompting the gooey-headed zombie as he prepares a shot, “Can you play with your brain a bit?” Many of the zombies are even wielding high powered digital cameras, which I’m pretty sure isn’t exactly proper zombie etiquette.
The inventiveness of the costumes and the attention to gory details is a testament to the popularity of this bizarre gathering. Now in its sixth year, Toronto’s Zombie Walk is the most established of its kind, growing from a handful of adventurous culture jammers in its first year to over 1,100 bodies last year, and a similar turnout (from all estimates) yesterday. Though the Toronto After Dark Film Festival is sponsoring the event, not everyone is here for the discount horror movie tickets. Walking around as a zombie for an afternoon has its roots in the subversive flash mob pranks of the infamous Cacophony Society (the inspiration for Fight Club’s Project Mayhem) and their costumed get-togethers like SantaCon. After all, some of these zombies are deep into their character — dragging their feet and demanding brains long before the march begins.
Consequently, there’s a strange sense of community. The collective recognition of everyone’s inner freakishness acts as a refreshing social leveler. I mean, how judgmental can anyone be when their eyeball is sliding down their cheek? I even overhear one young lady exclaim, “Hey gorgeous,” upon spotting a friend whose face had the texture of scorched plastic. And another zombie offers to no one in particular, “Does anybody need fake blood?”
A friend of mine postulates that the appeal of this gathering comes from the fact that we as a city have no shared culture; that any excuse to get together en masse without some sort of underlying purpose is motive enough. We discuss this at the southeast entrance to the park as the zombies make their way onto Queen Street, quickly overtaking the sidewalk and at least one lane of traffic. Amazingly, the dozen bicycle cops in their bright yellow windbreakers are able to keep the crowd from completely obstructing the 501 streetcar cautiously creeping its way westbound. While we’re enthused to see such unsanctioned fun disrupting the Sunday shopping scene on Queen West, it seems that the zombie walk will soon require a parade permit. So much for subversion.
By the time I make my way to the head of the pack, the crowd is dispersed along the Queen Street sidewalk all the way to Bathurst Street. Almost every “normal” person on the street has stopped to watch the procession, and I would estimate that nearly all are armed with digital cameras or cell phones in order to capture the moment. This may be the most heavily documented event since, well, Nuit Blanche.
But what’s more amazing is that a mass expression of horrific inclination is met with delighted smiles from those who encounter it. Like the psychological appeal of fear, seeing a street full of zombies satisfies the unconscious fascination with death. This is the Jungian shadow come to life.
As the parade slouches thorough the College and Bathurst intersection towards Bloor Street, the zombies begin to intermingle with the regular Annex crowd. Soon, every other body on Bloor Street is pale and bloody. And this is where the zombie walk gets interesting — zombies are browsing the used discs at Sonic Boom, munching on falafels, settling in on the Starbucks patio and lining up in front of Bloor Cinema. And it all seems so very normal.
Maybe Toronto is really a super-tolerant city, or maybe we’re just extremely desensitized to weirdness. I’d like to think it’s the former. After all, no one on my TTC bus seemed at all concerned to see two zombies staggering across St Clair Avenue long after the zombie walk had ended.