Wednesday, July 11, 2012
The Walking Dead Trophy Necklace
Activision is developing a shooter based on AMC's version of "The Walking Dead". Starting today, the first 100 Comic Con attendeess that pre-order the game will get this zombie ear trophy necklace. I expect we'll be seeing a slew of reproductions appearing on Ebay and Etsy.
Grisly trophy taking seems to be a part of the culture of warfare, it doesn’t matter if it’s the ancient Picts, Roman trooper, or 20th century WWII participant or later. A WWII Life magazine articles shows a young woman sitting at a desk with a Japanese skull, (Life May 22, 1944) which was sent to her via military mail from her spouse. The interesting thing is that the article didn’t condemn, but rather showed it as a form of patriotism. http://boomerangkoozbane.blogspot.com/2011/07/i-wish-this-was-too-sick-to-be-true.html
ReplyDeleteFor your study, a Civil War trophy of sorts, of a mummified arm of a soldier saved for nearly 150 years. http://www.independentmail.com/news/2012/apr/11/md-civil-war-museum-gives-severed-arm-good-look/
My first encounter with the subject of trophy ear necklaces was with returning veterans of South East Asia in the very early 1970s. The interesting thing was they themselves never had one, but a buddy had. Hmmm. They described the ears as curled up plum colored things, no longer looking like ears. They were considered too important to show around and I never got to actually see one, but the people describing them has a certain way of talking about the trophies, well it was weird. As for the repros, Etsy already has them.
I haven’t delved much into the physiology of such trophy taking; maybe it’s a way to deal with the terrors of war. I’ll leave that to people with the right degrees to untangle. Frankly I find Walking Dead somewhat disturbing – not so much the show, but the people fascinated with the program; I see in them a little bit of what I saw in the eyes of trophy takers; a need to share a little bit of hell.
This one was created by Eric Brown at Creature Seeker Studios. Don't settle for a knock off, get one from the artist that created them for the video game promotion at Comic con! Www.CreatureSeekerStudios.com
ReplyDelete