Nursery Rhyme
Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream,
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.The History
When children and adults alike think of "Row Row Row Your Boat", images of little vessels bobbing in the waves of a peaceful river come to mind. Though it grew out of American river songs, many have attributed Nietzsche interpretations to the deceptively simple lyrics.
Row, row, row your boat
Sets up the rhythm for the song, encouraging the rowers to work together in harmony.
Gently down the stream
Soothing, this serves as a promise of the reward for the cooperation of the previous line.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Again, this establishes the rhythm and sets the pace of the round that could begin off of the original verse.
Life is but a dream
The most interesting part of the rhyme; it encourages the listener to think that whatever hardships they might endure at the moment (blisters from rowing, tiredness, or any number of maladies), it will all pass either when they "wake up" or when the dream moves on.
My Interpretation
Given that this song has very little in the way of historical context, I decided to take my interpretation in a different direction altogether. "What if," I asked, "what if this mentality were applied to a zombie apocalypse?"
With the recent resurgence in zombie culture to guide me, I went about answering that burning question. Keeping the original setting of the rhyme was a no brainer, but how to incorporate the undead? Most zombies cannot swim, and running water has often been cited as a surefire way to deter the living dead.
An image came to me then: two figures, determined and focused at first glance, rowing with the nursery rhyme playing in the background. This expanded within seconds to include a wall of sound, images, and rotting corpses, all with the song being played in the background only to be overwhelmed by zombie noises.
The two people in the boat spend the entirety of the piece stuck in the first stage of grief, denial. It's not just a river in Egypt, but a state of life for these two. Struck by the horror of the apocalypse, they have no recourse but to continue on their chosen path, even when it is revealed to be less than effective in achieving their goals. So many zombie movies focus on the individuals who manage to pull through this stage and engage in epic running battles with the walking corpses - none of them stop to think about the isolated groups that never manage to move beyond that crucial first stage of inaction.
Originally, I planned for this to be a live-action movie but was forced to reconsider due to a lack of manpower and time. However, I was able to maintain the power of my original vision through the use of Adobe Flash. Though it may lack the horror of a true zombie flick, the messages of isolation and denial of everything in their world come through as crystal clear as they did to me when I first conjured this idea.