Editor's note: Liam's theory about the appeal of zombies makes sense to me. The living dead provide a backdrop for human struggles that we can all relate to. I'll also take his analogy one step further, and say that someone should replace British soldiers from the Revolutionary War with zombies and make a game out of it. At least they wouldn't have to change the AI much. -Jay
If aliens from Mars tried to figure out what life on Earth was like by examining our popular media, they would quickly assume that we are all shirtless, gunslinging badasses who, when not kicking everyone else's butt, engage in love lives that are to romance what the movie Memento is to chronology.
They would also think that zombies inhabit Earth -- lots and lots of zombies. The leading cause of death on Earth is not heart disease, cancer, or Chuck Norris. It is being eaten alive by either the living dead, or victims of an infection that makes people act like the living dead.
This conjecture makes me scared whenever we come close to discovering life on Mars. I keep thinking they'll just mercy kill us as soon as they start receiving FX on their holoscreens.
America is obsessed with zombies, in case you haven't noticed. The only way that they could be more prevalent is if an actual zombie apocalypse occurred. Judging by what's on TV these days, this may have already happened.
The question is: why? Why is America so obsessed with zombies nowadays? People say that you can tell a lot about a culture from its monsters. Does that mean that we're all a bunch of mindless shuffling lumps of flesh? Well, this is partially true, but our fascination with zombies has many other sources.
First of all, we practically made the damn things. You can tell people about Haiti and zombi powder (yes, it is spelled like that), but when you say "zombie," what comes to mind is as American as Grandma eating Babe Ruth's brains.
George Romero, as most people know, made Night of the Living Dead, and created a new genre in the process. He introduced many of the common themes: kill the head and kill the ghoul, the whole "living dead" thing, and the part of zombie films that keeps us entranced to this very day: the struggles of the human survivors.
He put a group of survivors in an old, abandoned house, created tensions between them, and then made them try to fight off a pack of zombies on the front porch. We don't watch zombie movies for the zombies. We watch them for the human stories that arise out of the death of the world and society.
These relationships, which would normally be tenuous, are stressed and tested by the fact that everyone in the world is trying to eat you, and you're stuck with someone you wouldn't share a subway car with. Yes, in games like in Left 4 Dead or Resident Evil 5, the characters are supposed to collaborate, but you get the point.
Zombie plots regularly feature a plucky, outnumbered group of people up against a much larger force of zombies. These zombies we are told, are very stupid, usually shuffling along out in the open where anybody who can hold a gun still can shoot them in the head. Usually, the outnumbered group tends to win, whether by making it to the escape boat or helicopter, clearing the land of the foul beasts, or finding a cure. Roll credits.
Now, reread that last paragraph. Does that sound familiar?
Face it, the foundation of America mirrors a zombie story. Replace "zombies" with "British", "group of survivors" with "Colonists", and "abandoned house" with "America", and suddenly Night of the Living Dead is a lot more familiar.
Is it really any wonder that America is so fascinated with the stories of zombie survivors when the country practically is one? These stories appeal to us because they seem strangely familiar, and not just because we took a walk down Main Street.
Also, zombies are just plain fun to shoot, and we can kill them without the messy moral dilemmas in games like Call of Duty. Sure, this could be interpreted as a commentary on our consumerist society. However, when blasting away at the undead is so enjoyable, do we really care?
Comments (13)
The 50's film "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers" was pointed out, by Stephen King in 'Danse Macabre,' to have been incredibly popular at the time because of America's fear of Communism--they depicted insidious "Seeds" infiltrating the people around us, changing their ideas and personalities but not their appearance, until the protagonist found himself entirely surrounded by a society completely co-opted and transformed by something alien. The perfect metaphor for the fear of Communism.
Zombies, on the other hand, seem to represent the fear of our own mindless, unrestrained growth--as the connectedness of our society increases (along with the world's population) we FEEL so many more poeple around us, see so many more signs of our own multiplicity, in traffic, in media, in the lines in which we wait and the queues in which we are on-hold. At the same time, this mass of people's needs and desires seem so completely driven by fads and media trends that we seem almost mindless to ourselves. Just like zombies, we are clothed in fashions and styles and show that often show no true reflection of personal expression, but just seem to be what we were wearing when we joined the "walking dead."
The mindless, consuming horde. A perfect fear metaphor for the Brangelina-obsessed mass of product-buying America we can perceive ourselves as, in this day and age.
As for the allusion to America's revolution and the basics of zombie warfare, I truly never considered that. I give you respect, sir, for making that original argument in a well thought out and constructed manner. Hope to see more from you.
P.S. Jay, I like your joke about British tactics and zombie behavior. Bravo.
In my eyes, zombie movies are a metaphor for our constant struggle to remain human in a world that's constantly dragging us to a state of permanent numbness.
@Dana Your comment's spot on
And since we're talking about zombies, I miss the classic zombie, the rotting, halting corpse that might leave a bit of itself behind as it shuffles after you.
