Zombies : A Pop Culture

The article “Dead man still walking: Explaining the zombie renaissance” by Kyle Bishop is about the revitalization of the zombie genre. The article talks about the inception in the late 1960’s, the category of zombie films has had its roller coaster ride of ups and downs, starting with its decline in the early 1980’s with the release of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video. Furthermore, during 1990’s, due to the shift in the cultural consciousness that came with the Clinton Administration and the countries isolation from global tragedies, the popularity of these films continued to decline. Cultural consciousness refers to the understanding and awareness a shift in feelings, sensations, thoughts, of not only our own culture, but adjoining cultures.

Zombies, as we know them today, have mortified movie viewers for the last forty six years. Modern zombies first appeared in George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead in 1968. These zombies were the slow moving, staggering ghouls that one has seen in countless films, but in 1985, Return of the Living Dead featured a new kind of zombie, the first fast moving and talking ghoul. Both Night of the Living dead 1968 and Return of the Living Dead 1985 feature the zombie as its villain, but Return of the living dead’s fast moving, talking zombies are a more modern take on the movie monster.

Reading through the whole essay, there are many appealing strategies found in order to strengthen the essay academically. Brooks attracts the audience with a pathos-style strategy, giving specific movie examples to straighten up the essay. The movie Night of the Living Dead resonates the viewers with an image of a flesh-eating and harmful zombie figure instead of a harmless voodoo-created zombie, which makes the notion of zombies transformed into a horrifying figure, provoking the sense of fear of audience with emotional appeal. The revolutionary creation of zombie film was led by George A. Romero, the father of the entirely new horror genre. In his work, zombies are characterized as a form of undead

Vampires and Zombies are common in today’s modern world through the use of the media. In this essay, I will be talking about how each of these beings say something about society, how vampires have been portrayed across time and how zombies have been portrayed. By doing this, I will use two references from TV shows.

The name of the article is Our Zombies, Ourselves written by James Parker. In this article Parker discusses the historical backdrop of zombies and talks about where it is that they started from. Parker additionally raises exceptionally fascinating point on the notoriety of zombies and a short timeline on zombies. He also talks of different sorts of popular cultures which incorporate zombies and are utilized, for example, the movies Night of the Living Dead, White Zombie, the books The Zen of Zombies, Zombie Haiku, and the television series The Walking Dead.. By utilizing these references Parker helps demonstrate to us how zombies appear to ceaselessly draw our interest. The article additionally educates the reader about how zombies came

Today, the new movie "Zombieland" has just been released into theaters so the zombie is still going strongly through culture. Night of the Living Dead was a serious horror look at zombies but society has turned a once terrifying genre into some humor. Spoofs like ‘Shawn of the Dead’ and ‘Zombieland’ “has fun messing around with the rules of the post-apocalyptic zombie movie genre” (Machosky). However the reason the undead have survived so long is because they have broadened their publicity range. Not only does the world see zombies in movies, but mankind must “watch out for Nazi zombies rising from the grave in videos games like ‘Dead Snow’ and ‘Call of Duty: World at War’” (Greene). Zombies have been expanded into music as well with the Kingston Trio’s release of the song “Zombie Jamboree”. Even books have been used to spread the disease, such as “at Borders zombie literature runs the gambit from Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to Zombie Haiku” (Greene). In addition, David Lubar has just recently expanded the zombie craze to elementary school children with his newest novel, My Rotten Life (Lauer-Williams). This is a children’s book about a middle school student who is also a zombie. Zombies, once a scary menace only for the brave at heart, have become a friendlier topic for everyone.

When analyzing this piece of writing it is clear that the purpose is not to entertain or persuade. The purpose, instead, is to inform and give a new perspective on zombie movies in a simple way that an audience of all ages can understand. In Andrew Cooper and Brandy Blake’s, “George Romero Zombie Films: A Plague of Meaning,” the authors walk the reader through how as time changed zombie movies changed with it. The authors further explain how zombies in many movies represent the time and culture. The writers inform the reader through their use of information from past zombie movies and analysis of the events of the times they were made.

Ever since the first zombie movie was created in 1932, there has been a constant rise of zombie appearances in popular media. Like with all monsters, the majority of zombie media aimed to represent a certain aspect throughout the society in question. Whereas vampires represented romanticism and Dracula represented how a certain social group was viewed during a certain time period, zombies in Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” aimed to create a situation whereby a group of people had to survive a night together, despite their racial tensions between one another. Being the founder of all subsequent zombie films, “Night of the Living Dead” provided a guideline for zombie behavior. As time passed, more and more versions of the zombie came out, whereby zombies stopped being a plot device and turned into the focus of the film itself. The Walking Dead, currently standing as the fourth most popular TV series, took a turn from this progression and decided to imitate Romero’s take on zombies. By including zombies which simply aimed to sustain themselves by consuming the flesh of the “live,” the creators of The Walking Dead caused the remaining survivors to gather together and rely on primitive human instinct to survive. Even though the zombies in this series run rampant, they play a very minimalistic metaphoric role. Instead, by presenting the zombies as a plot device, the characters in this series were able to demonstrate their true prejudiced view on society, ultimately revealing

There has been a resurgence of zombie films in the last decade, ranging from Danny Boyles 28 Days Later to Paul W.S. Andersons Resident Evil. This renaissance of zombie cinema has resurfaced in response to the cultural, political, and social volatility experienced in today’s society, much like its predecessors. A zombie film, unlike other monster movies, plays more with the real-world fears and anxieties, presenting the audience with inescapable realities. However, to understand why this subgenre has been brought back into the mainstream cinema, a comparison is needed across generations of film. This paper will focus on the comparison between George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and Danny Boyles 28 Days Later; in an attempt to show how zombie cinema is a reaction to cultural shocks.

Zombies continue to keep their popularity alive through the entertainment industry. Zombies have been around for years now with no sign of leaving anytime soon. In the story Max Brooks suggests that zombies have given the other horror movie monsters a run for their money because, zombies are the only monsters that keep their popularity going strong in today’s society. I enjoyed the way Max Brooks shows the reader that he is a fan of zombies and thinks that zombies have been dominating the entertainment industry.

Nowadays some people still think historical background of zombies as the past but some people think zombies are dead body who came from science experiments. Zombies are found in many series, movies and animations,

As we all know most of us find zombies repulsive, ugly, and scary. Zombies can also connect our fears with death. Zombies are looked at as being fictional and created through a reanimation of a human corpse. Zombies are most likely found in horror films and fantasy genres, but can have connections with history with complex origins.

Critic, Jung Min You claims that “together with the development of movie industry and technology, zombies have evolved over the years” (You.) From each generation, zombies have been the star in any scary movie. It is easy to say that movie films, editing software’s, and camera equipment has greatly been improved over the past generations, but with all of the enhancements of these materials comes the progression of the things they are taping and editing. The zombie that we all know is the zombie that we, the people of the world, created ourselves through our advancement of technology. They were not as horrific as they were in the 1800’s because many of the new features they have picked up came along with time and development of software. Many individuals believe that zombies evolve simply because the world does, but not many authors or scholars so far have related this evolution of this creature to the evolution of scientific

No book has captivated the zombie apocalypse better than World War Z. Max Brooks creatively presents “a worldwide zombie pandemic from outbreak to aftermath” (Boyd, Tristan). His book encompasses many social and political themes in the world today. The book

Is it possible to kill an idea when it is undead? Classic movie monsters tend to fade in and out of popularity as audiences grow bored and move on to fresher concepts. But there is one that has risen up and does not seem to slow down: zombies. Zombies have gone from being a small subgenre of horror film to a staple of popular culture across various media. This paper will explore the rise of zombies in popular culture and why it continues to remain relevant.