I had this question for a while now, coming from a person who love zombies (I don’t like werewolves or vampires wars), why we, a society as a whole, are so fascinated and even dread zombies. Every culture, religion, society, or being alone has some form of an individual reanimating back to life. Take this, is Jesus a zombie? A zombie is an undead being created through the reanimation of a human corpse, so is Jesus one? Americans love zombies, I mean look at the Zombie walk in Asbury Park or The Walking Dead. Not just Americans fear zombies, taken in Chinese culture the Jiangshi, the hopping zombie, or 2014 when Ebola outbreak occur, villages reported seeing zombies. Yet, zombies captivated us, because anyone can be one, and you lose 100% of
Although the zombies are not as complex of monsters, they are still representative of fears in the
The article “My Zombie, Myself: Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead,” written by Chuck Klosterman, discusses the reasons behind zombies becoming so popular. Klosterman writes that rise of popularity of zombies is different than that of vampires. He states that most monsters are initially created as representations of fear. Similar to that of Frankenstein or vampires, Klosterman explains that zombies could be viewed in the same light; however, zombies are better explained as an allegory for our day to day existence. Rather than some innate fear, Klosterman highlights this fact to be why zombies have risen to such high popularity.
Rodney Clapp, writer, editor for Wipf and Stock Publishers and expert in topics such as theology and culture, in the article, “Attack of the Zombies”, argues that many things in life are beginning to resemble zombies. Clapp assumes that the audience also views zombies as lifeless creatures that go around spreading their disease. The author’s purpose is to persuade the audience to believe that many things they see today are starting to resemble zombies. The author writes in a challenging tone for people who question the similarity of zombies to every day life. Clapp supports his argument by comparing and contrasting, and exemplification.
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.
During the atomic age, the zombie was born, as a new monster that resembled Cold War anxieties. One of the most known fears was the fear of the spread of communism in the United States that would "[turn] citizens into mindless hordes." Nowadays, zombies have developed and are not stupid and slow as shown in the first zombie movies, but they are smart and fast today. The perfect killing machines. Zombies can be compared to "terrorist sects and sleeper cells [...]" (66). The zombie walked represents insecurity in a culture, about "who we are, who the enemy is, and whether s/he is us." The zombie walk helps participants to express their feelings about cultural anxieties related to death and warfare. The destructive force of zombies is detectible in modern anxieties over terrorism and worldwide war. Here, zombies walks have a deep meaning. They "act as a means for working through [...] the structural conditions of a new and violence that so
“We spend our whole life trying to stop death. Eating, inventing, loving, praying, fighting, killing. But what do we really know about death? Just that nobody comes back. Maybe death is a gift.” says David, in the movie the life of David Gale. Dead Man Walking and The Life of David Gale are two movies like a very alike yet very different. These movies are both great movies in their own way. The Life of David Gale and Dead Man Walking have an abundant amount of similarities and numerous differences.
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
Dating back to hundreds of years ago, we feared humans coming back to life. Why do we dig a hole six feet deep, why do we nail the box close, why do we have wakes and funerals for the dead? Because we fear them coming back to get us, either as zombies or ghosts. We tender to fear zombies more because, if we turn into a zombie, we lost ourselves, unlike vampires or werewolves you can still place as human. One can state, Jeffrey Cohen is right, zombies are taboo ad also not individualities. They only have one goal that is to eat. Then looking within us, are we the monsters, are we zombies? We kill zombies because they are not like us anymore, they are robots. Cohen talks about movies like Alien, and how taboo it is. What would the alien done if it killed Ripley, what if The Terminator completed its mission? The Terminator says in the second film that they cannot self-terminate. Would it have live with us? We are looking from the outside because Aliens, The Terminator and even King Kong were never human, they are not
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
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.
Are brains connect zombies with the end to modern society. Today in modern times everyone is dependent of technology and are society, that going away is terrifying. It terrifies me thinking about having my life taken away from me. I don't want to to give up my minute rice, 24/7 TV, and double stuff Oreos. And I'm sure everyone feels the same way. How we live is like a old sweater we constantly wear and the dryer is like the zombies, you can picture your sweater being destroyed by the dryer. I know it's a strange metaphor, but for some reason it seems to fit. Zombies represent are ever present fear of destruction and fear of evil taking over the living and the dead. In a way when you kill a zombie it's still technically a human body, so really your afraid of other people and even yourself. If you turn you would hurt other people, become a monster that you were afraid of. Becoming what you fear is a huge them when it comes to zombies, assuming that the zombies are the type that can turn you of course. As I once said before, zombies are associated with destruction which can also be taken as a sign of disapproval of
Together, zombies and vampires seems to occupy opposite extremes of the spectrum. Zombies demonstrate the greatest fears of humans, death, whereas vampires reflects human’s greatest desire, to love and to be loved. However, combined they find a happy medium, mankind’s view of an afterlife. To be reanimated as either a vampire or a zombie, one has to die. The thought of the dead coming back to life is unfamiliar territory for humans, and this unknown is a fear in itself.
The topic of the undead coming back to life to feast on the living has been around since the first zombie movie White Zombies in 1932; however, just in the past few decades has the threat of a zombie apocalypse enter the realm of international politics. The threat of a zombie apocalypse is a very serious concern of the international communities. Many political scientists are not sure how the world leaders would be able to work together if this issue were ever to arise in the world today. In the book “Theories of International Politics and Zombies”, Drezner uses the threat of a zombie apocalypse to show how the different theories of international politics would eliminate the threat; however, are the living dead a real international concern or are they just a brilliant metaphor for something much greater that could happen to the world.
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.
The Walking Dead is a televised American drama series about a group of people trying to survive a zombie apocalypse developed by Frank Darabont. The series stars Andrew Lincoln as sheriff's deputy Rick Grimes, who awakens from a coma after the world yields to a zombie plague (Griffiths, 2011). Dazed and confused from months in the hospital he wanders out to figure out why he cannot find anyone alive. He makes his way home only to find his wife and son missing. He sets out to locate his family and finds many other survivors on his journey (Tucker, 2010). The Walking Dead coordinates with many social themes such as