Zombies As American Zeitgeist Proxies

blackbearnh writes "No doubt, there will be more than a few brain-munching glassy-eyed zombies showing up on the typical doorstep tonight, demanding brains, brains, brains, or at least some Milk Duds. But according to this essay over on Forbes.com, zombies are more than just the trendy monster on the block, they are to Americans what Godzilla is to Japanese: a personification of our fear of science and technology. 'It seems you can't throw a half-eaten cerebrum these days without hitting a posse of zombies brought to life by some kind of biological mishap (28 Days Later, Resident Evil, Planet Terror, Quarantine). Like Godzilla, zombies keep up with the times, always ready to mirror whatever aspect of science and technology people feel most uncertain about at the moment.'"

Comments

Re:Fear of Science and Technology?

[hibiki_r]

They do?

Are you from that legendary coastal America? Because around here, people don't know that the word theory has two different meanings, and distrust anything that wasn't invented when they were in their 20s. Just today I saw a woman, probably in her 60s, step back from a touch screen, claiming that she didn't trust the machine.

Re:Fear of Science...

[AliasMarlowe]

This seems a bit of a stretch, since Americans embrace Science and Technology readily.

Almost all Americans are willing to embrace technology, but few really embrace science. In fact, a large number are overtly hostile to some branches of science (especially the biological sciences). The majority seems content to retain an ignorance of science in general, or perhaps fear that they are incapable of understanding it.

Frankenstein?

[RyoShin]

according to this essay over on Forbes.com, zombies are more than just the trendy monster on the block, they are to Americans what Godzilla is to Japanese: a personification of our fear of science and technology.

I would have put that label upon Frankenstein. While perhaps not of American creation (are zombies?), Frankenstein is as well known as Mickey Mouse. And, as opposed to zombies, Frankenstein is, in every iteration, a creation of humanity; whereas Zombies can become as such thanks to any number of suddenly-unearthed virii.

I would say, though, that zombies strike more fear because they are more unknown. In most versions, Frankenstein answers to someone or can be stopped by some repressed sense of humanity (or a woodchipper, whatever). Zombies, however, have a bloodlust that is rarely stopped short of a shotgun to the head.

But that might be the reason for the popularity of zombies currently: they have a much more versatile origination scenario than does Frankenstein.

Re:Way to over-analyze, Forbes

[Anonymous Coward]

Vampires represent peoples hangups about sexuality. You are mostly correct right now. The vampire currently represents a man who is everything a girl can want, but for some reason can't love her. This is essentially catering to the "fag-hag" demographic which is actually growing faster and faster as current media extols the virtues of "metrosexual" style. In the early 80s, vampires were generally depicted as doomed souls due to aids panic. In more Victorian times, vampires simply represented sex outside of wedlock. Normally I wouldn't make much of such symbolic interpretations, except for the fact that authors generally are deeply interested in symbolism and therefore a symbol of sexual deviance would be passed down as a way of exploring... sexual deviance.

Re:Fear of Science and Technology?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Seems more likely a personification of fear of death."

Or maybe they just needed something semi scary at the time, horror books and tales preceded movies by a longshot. I don't think they are the personification of anything other then being an animal that is ugly and that can kill you.

Profoundly Wrong

[benjamindees]

Zombies in no way personify a fear of science and technology. They personify a fear of the elderly. Every American I have ever known to be preoccupied with zombies is a young person. The monsters of elderly Americans' generations were King Kong (Blacks) and, before that, Dracula (Jews).

Zombies are catatonic, un-dead creatures that forcibly feast on the brains of the living in the same way that elderly Americans forcibly rob younger generations of progress, instead co-opting the best and brightest to work to extend their lives indefinitely, turning them into zombies as well in an unsustainable, exponentially-growing process.

"You'll eat your young." --some American

Re:Fear of Tech?

[hey!]

OK, I'm an engineer, but I've had the *rudiments* of a liberal education, and *I* can see that the idea that zombies represent fear of technology *per se* is weak.

No.

What zombies represent are fear of the economic and cultural changes which are facilitated by technology. Depersonalization. How far is it from a cubical drone to a zombie? Pretty much add the taste for human brain and you're there. Take something like a MacDonald's restaurant -- not to pick on them, but all franchises are the same. A franchise is a complicated economic relationship in which the individual store, although possibly independently owned, has everything defined by corporate HQ (in this case MacDonald's HQ). The franchisee has a detailed manual which specifies how to *everything*, how to respond to any kind of situation that might arise. In fact, it doesn't just *say* how. It *mandates*. It is a big collection of algorithms. And every one of those algorithms is executed by *people*, not based on their own judgment, but triggered by the conditions specified in the manual.

So what zombies represent is not a fear of technology, but a fear of *becoming* technology.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar

[V50]

When I was in University, I once had some leftist student try to convince me that Batman was evil, using a Marxist analysis. That is, he's a rich man, who tries to keep the poor of Gotham down under his boot by going out at night, scaring beating the crap out of the proletariat for daring to stand up to him and his exploitive, capitalist parents.

While rather amusing (I don't think he was fully serious, I hope), the truth is, you can see whatever as a metaphor/representation/whatever of anything you want, but at the end of the day, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Zombies are cool cause they eat people. That's my analysis.

Re:Way to over-analyze, Forbes

[sznupi]

Adding to reasons you mention - vampires basically originate from slavic mythology (they were probably introduced to the western Europe by way of human trade in middle ages; for example, "nannies" of slavic descent were supposedly quite valued for some reason, so when they actually were left to care for children it's concievable they would tell some stories...)

And this was also the time of imposing Christianity on those regions. Very gradual of course; in Poland for example there is currently a widely held myth of "national baptism" in tenth century, when in reality this was of course a political gesture, even with Pagan Reaction in XI century (killing clergy, restoring old places of worship, forcing Christian ruler to escape, the usual; btw, he came back some years later and enforced new rules again with the help of borrowed German warriors...but don't mention that to most vivid current worshippers, they also often don't like Germans, they get confused ;) ) and Christianity being mostly a facade even up to around XVII or XVIII century. A facade, but nonetheless with few crucial changes in officialy tolerated customs.

You see, Pagan Slavs generally burned their dead. Leaving a body to slowly decompose was a big no-no. But it was one of essential things back then for Christianity. A very potent recipe for greatly elevated fears of dead returning to life that you mention (also because at the beginning it was actually widely realised they didn't get "proper" burial)

PS. In a very twisted way, original poster has some point - religious circumstances helped greatly, perhaps it was even sometimes fear of the "old gods" ;p

Common in early zombie movies, but we've moved on.

[Valdrax]

Of all the examples he could have chosen, he chose zombies? In most films, if there is an explanation for their existence of the zombies in the film, it's usual mystical or related to disease or something (as the writer cedes).

Mystical elements were big in early films featuring zombies, but "Night of the Living Dead" has thrust the zombie apocalypse genre firmly into the sci-fi horror camp ever since. You generally don't see masses of zombie hordes bringing an end to civilization in mystical zombie films because that kind of zombie is rarely self-propogating, and a true zombie apocalypse requires that.

Ever since "Night of the Living Dead," the causes of zombie horror have mostly been either due to scientific experiments gone wrong or due to disasters caused by the march of science and technology. Let's look at a few:

• Night of the Living Dead - Radiation from an exploded space probe.
• Dawn of the Dead - No one knows the source of the plague, but the impotence of science to do anything is part of the collapse of authority.
• Day of the Dead - The protagonists are a military/scientific team trying to reverse the plague from the above film. The head of the lab is a classic amoral scientist.
• Hell of the Living Dead - Leak of a chemical actually intended to turn people in third-world countries into zombies to have them eat each other.
• Night of the Comet - Weird space comet turns people who see it to dust or into zombies. Scientists were aware of the coming problem and are trying to find a solution.
• Revenge of the Living Dead series - A fictional synthetic sounding gas called "Trioxin." Series features military cover ups, evil corporations, and in one of its worst sequels drug abuse.
• Braindead - Disease-carrying animal brought back from the jungle to a zoo. A well-intentioned idiot keeps the initial zombies under control with injections.
• Zombi 2 - Like the last movie, the plague is exposed to the world thanks to a researcher sticking his nose into unexplored territory.
• 28 Days Later - Not about full zombies, but the origin of the apocalyptic plague is a man-made virus escaped from a research lab -- thanks to animal rights activists, a double-whammy for people the public doesn't trust.
• Resident Evil series - Biological weapon experiments by a pharmaceutical company run by madmen out to trigger the next stage of human evolution.
• Dead Rising - Central American research facility intended to research a way to mass-produce cattle instead engineers wasps that can implant zombifying parasites. (Boy if that isn't an abuse of grant money, I don't know what is!)
• House of the Dead - While there's a lot of tarot themes, the source of the outbreak is a mad biologist funded by an evil corporation.

Anyway, this list isn't comprehensive, but I'd say that in most movies either: (a) the plague is the result of scientists' actions usually on behalf of the military or an evil corporation, or (b) the cause for the outbreak is a natural disaster / unexplained and a part of the background of the movie is the inability of those in power (including scientists) to do anything about the situation.

Unexplained plagues are becoming far more common in the past two decades as the zombie apocalypse has become and established genre, and movie-goers don't really feel a need for an explanation for the setup. After all, these stories are really about the collapse of civilization, a more bloody version of Lord of the Flies.

Science being dangerous isn't all that important to the genre anymore, just like the Godzilla films stopped being about atomic horror long, long ago and started being more about cool giant monsters duking it out over a city. It's important to genre in the 60s-90s, but it's not such a big deal anymore.

Re:Way to over-analyze, Forbes

[hairyfeet]

Actually it isn't so much the media pushing the "metrosexual" crap, it comes down to birth control pills of all things. Just look at the "macho he man" types that were popular before the pill, like Kirk Douglas, and how after the pill became popular you had the sudden rise of the 'pretty boy" types like Tab Hunter.

The pill changes a females taste in men, the media was simply giving the female what she wanted, even if they didn't know at the time why they wanted that particular type. The article I linked to explains on the chemistry level, but I have seen plenty that have shown that depending on whether she is on the pill or not will skew which males in pictures she finds attractive. A woman who doesn't take the pill will like the classic "macho he man" types, whereas a woman on the pill goes for the Brad Pitt "soft boy" types.

I have witnessed this IRL with the way my GF doesn't understand how her friends can like all these "little boys" like Orlando Bloom but will practically drool over "tough hombres" Sam Elliot and Viggo Mortensen in LoTR, but only when he was looking "all scrappy and hot", her words. She of course isn't on birth control and all her friends are, so it gave me a good chance to observe and yeah, it really does change their tastes as far as men go.

The zombies represent the audience.

[for(;;);]

Have you ever seen Romero's batshit film Knightriders? It was his first big studio film. It's about a traveling jousting troupe that rides motorcycles instead of horses. (It's also a fucking disaster of a movie -- watch The Crazies if you want more good early Romero.)

Anyway, these biker-jousters live noble lives, going from town to town to perform these great honorable jousting acts. And what are their audiences like? Brainless, artless, drunken idiots; people who live with no purpose, no ethics, and no honor. The people in the biker-jousting shows are zombies.

This, I claim, cracks the code of Romero's zombie metaphors. In Night and Dawn, the living survivors holed up in the house/mall represent Romero himself and his film crew -- people attempting to be aware of their own existences, and attempting to bring meaning to their lives, and generally trying to live fully. We, the audience, vicariously live by watching their movies; we live by feasting on their ideas. We're the zombies.