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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.'"
This entry belongs in Idle, which incidentally is perused exclusively by zombies.
I'm pretty sure that in Dawn of the Dead, Romero wasn't trying to convey a fear of new technology, but rather a disdain for commercialism.... the bulk of that movie took place in a shopping mall, fer cryin' out loud!
Both 28 Days Later and Resident Evil were made respectively by a UK director (in the UK), and by a UK company (FilmFour)....
This seems a bit of a stretch, since Americans embrace Science and Technology readily.
Seems more likely a personification of fear of death.
However, I personally don't lend much credence to these mumbo-jumbo pseudo scientific explanations of things people do for the sheer fun of it. Some things don't have a deeper meaning.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
... you just needed a convenient enemy for an FPS? Something in the uncanny valley that is human-like but not quite human that the average person will feel compelled to blow away?
So now you've decided on zombies, you've got to figure out how they were created so the plot makes sense. Supernatural, or science. If science, pick from alien technology, radiation, biological means, or something a bit more wacky - other dimension, your large Hadron collider malfunctions, I don't know.
There are only so many explanations the public will buy to sate their desire to blow away not-quite-human things. You have to pick one.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
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). But the writer had better examples he could have chosen. Like the "evil computer" - e.g. Hal 9000 from 2001, or Skynet from the Terminator films.
Freedom is drinking a beer in the park when you're supposed to be at work.
Zombies are fun. They're fun for costumes, they're fun as horror movie bad guys, they're fun to blow away in video games.
Pirates and ninjas and vampires are fun, too, but they've been overexposed. Zombies are about to go the same way, I suspect, and they'll drop off the cultural radar screen for a while. Then they'll come back (they always come back ...) after people have gone through a few more cycles of archetype-of-the-week.
That's really all the explanation needed. Trying to read some deep cultural significance into what monsters are popular at the moment is almost always a fool's game. Even Godzilla very quickly outgrew its origins as a nuclear metaphor, and just became a fun monster.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
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.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
> For your next trick, can I get an article about how movie vampires represent world-wide fear of religion?
How about a scary story about the American, Kennedy - it includes a body, the real "un-dead" and even... brains.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-m-gillon/a-new-wrinkle-in-the-jfk_b_339026.html
According to the newly declassified transcript, Mrs. Kennedy was becoming desperate to leave. "Mrs. Kennedy was getting very warm, she had blood all over her hat, her coat...his brains were sticking on her hat. It was dreadful," McHugh said. She pleaded with him to get the plane off the ground. "Please, let's leave," she said. McHugh jumped up and used the phone near the rear compartment to call Captain James Swindal. "Let's leave," he said. Swindal responded: "I can't do it. I have orders to wait."
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
So we'll end up with a Big Gay Al Qaeda?
Super.
There were NO zombies in 28 Days Later.
. . . pets peeve, tries to calm down, wonder why he brought his goat anyway . . .
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
If anything, I think zombies symbolize a breakdown of technological society, and the survivalist chaos that would arise in its absence. Most popular zombie movies feature the complete or near destruction of human civilization by the zombie horde. The humans then spend the movie scrounging for weapons, food, shelter, etc, and other humans generally pose at least as great a threat to them as the zombies do. The zombie apocalypse is fundamentally a survivalist fantasy, in which those with guns make the rules and there is an unlimited supply of enemy targets that are only dangerous in numbers, easily fooled, and which can be shot to pieces without ruffling any ethical feathers. In short, a survivalist paradise. This is what appeals to the (probably mostly male) audience. Men are built for violent competition in an environment with no technology and competing, relatively small groups of people, and by largely removing technology from the picture, zombies put us in exactly that situation.
I would argue that zombies are nothing related to a fear, but rather the geek's hope for a post-apocalyptic world where they can go back to the basics.
No more 9-5 jobs.
No more waiting for the release of the next piece of entertainment.
No more races for popularity, money, and possessions.
A simple fight for survival where those who are still alive are considered the successful, the happy, and the free.
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.
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.
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
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Actually, vampires represent two things.
A few years ago I read an interesting book of bona fide vampire legends collected by a professional folklorist, and he makes a convincing argument that nearly all such real legends (as opposed to literary creations) are associated with events consistent with and strongly suggesting tuberculosis outbreaks. It fits: the increasing pallor and weakness, the slow decline of one, then another family member. In rural populations a single family member might bring the disease back, dooming the entire family, but their neighbors would be hardly exposed at all, giving an effect much like a curse on a single family.
So vampires represent infectious disease in the true folk imagination.
A long time ago I read an account by a psychologist who believed that people have a latent fear that the dead will return to life. He convinced a local funeral parlor owner to offer locks on caskets as an option and they sold extremely well.
So the second thing vampires represent might well be ... fear of vampires.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
If anything, the proliferation of zombie movies is not the product of fear of technology, but the result of not having clearly defined enemies.
Or how about "the proliferation of zombie movies is the result of lazy Hollywood companies that simply want to cash in on a fad, because frankly Hollywood ran out of ideas years ago"?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
People. These are real people. After an assassination, things are gory, including blood and internal organs (brains in this case).
And the emotional state of people is not going to be all that much cleaner, either.
Presidents and vice presidents, and their family, are real people. When we expect them to be superhuman, we've already lost any war that's important, including metaphorical wars with the undead.
And if it's just the gore itself that's so scary, well, again, welcome to reality.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
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.
i've always thought that the american fascination with zombies was because they combined a representation of the "mindless hordes of communism" with america's favourite paranoia about Fifth Column subversion of the American Way Of Life
plus, of course, americans love the Lawless West mythology, that a single good man with a gun can save the day. add to that the survivalist wet-dream of A World Gone Mad and you have the perfect fantasy fuel for everyone, especially the RKBA nutters.
(that said, i love a good zombie flick myself. or even a bad one)
oh yeah, while i'm dissecting the american zeitgeist, i'll also mention that the american obsession with robots from the 1950s onwards is due to the white middle class desire to have an obedient slave race that won't revolt....indeed, CAN'T revolt due to Asimov's Three Laws being built-in. robots are proxy black slaves with all the uppitiness removed.
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
One that hath name thou can not otter
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:
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.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
It seems that Anne Rice and Stephanie Meyer [...] disagree, and they seem to have good chunk of the popular imagination in the United States.
Yes, because modern takes on ancient legends are incredibly valuable for telling us how they originated and why they seem to have been so pervasive across culture before the advent of modern communications technology.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
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.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Along with nuclear waste and mysterious space-borne radiation, pandemic plagues have also spawned zombies. This zombie type has become the dominant movie form over the last few decades, no doubt a reaction to AIDS, Ebola, cloning, genetically modified foods and the remainder of the brave new world of biotechnology.
I have to take a moment to totally disagree with this assessment. --As many have already pointed out, bio-tech gone wrong (or whatever) is just the McGuffin used to get the story rolling. You can't have zombies without some sort of half-baked explanation at the outset. Nobody cares what it is really, so long as it isn't entirely implausible. In this case, the monster is definitely the Thing, (Ha Ha. Pun intended.), and the reason we are, as a culture, so fascinated with Zombies is based on, as per usual, the rumbling proto-awareness bubbling up from our subconscious. --Because we can't quite get a fix on the source of threat with our conscious awareness, the Deep parts of ourselves step in, conjuring up images for us to contemplate until we figure out the enormous stress vector we've thus far failed to recognize in the world around us, but which is trying its damnedest to consume us.
And if you'll notice, there is another trend in film and television which is closely related to Zombies. . .
Dollhouse (Programmable people.)
Terminator Salvation (Programmable robot people which think they're real.)
Moon (Programmable clone people.)
Surrogates (Remote controlled robot people.)
Gamer (Remote controlled real people.)
Avatar (Remote controlled alien people.)
I'd also add a few others such as. . ,
Dexter (Dangerous fake people who don't think like us.)
V (People which look like us but are really noxious alien lizards.)
See the trend? I sure do. Everything looks peaceful, but our cultural subconscious is screaming.
All in all, plain old Zombies are far less disturbing because they're mindless. The idea of somebody else controlling zombies raises the skill level beyond simple shotgun solutions. I'd wager that the reason our world is such a mess is precisely because we've utterly failed to deal properly with the problem of fake evil people, and worse, the fact that regular folks are so very easy to turn into fake evil people. This is upsetting, and it's the reason, I think, behind the whole Zombie thing.
-FL
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.
Rather amusing? You're assuming that just because the crowd believes what it is instructed to believe, that it must be true. --Which always works out for the best. (Sarcasm)
Actually, your leftist student was very close to the truth. Many of DC's Superheros are fixated on catching bank-robbers and otherwise protecting the established power structures and property wealth. --Unless you've noticed, the banks today are the villains in all the news stories, (unless, of course you happen to be a millionaire republican TV commentator, in which case it's the poor and ill-educated who are to blame). Given that the banks create the entire money supply out of thin air through fractional reserve lending and then have the gall to charge interest on top of that, (interest which is not actually possible to pay back as a society since the only supply of money is the bank system itself), the actual intent was always slavery and social control. It was by no means accidental. --And there's no argument I've heard yet (and I've heard a lot of them) which can logically defend the history of this system unless the argument out and out declares that people deserve to be treated like livestock and that the already-wealthy should be at the top of this sick food chain.
If Bruce Wayne was such a genius, he would have taken out the elites instead of beating up on the poor and neglected, which setting aside the Joker, is exactly what he does. I put it down not to his being evil, but to his writers being naive child-men.
Left or right, that's the truth of it. So yeah, a cigar may be just a cigar, except in this case, few seem to understand what a cigar actually is.
Superman is an even bigger dummy. At least in Frank Miller's work, Batman was partially aware that the government was self-serving and untrustworthy.
-FL
Pirate zombies versus ninja mummies.
That would be epic.
(Zombies are too messy to be good ninjas.)
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
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.
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man