Zombie Culture and the March of Socialism
by S.T. KarnickYes, vampires are still a hot media commodity, but zombies are vying to knock them off the cultural pedestal, with the rise of zombie movies as a cultural force and numerous books about zombies hitting the stores, capped by the spoof novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies having recently reached the top of the bestseller list. An article in the Chicago Tribune documents the phenomenon and suggests some reasons for it.
First the author suggests audience identification as the main factor: we are interested in zombies because according to the mythology, we could become them ourselves (should we die after being bitten by one):
“There’s a sadness,” said S.G. Browne. “They used to be us. But they’re tragic and comical and they want to be friends, but we run. Vampires are Brad Pitts. Zombies are more like the Steve Buscemis. We can relate.”
That natural sense of sympathy, however, conflicts with an even more fundamental urge: the drive to stay alive, as the latter absolutely requires that we kill every zombie we can find. That’s a rather poignant situation, and I think it does indeed account for some of the power of zombie stories.
Thus the Tribune story quotes Dr. Steven Schlozman, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School:
“What happens in zombie movies is important,” he said, “because we shoot zombies in the head, then we start to enjoy it, then we feel sheepish. We can learn a lot from a scenario like that.”
The Tribune story also considers the question of why the zombie phenomenon speaks to contemporary America in particular, suggesting that the answer is that people today are extraordinarily fearful, as a result especially of the 9/11 attacks (as I noted in 2004) and (much less persuasively or even plausibly) the recent reports of a coming swine flu epidemic. The Trib story quotes Max Brooks, author of The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z as making that claim:
“Because with swine flu and everything else, it strikes a chord, it helps work out apocalyptic anxieties without getting too real,” Brooks said.
In fact, “The Zombie Survival Guide” was born of pre-Y2K hysteria, he said, not unlike the zombies of George Romero’s zombie classics, born of Vietnam and racial anxieties (”Night of the Living Dead“) and zoned-out American consumerism (”Dawn of the Dead“).
Thus Brooks correctly observes that a widespread sense of anxiety has prevailed in American society for several decades–which coincides with the rise of the zombie as a cultural phenomenon, I would add. The phenomenon started with the unexpected popularity of the low-budget zombie film Night of the Living Dead in 1968, a year of great turmoil in the United States.
The Trib story goes on to quote the author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies with his idea about what makes zombies especially fascinating today:
It may be a cringing irony that the current zombie craze coincides with a deadly outbreak of swine flu. But it goes beyond that, said Grahame-Smith.
“We live in a time when we think a lot about big faceless groups of people in the world who mean to do us harm and can’t be talked to, and so it’s not surprising we would take comfort in the zombie.”
As opposed to other times when there weren’t big, faceless groups of people meaning to do us harm? No, none of these explanations gets to the essence and explains the enduring appeal of this cultural phenomenon over the past four decades.
I think the causality is the other way around. Both the zombie appeal and the swine flu fears are caused by two things: the news media’s increasing use of scare tactics in trying to lure audiences, and the socialists’ continuous use of fearmongering to press for political power. In their neverending quest to wrest more power by creating what H. L. Mencken correctly characterized as an endless series of hobgoblins requiring a socialist elite’s powers to destroy, the socialists and their media satraps continually raise fears of everything conceivable:
- medical and public-health scares from Alar in apples to Gulf War Syndrome to Asian flu to swine flu
- all-out nuclear war (it never happened because both sides indeed knew it would be catastrophic and wouldn’t get them what they wanted)
- a housing “crisis” that could hit innocent homeowners and investors (as opposed to being the necessary consequences of irresponsible actions by lenders and borrowers) and bring down the entire economy
- the earth overheating and killing all life on the planet
. . . and so on and so on for decade after decade.
This habit of the political elites and mainstream media is quite sufficient to account for the dominant sense of unease and constant fear one can see among much of the contemporary American public.
The irony is that for the public to give in to this scam would be the one sure way for the zombies to win.
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
| 
Follow Us on Twitter
Subscribe via RSS
Tips & Feedback
53 Comments
The govt loves to scare us into submission. The kinds used to do it all the time; start a war with the next kingdom over so the peasants would look to the king for protection.
Same racket, just a bit more help because now we have the media and the internet to scare more quickly.
Details at 11!
Zombies as the ultimate fifth columnists… interesting idea; Don Siegel and Kevin McCarthy would be proud, no doubt. Of course, those were pod people from outer space but who's counting? Yes- zombie commies… we like it…
Movie wise, I think that zombies are playing themselves out. They had a brief resurgence when "28 Days Later" gave us fast twitch zombies rather than their slower cousins, and when an increase in the level of blood in horror movies gave Hollywood a chance to remake prior zombie movies (again). But beyond that, the theme itself is so limited that it's all been done already (twice), and their appeal seems to be fading.
Culturally, you couldn't get more zombie than an Obama kool aid drinker.
I love zombie movies – very few movies have actually given me nightmares (Shining, the original Elm Street as seen when I was 10), but 28 Days Later did it. 28 Weeks Later, like Hostel II (no, not a zombie movie) failed because they inserted explicit contemporary political observations. Horror is a great medium to reflect modern anxieties, but it works best when said reflection is implicit and subdued, not rammed down the audiences throat.
That being said, there's something about zombies sprinting that still disturbs me.
yes, but what of the mutant zombie? Surely he can free us from this repressive sense of impending doom which haunts and gnaws at the very heart of the zombie psyche. Please believe that Yes We Can shed our zombie bonds and walk normally along the sun drenched beaches in zombie utopia.
the '28 Days' thing was, we agree, pretty much the last gasp- when you couple Simon Pegg's clever excursion into the genre with 'Shaun of the Dead' where else is there to go? Unless, of course you go after the Obamazombie… we actually could generate a decent script on that. Problem is which studio to go to…
hmmmm… ok, so that's a problem.
Not to be pedantic–well, ok, to be pedantic: the creatures in 28 Days Later are not zombies. They are humans infected with a rabies-like virus. They are not the living dead.
It's a distinction without much of a difference, though, as it's the non-rational, animalistic qualities humans take on in such movies that are the source of the horror, not the fact that they're supposedly dead.
You are correct – I always use zombies as shorthand for the creatures in 28 Days Later, but they are living people infected with Rage. Although thoroughly non-specific, they "feel" like zombies, which is why the shorthand works for me. Maybe since they're not the living dead, merely infected with a virus, is why they can run so fast.
Zombies are, by their nature, very limited — all they do is walk, grunt, die and kill. And, at this point, we've seen it all already.
We all know the horrors of becoming zombies, of seeing people we know become zombies, and of being chased by zombies (first at slow speeds and later at fast). Been there, done that. You can't up the stakes anymore either because we've already seen the world end several times in a zombie apocalypse. So where do you go from here?
"28 Days" gave new life when it made zombies more threatening and more gory. "Day of the Dead" (2008) tried to give us smart zombies, but nobody cared. And "Shuan of the Dead" came along to exhaust the "zombie humor" category.
Right now, the genre is played out. And, unlike vampires, zombies can't transition to other genres (like mystery or romance).
Sounds like it's a bad time to be a budding young zombie looking for a movie deal.
whatever
Best elements of Zack Snyder's remake of Dawn of the Dead:
Best line: "Shoot the one that looks like Rosie O'Donnell."
Best ironic muzak selection — song playing inside the shopping mall: Don't Worry Be Happy.
Best 2nd Amendment statement: can't have gun shops inside a shopping mall, so it's located across the street.
Best zombie movie ever: GHOST BREAKERS
OK, it wasn't really a zombie movie, but it had zombies in it. Bob Hope ends up in an eerie castle somewhere near Cuba while running from cops and crooks. He is warned to watch out for the voodoo doctors, and particularly their zombies (which appear a couple of times). He asks the local what a zombie is. The local replies "It's a mindless, half-dead creature who has no will of his own, but acts only on orders from his master." Hope responds: "Oh, you mean like Democrats."
Ah, what's in a name? A zombie by any other name would smell as bad.
i knew i kept my old lp's for some reason…now excuse me, i have to go practice my aim.
My favorite zombie movie is "Deathwatch." Like most zombie movies it's kind of campy, and sort of corny, but it's set in the trenches of World War I. So it gets extra style points. Besides, the trenches and gas of WWI were creepy enough, but they also always had a surreal quality to them that makes the insertion of zombies into it not only make sense, but completely believable. At least to me, it's a good flick.
At least that's my favorite "horror" zombie movie. The best zombie movie ever made hands down in my opinion though has to be "Shaun of the Dead."
'Shaun of the Dead' had romance in it. Well…kinda.
if i can make an unrelated popculture reference: I like the Idea of Obatrons being zombies. It is funny and viscerally satisfying. But I think we are more like "The Music Man". A guy who wont show his credentials, comes up with a think your way out of it scheme to take the towns money. Along the way the people who oppose him are sewpt away as every one starts to celebrate the non successes of the Professors instruction.
Then everyone goes marching through the town in a parade of self deluded hope.
That is scarrier to me than zombies. With zombies you know what's wrong with them.
That said Shaun of the Dead is fantastic. Zombies grunting the baseline of "Whitelines"? genuis
An ObamaZombie movie sounds like a comedy goldmine if it was done right.
There's already comical (but deadly) O'Zombies everywhere. You could flesh-out half of the film right now with stock footage of them and their antics.
The Pelosi Zombie would be the scariest. Like the Queen in Aliens, she could suck the life out of anything just by looking at it.
That truly was a strange movie. I would give it a good grade. I particularly like the German soldier near the end who speaks better English than I do. I kept wondering if that was going to lead to something else.
To be fair, isn't this something of a condition of human existence?
Back when there were more immediate threats from both the natural world and social conditions (e.g. violence was more condoned) the impulse to fear made more sense in context. But with modernism, the advent of democracy, the compartmentalization of religion, and the rise of technology, the old threats diminished as did the ability of political* and religious leaders to act as fear-mongers on a universal scale, so folks from other domains managed to step in to fill the void.
*with the caveat of liberal fascists, of course.
(pt 2) My take on the zombie craze since Romero is that the living heroes reflect a bunch of over-educated yippies who think they know everything and by comparison everyone else living normal-yet-not-quite-as-reflective lives look like zombies. The religious right exemplify this for them. Thing is, what was moderate fringe culture has evolved into THE youth culture of today, but with less empathy and more hatred for the "zombies" ("You're mentally dead to the reality we live in, and therefore sub-human. You're not going to eat _our_ brains. We reject _your_ inferior brains with a killshot between the eyes.") Though of course, as everyone notes, their own tropes are so stale that they're imbibed without thought and they're just as much zombies as anyone else.
Mulder: Well, I got a new theory. I say that when zombies try to eat people, that's just the first stage. You see, they've just come back from being dead so they're going to do all the things they miss from when they were alive. So, first, they're going to eat, then they're going to drink, then they're going to dance and make love. Scully: Oh, I see. So it's just that we never get to stay with them long enough to see the gentler side of the undead.
Yeah there's something that happens when you combine horror elements into war movies, you either wind up with something very neat (yet still weird) or you wind up with a steaming pile of crap (like anything the Sci-Fi Channel attempts to do with mixing the genres) with little in between.
Want to talk about a weird horror/war movie though, all you need to do is look at "The Keep." It's one of my favorite movies of all time, but to this day I couldn't tell you why. You have Wehrmacht, SS, Romanians, a "vampire" and an "angel" all rolled into one big burrito of a movie, complete with music by Tangerine Dream and brilliant performances by Jürgen Prochnow and Gabriel Byrne. Is it a war movie? Kinda but in a tangential way, but even then more of an anti-war movie. Is it a horror movie? Yep in a psychological way. It's impossible to pin down.
One of the simplest shots in that entire movie is one of my favorite one in any movie too, when Scott Glenn rolls up on his motorcycle to the Hungarian border guards and he and the guards are tiny in the frame with the forest rising up around them beyond the little strip of dirt road to either side, all fog cloaked and brooding, that was about the best purely visual mood setter I'd seen since "Nosferatu."
I loved "The Keep." It's one of those movies that seems to have come out of the script/plot Cuisinart, but somehow worked.
I am second to no man in my love of all things zombie, but I have to agree that the genre is about played out. Exhibit A is George Romero's excruciating "Land of the Dead", as stupid and heavy-handed a piece of cinematic dreck as I have seen in years. Yes, I know that he is a screaming liberal and wants to make a big, biting statement, but has he even SEEN any of his own films? He turned his life's work into a horrible punchline–the ultimate "We must try to understand them" moment in Science Fiction history.
Even zombies can only carry so much baggage on their rotting, maggot-ridden backs. Turning the Living Dead into misunderstood, oppressed ACORN workers just doesn't fly.
I saw a zombie today. He had an Obam sticker on his car.
LOL! That was good
Fear is an excellent motivator for politcal and social change. Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, and Obama have used it for tremendous advantage. Or as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, "Never waste a good crisis!" However, it never endures. History shows what happened to Lenis, Stalin, and Mussolini.
no kidding- to go full cycle on this one only need return th the origonal 'Night of the Living Dead', when the sheriff at the end is cleaning up the remaining zombies with sharpshooter long shots… The reporter comments on the zombie's behavior, to which the sheriff replies, “yeah, well, their dead- they're all messed up….” and the shooter takes out Our Hero-
“that's a great shot, Ed- there's another one for the fire” -roll credits- really, it never did get any better than that…
We've always had a fascination with the undead, the thought that none of us are going to make it out of this life alive is pretty scary. Even good Christians worry about the Big Transition (cue the infidels automatically thinking the Jesus reference) and want to think the Rapture (or whatever you call it) will happen while they're alive so they don't have to worry about it.
The whole undead theme, as in formal mortals now living in theory forever, is hitting a creative brick wall. Vampires went from murdering brutes to intellectual compassionate individuals. Werewolves and related are already getting a similar makeover, like as seen in Harry Potter. "Real" world, if someone bit you and you turned into something that'll murder people, if you had any decency you'd either kill yourself or arrange to get killed. Zombies don't have that conflict being relatively mindless, but still…. Only a matter of time before the Hannibal Lecter-type zombie shows up, sophisticated and charming, have compassion for him as he only eats humans to survive.
About the last combo to go for undead is people who were killed and came alive, but not who they were, the souls of other dead people took over. They look like they always did, just act different, don't ask what they had for dinner. That'd be a movie, satanic cult escapes Hell and takes over a town, one person at a time, high nearby missing persons rate centered there and don't ask what happened to the tourists. Bus crash, group of "volunteers" from "the other side" come in to stop them, who in the meanwhile gets jobs at morgues and funeral homes to get fresh food. Your call if it'd work better as a comedy or straight horror. Eh, better make it comedy, let the line kill itself off before it spreads.
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." -Winston Churchill
Ozombies can relate to this!!!
The old Hope movie is a fond memory, and The Keep is a disjointed but cool ride. A cool zombie flick in a more traditional way The Serpent and the Rainbow.
My favorite Zombie actor is John Kerry. He is a pro.
Yes, that was pedantic. However, I gave you a thumbs up because you knew it and warned us.
You guys are very wise down-under!
Zombie movies may be played out. But they are still quite popular in the world of video games.
1. Gamers love the opportunity to mow down waves of helpless hostiles.
2. Coders love zombies because it is very easy to program their A.I.
To be fair and balanced, I don't think the Left is the only side of the political spectrum that uses fear to influence the electorate. It is used in equal amounts by all sides.
"The Republicans are going to steal your Social Security!"
"The Democrats are going to get you killed!"
I think this has to do with the fact that fear is one of our most basic emotions and it is the easiest one to influence.
[...] an intelligent man, but in this case he couldn’t be more wrong. He quotes one of the geniuses from Big Hollywood (who, incidentally, just learned what the word “satrap” meant): In their neverending [...]
I chalk much of it up to the pervasive fear in Invasion of the Body Snatchers – the fear of losing our identity, of becoming just one more of a faceless horde. The more intergrated the culture, the more pressure there is to conform. "Are you on facebook? Why aren't you on facebook? You HAVE to join facebook!"
Zombies also present something of a "safe" apocalypse. Yes, the world has ended. But the mall is still there. There's no radiation poisoning. The threat is massive in numbers but also (usually) slow and dimwitted. Give me a crowbar, and I could see myself being one of the survivors. Not so a nuclear war or global pandemic.
Y'know, wasn't the lib-call back in the 70's that the whole world would FREEZE to death?
Because I remember my teacher crying about "polar expansion" and garbage like that.
Typical libbie doublethink.
Saw the movie in the theater, then read the book. There are a few shining moments where you can imagine the two are connected somehow. Excuse me while I resume forgetting that movie exists period.
Gee, I was getting taught that at college in the late 1980's. Makes me wonder how much of the book sales for this alarmist crap is simply students needing a book for class.
The Zombies have already taken over. Don't believe it? Just tune in ABCNBCCBSMSNBCCNN news or any C-Span White House press briefing, and there they are – with pressured voices, widened eyes, and one-sided repetitious rhetorical dribblings.
Democrats have always been zombies. But the difference has always been, you get rabies from a demo bite.
People in developed countries identify with the media treatment of the zombie idea – brain-dead masses moving, beyond life, doing the bidding of some sort of master or situation. The "zombie" is the ultimate citizen-victim of control. The 1950 Don Seigel version of "Invasion of The Body Snatchers" isn't about communism anyway – it's about TV.
There is a google ad for Rifftrax's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.
[...] T. Karnick makes an interesting point in the context of an essay on the new popularity of zombies: Both the zombie appeal and the swine flu fears are caused by two things: the news media’s [...]
Fear is regrettably an easy emotion to inspire and it's quite effective at getting the desired results. Even in simple things like going to the prom we try and terrify our children into to not drinking and driving by showing them videos of car accidents etc. Religion, as much as we like to deny it, is based almost entirely off fear and always has been. So fearmongering is not new by any stretch of the imagination but in our information saturated culture where there is literally no escape the spreading of fear is easier and far more pervasive.
"Land of the Dead" was pathetic, but the next one was worse. It was "Blair Witch with zombies", and as horrendous as you'd expect.
For one, I think the use of "Zombie" reflects the un-PC nature of this article. Please, use the more correct "unstationary corpse" in the future to avoid offending anyone.
[...] man, but in this case he couldn’t be more wrong. He quotes one of the geniuses from Big Hollywood (who, incidentally, just learned what the word “satrap” meant): In their [...]
we prefer 'differently vital'
Zombies are getting bad in my neighborhood. I just noticed you can now purchase Zombie pinup decals on ebay for your guitar… CRAZY!!! I started looking at this entire "Zombie culture" and was shocked.
You must be logged in to post a comment.