So I was putting my daughter to bed a bit ago and she was all wound up about zombies, having just seen Michael Jackson’s Thriller video (for instance here.)
And wow, even though Halloween is over and all people sure are fired up about zombies. Vampires too but, seriously, the zombie thing is pretty… interesting.
And it seemed to me that one of the wild things about the zombie narrative is that no matter how decayed, and no matter how chopped into flinders, they just keep inching forward towards the hapless heros of the story.
And I… I think what makes zombies compelling enough to have become almost cultural clichés is that just as vampires are a metaphor for our facination and fear of lust, zombies are a metaphor for unrequited longing.
And no, not “unrequited longing” in the stalker sense. The movie-monster metaphor for that would be found more in the psycho/Jason/Freddy genre. And, of course, stalker movies. Plus real life stalkers who, unlike make-believe vampires and zombies, aren’t blank enough slates to project our (idealized) fantasies onto.
And finally, no, I’m not claiming that longing is a bad thing just because zombies do it. For one thing metaphors aren’t analogies.
Grrr. Not sure why it’s
Submitted by figleaf on Tue, 2009-11-03 12:17.Grrr. Not sure why it’s turning off comments by default. I’ll do a visual check when I post till I figure it out. Apologies to all concerned. —fl
perhaps the zombies are doing
Submitted by Mike (not verified) on Tue, 2009-11-03 12:35.perhaps the zombies are doing it ;)
I totally disagree. I think
Submitted by Redleader (not verified) on Tue, 2009-11-03 20:50.I totally disagree. I think zombies are not about intrapersonal issues, but response to a society where issues such as nuclear weapons, ecocide, and widespread (as opposed to local) famine are widely talked about and feared. That the genre started in 1968 and grew out of the 50’s monster movies, in the early Cold War was no accident. The “rash” of zombie movies such as “Day of the Dead”, “CHUD”, “Return of the Living Dead”, “Night of the Comet”, “Redneck Zombies”, and the video “Thriller” in the 80’s coincided with the early Reagan era and renewed nuclear fears, and went dormant in the 90’s. Finally, zombies came back “in” post-9/11 with Bush’s wars.
As a child who feared nuclear war so much in the 80’s, I can tell you that zombies resonated massively with that, and very little with unrequited longings!
Don’t assume that her age means your daughter is too young to be thinking about ecocide, war, and hunger. When I was her age I was terrified of nuclear war, hunger, ecocide, and the thinning ozone layer.
As for Victorian Vampire stories? Some of the ones that survived were sexual symbols. But historically vampire myths were probably more tied to TB and other “slow wasting” or “consumption” diseases. The first of the modern vampire stories by Bram Stoker had both “consumption” and sexual themes in them. But it was easier for moderns to pick up on the latter. Sure the Victorian idea of seduction was big, but they had reason to fear TB.
And kids today have reason to fear war, nuclear weapons, and ecocide.
I think part of the appeal of
Submitted by Holly Pervocracy (not verified) on Tue, 2009-11-03 22:16.I think part of the appeal of zombies is also that they’re acceptable targets. You can shoot fifty of ‘em, stab ten more in the eyes, laugh about it, and not feel bad. (See “Zombieland,” but also “Dawn of the Dead” and “Shaun of the Dead” and “Army of Darkness” and “World War Z” and…) Not to mention that zombie movies very often take time to point out that once zombies have taken over, you can grab anything you want off store shelves and not pay.
So I think zombie movies are largely an outlet for our most antisocial impulses. There’s a part of us that sees civilization as a cage and other people as obstacles to meeting our animal desires. And that part just wants to see everyone (except a few of our friends and a hot chick) die and then get to kill them again. Only the rest of us is too moral to put it quite like that, so let’s say it was a big epidemic and not our fault. My hands are tied here, I just have to fulfill my nastiest fantasies, the situation forces it.
In that way it’s a similar setup to some erotica. I’ve noticed a disturbing preponderance of fantasy erotica where people didn’t exactly want to have delicious pervy sex, but there were contrived magical forces that made it necessary, you see.