The Zombification of American Culture

They're everywhere - you can't turn on the TV or go to the movies or play a video game these days without running headlong into a swarm of the undead. Zombies have conquered American popular culture... How did this happen; why did it happen and why now?

American Horror Story: Coven - Halloween Zombie Attack

These are all tough questions - but we will attempt to answer them for you. Now, Zombies aren't really that new and zombie movies have been around since at least 1932. There may have been some during the silent era as well, but we can't find any evidence of it (unless you count Nosferatu as a zombie which is probably fair). The 1932 flick, White Zombie seemed to have inspired rock musician Rob Zombie (we're guessing that's not his real name) as well. Now, this early Zombie flick is semi-racist because they're going out of their way to highlight that these aren't typical Jamaican rasta Voodoo zombies, but instead white chicks (being controlled using Voodoo magic). So, the genesis of Zombie lore does start down in the Caribbean and is tied to various drugs used to place people in trances and such. That traditional zombie theme was resurrected (excuse the pun) in this Season's American Horror Story - with witches doing battle with a New Orleans Voodoo Queen. But we digress.

Bela Lugosi was the undisputed creepiest guy in Hollywood for 2 decades

Zombies have been around for a long time - why are they so popular now? It seems as though the resurgence really picked up in the late 70's and early 80's. much of that was fueled by the many zombie films produced by George Romero. What was going on in American culture at that time? Well, we had Jimmy Carter and then Voodoo economics with Ronald Reagan. We had more of an awareness that we were just 5 minutes away from self annihilation on the nuclear clock. We had the introduction of the AIDs virus and the cultural drought of 1980's consumerism and yuppie madness and MTV. Yet, do all of these frightening elements really explain the zombie pandemic?

Maybe people just enjoy watching gore? (not Al Gore)

Perhaps there's a deeper root cause to this seeming never-ending flood of zombies? Could it perhaps be a reflection of an increasingly cynical and negative perspective that much of the population has to direction that our society seems to be heading to. Things for whatever reason, seem to be less hopeful, less promising and more menacing than before. Prior generations had looked forward to progress and personal growth for themselves and their children. Since the 1980's, we've had stagnation of personal income and upward mobility, the constant drumbeat of terrorism and budget cuts and things just seem a little depressing. It may in fact be more appealing for many of us to imagine an apocalyptic future where survival is the only job skill necessary and bills, college and Obamacare no longer factor in. In a world where no matter what you do there's no chance of progress, then killing zombies becomes both entertaining and cathartic.

Does Rick enjoy his new life more than his old one - hard to tell...

Or maybe, just maybe it's even deeper than that. What's one thing all zombies seem to have in common? Well, besides cannibalism - yes, that's right - Disease. Zombies become zombies through infection of some sort. Zombies in fact represent a collective fear that's been with humanity for thousands of years - zombies are the human manifestation of plague. In a plague, like the Black Death, the ones who were most frightening were the sick and the unknowing carriers of disease. Someone who had caught the plague was for all intents and purposes "walking dead" long before they actually died. So, maybe our zombie pandemic is an indictment on modern society - calling it plagued so to speak. The survivors of all these scenarios are in fact turning their back on what society was and helping to kill it off one zombie at a time.

Or maybe, people just like to see rotting corpses walking around and pulling out peoples intestines. Either way, perhaps it's time to really run these zombies back into the ground.

We're not unreasonable...

Got Brains?

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