I found my senior seminar project from 2011! This is how I earned my English degree 🤣
High-Brow Horror:
The Significance of the Flesh-Eating Zombie as a Metaphor in Popular Culture
Stories about flesh-eating walking dead have existed at least since the 7th century bc. In 1893, Ambrose Bierce wrote about the walking dead in The Death of Halpin Frayser. In contemporary culture, we refer to the walking dead as “zombies.” The concept of the zombie has long been associated with contemporary political context. In the 1930s and 1940s, a time of imperialism and exoticism, voodoo zombies derived from Haitian mythology became a popular motif in horror films. In these old films, people were killed and reanimated as slaves with no free will. Instead, they were entirely controlled by a Bokor, or dark voodoo priest. These films blatantly referenced the way that Haitians were being abused by white imperialists on dangerous sugar plantations.
George Romero popularized the modern concept of the zombie in 1968 with Night of the Living Dead. Beginning with his films, zombies were no longer docile slaves under the control of other individuals. Instead, they became a sort of zombie-vampire hybrid: mindless, decaying, unkillable, uncontrollable, walking dead with an insatiable hunger for human flesh. These creatures were even scarier than the originals because, rather than having another person think for them, no thinking was happening at all. There was no control over their impulses, and the condition spread quickly. The concept of contagious, uncontrollable, impulse-driven irrationality is terrifying. So, if zombies are so terrifying, why is zombie fiction so popular?
Popular culture is necessarily determined by how it resonates with society, and often reflects metaphorically the issues that a society faces in reality. Horror is no exception. For example, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, written during the scientific revolution at a time when scientist performed horrific experiments, draws from real-life attempts to reanimate the heads or body parts of dead animals via the use of galvanization. Mary Shelley lived at the time when “what used to be called ‘natural history’ became ‘biology'” (Morton 8). It has been said that the biology of that time “had gone too far in the direction of objective observation and pure reason” (Lienhard). A major purpose of biology in that age was to discover “the essence of life” without necessarily crediting nature or God (Morton 8). Science was no longer being held in check by religious morality, nor had it begun to be guided by ethics. It should come as no surprise then that some people, including Mary Shelley, began to speculate upon the consequences that could result from scientific success. In Shelley’s case, the result was a fascinating gothic novel with undercurrents of political and social commentary. Mary Shelley wrote about Frankenstein’s monster in 1816. Presently, Mary Shelley’s questions are still being explored in the genres of science fiction and horror, particularly in the field of monster stories. By placing their stories in a science-fiction framework, writers can use monsters to make indirect commentary about the negative aspects society. The habit of science-fiction horror is to ask its audience to consider what-if questions and encourage that audience to broaden the field of those questions to include real-life situations.
Monster stories have a long history in human culture. According to anthropologist David Gilmore, there are fifteen-thousand-year-old cave paintings depicting creatures which can only be described as monsters (Primal Fear), suggesting that modern society’s interest in monsters is not sudden. But what is a monster, and why, if we have never encountered one, do we tell tales of them? What purpose do monster stories serve?
Stephen T. Asma, in his book On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears, claims that “[a]n action or a person or a thing is monstrous when it can’t be processed by our rationality, and also when we cannot readily relate to the emotional range involved” (10). Does that mean that we tell monster stories to explain the horribly inexplicable? That is one theory, and I, for one, see merit in it. In the 18th century, the legend of the vampire was used to account for misunderstood effects of decomposition in the grave (Guiley 37-39). But illuminating the inexplicable is not the only compelling explanation for the telling of monster tales. For example, Sigmund Freud said that monsters represent the uncanny, a feeling of familiar but unfamiliar. Monsters are people, but not people. Freud’s discussion of Doppelgangers is particularly relevant to the subject at hand.
Some of the most common monsters in popular culture are were-animals, ghosts, vampires, and zombies, all of which are examples of humans who have become monsters. If one thinks of these monsters on the same terms as doppelgangers and evil twins, one can begin to see these monsters as possible other selves, much like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. According to Freud, this idea of a second self is related to the desire for eternal life. As a person matures and comes to see the impossibility of eternal life, the desire must be repressed. In this way, the concept of another self becomes a thing to be feared and despised (Asma 189-190). When we see this kind of monster, we tend to infer, on some level, that the monster has always been a part of the individual but has only now gained dominance. This leads us to wonder which persona is the true identity of the character, the “good twin” or the “bad twin.” If a doppelganger is to be feared and despised because of its relationship to a desire for eternal life, could we not then say that earthly eternal life itself is taboo? If Feud’s theory holds true, perhaps the idea of a human becoming immortal must be feared and despised for the same reasons. If so, it would be natural to want to explain why immortality would be so wrong, and that could be another possible use for the monster story. After all, what are ghosts, vampires, and zombies if not examples of the evils of immortality?
The concept of immortality is ultimately selfish. If this generation were to achieve immortality, it would be denying future generations their rightful turns with the world. Already, longer life spans have caused global overpopulation. More people now have to share the same amount of Earth, and everyone suffers for it. (That is not to say that everyone does not also benefit from longer lifespan and more time with their loved ones.) Since each generation is living longer, each generation remains in power longer. The politics and values of the older generation still hold sway when a younger generation reaches adulthood. It makes sense, then, that, as a person attempts to move from the ego-centric phase of their development to a more socially acceptable mode of behavior, that person would seek, on a subconscious level, to demonize that kind of selfish desire. If monster stories are told, to some extent, to explain why selfish desires are bad, one might say that flesh-eating zombies, in particular, represent the ultimate level of selfishness: mindlessly devouring others to sooth their own cravings for human flesh.
In fiction, humanoid monsters allow artists to represent the darker side of human nature without making direct accusations against specific categories of people. This nearly subliminal commentary may be more effective than outright attacks because it is less likely to be censored, and because people eagerly seek out the material for entertainment, whereas few people would be likely to seek out criticism of themselves. Speculative works like zombie movies have the ability to provoke thought or educate while simultaneously entertaining. It works on the same principle as giving children gummy vitamins. The children enjoy the method of delivery for the thing the parent believes the child needs. Similarly, zombie narratives are used as a vehicle for much-needed thought-provoking commentary, and, just as gummy vitamins are ineffective if taken on an empty stomach, the commentary in zombie narratives is ineffective when received without the use of critical thinking.
The modern use of zombies in popular culture tends to critique society’s perceived monstrous tendencies, including the human capacity to mindlessly destroy and metaphorically devour others in order to survive or get ahead in life, the human inability to control greed for both knowledge and commodities, and the capacity for both necessary and gratuitous violence.
All of these perspectives are ways to examine human nature through hypothetical circumstances. One might argue that the major attraction to zombie films is based on the gore factor, but I believe this explanation to be too simplistic. Why, after all, are people attracted to the gore? Connoisseurs of the genre claim that the gore is only incidental, and is necessary to the suspension of disbelief. I theorize that the real appeal of zombie fiction is that zombies are terrifying on multiple levels because of the questions they raise and the things they reveal about humanity and society.
While partaking of zombie films and fiction, one might ask oneself how very different the humans are from the zombies and which of the two species is more monstrous. After all, the zombies are acting on instinct. They are rarely shown to enjoy or even think about hurting others. They just do what they are programmed to do. Humans, on the other hand, are fully capable of rational thought, but still kill one another and are shown to derive pleasure from killing the zombies. These humans do not even eat their kills. The zombies kill on instinct. The expressions on their faces suggest nothing other than an effort to consume flesh. A zombie face tends to be confused, or, as Shaun of the Dead character, Diane, puts it, “vacant with a hint of sadness, like a drunk who’s lost a bet.” They do not appear to be angry or malicious. Humans, on the other hand, insult the zombies and make games out of the executions. In films such as the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake, humans on a rooftop make a game of shooting zombies on the ground below even though there is no way that those zombies could pose an immediate threat. Zombies never play with their kills. It is the human, then, and not the zombie, who is prone to malice.
In the hope of offering some explanation for the popular appeal of the zombie genre, I will, in the following sections, show how scenarios in zombie fiction reflect real-life, contemporary anxieties and how zombies illustrate a monstrous humanity.
Contemporary Anxieties
Some contributing factors for the current obsession with the flesh-eating walking dead could be overpopulation, disease, war, the uncontrollable rise of science, high crime rates, terrorism, unofficial imperialism, and apocalyptic prophecies. All of these can be found as themes within zombie films.
Overpopulation, for example, permeates nearly every zombie film. A single Romero-style zombie can easily be overcome. They move slowly and clumsily, and they do not seem to be particularly talented problem solvers. The scary part about a zombie hoard is the hoard. The numbers cannot be overpowered without difficulty. Every zombie that you defeat is replaced with several more, and the epidemic spreads quickly because people are in such close proximity. In George Romero’s 1978 Dawn of the Dead, residents of an apartment building and the SWAT team sent to impose martial law are overrun with murderous corpses, but those corpses used to be residents of the building. Because there were so many people in such a small space, each monster had been able to kill multiple people, all of whom quickly reanimated to claim their own victims. By the time SWAT arrived at the scene, the building’s basement had already been stuffed with hungry zombies, a situation that could have been avoided in a less populated setting. This particular incident speaks to many parallel concerns related to such close quarters.
In this case, the zombie epidemic could easily be a metaphor for such things as drug use, crime, racism, disease or any other cultural problem that seems to spread on contact. In fact, the mindlessness of the zombies could very well be seen as the way in which people are often influenced to conform to destructive behavioral patterns to which they have been exposed. Zombies, then, represent conformist gang violence, unthinking mob mentality, desperate methamphetamine addicts who kill for their fix, and PCP users who kill without realizing it. These are just a few examples of how zombies are used as metaphors for high crime rates. Criminals become thoughtless, desperate, fiends who are willing to harm others in an effort to get whatever it is that they think they need.
Though the zombies may represent criminals, both they and the living represent mob mentality. The zombies are in large groups, acting out with mindless violence, but the living, also in groups, engage in behaviors that they would probably not participate in under normal circumstances. In these films, people stop considering the real consequences of their actions and move like a heard of terrified cattle. Some examples of this are the trampling of other humans in an effort to escape attackers in 28 Weeks Later, and a similar scene in I Am Legend, in which people fight for the chance to board a helicopter before the area is quarantined to prevent the spread of a virus that is sweeping the nation.
Actually, in many modern zombie movies, the agent that spreads the condition is a virus. While we could attribute this to a change in the public’s willingness to suspend disbelief, we must also recognize the trend as a not-so-subtle reminder of the fear society has of communicable disease. We have good reason to fear the spread of disease, particularly viral conditions for which there is no treatment. Who hasn’t heard of the bubonic plague, leprosy, yellow fever, Small pox, Cholera, malaria, meningitis, Ebola, Spanish Flu, Asian Flu, SARS, the West Nile virus, Swine Flu, Bird Flu, and HIV? All of these diseases have caused or are still causing a panic in the societies that have been exposed.
In the middle ages, nearly a third of Europe’s population was lost to the Black Death, or Bubonic Plague. Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron begins with a description of the plague that calls up scenes from the many zombie films that I have seen. In The Decameron, the narrator says of the Florentines during the plague that many
“would balk no passion or appetite they wished to gratify, drinking and reveling incessantly from tavern to tavern, or in private houses (which were frequently found deserted by the owners, and therefore common to every one), yet strenuously avoiding, with all this brutal indulgence, to come near the infected. And such, at that time, was the public distress, that the laws, human and divine, were no more regarded; for the officers, to put them in force, being either dead, sick, or in want of persons to assist them, every one did just as he pleased” (Boccaccio xxi).
Whole populations are wiped out in impossibly short time spans, just like in 28 Days Later, the Romero films, and, of course, the remakes of the Romero films. Family members abandon each other, and corpses are left in their homes to rot. Survivors loot abandoned properties, and anyone who is able tries to outrun the epidemic by going somewhere that is rumored to be safe. We see these same actions in virtually every zombie film since Romero’s 1978 Dawn of the Dead. Picture the beginning of The Walking Dead, in which the main character wakes in an abandoned hospital, surrounded by corpses. He goes home to find that his wife and child, along with everyone else he knew, have left in search of a place that is safe. It is possible that writers and directors deliberately reference stories of the plague, but it is also likely that such a situation has become archetypal in the human consciousness.
In Boccaccio’s time, diseases were often attributed to witchcraft, the wrath of God, or demons, but, as the science of biology progressed, people began to realize that viruses and bacterium were to blame. With the advent of biological weapons, we have come nearly full-circle. Now we find ourselves wondering if man can or will create a monster-illness that we wouldn’t be able to control. The majority of recent zombie films and stories holds zombiism to be the unexpected result of a man-made virus or chemical, demonstrating the age-old fear of uncontrolled scientific greed as well as our concern regarding terrorist attacks such as anthrax-contaminated mail. One way that terrorism affects a society is to cause a rupture in the national unity. When everyone gets jumpy after an attack, people turn on one another, never sure who the enemy is. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, many Americans became suspicious of and aggressive toward anyone who “looked Muslim.” Other Americans insisted that the American government might be to blame for the attacks. This kind of discord has been present in zombie films since Night of the Living Dead in 1968. When several groups of survivors find themselves hiding in the same farmhouse, the people fight over which man should be trusted to govern the actions of the others. In the end, the dispute leads them all to their deaths. At a time when no one knows who to trust or who is at fault, everyone becomes an enemy, whether zombie or human.
Similar to terrorism, many zombie movies seem to take their inspiration from war. The very first flesh-eating zombie movie, Night of the Living Dead, is said to have been a reaction to the Vietnam War. It makes sense if you realize that much of the American public disapproved of the military’s involvement in Vietnam. You might say that the country was very nearly torn apart. With chemical weapons like Agent Orange and napalm, it certainly seemed to many who saw the effects that the apocalypse was near. In later zombie films, the government and military become both heroes and villains during the zombie outbreaks, just as the government is often seen with mixed reactions in contemporary life. On one hand, the military have the weapons to stop the zombies, but, on the other, the military and government often seem to be responsible for the chaos. The military in the films ride in to presumably save the day, but their ruthless fulfillment of orders like martial law (Dawn of the Dead, both versions) and quarantine (Day of the Dead 2008, 28 Weeks Later) turn them into villains. If fact, National Guard officers rob college students in Diary of the Dead and, in Planet Terror, American veterans of the Middle East turn the population of an entire Texas town into zombies in an attempt to gain recognition for the horrors they experienced in the name of their country. The zombies in the Resident Evil series, Zombie Strippers, and Dead and Deader are all the results of government attempts to build super soldiers. Stephen T. Asma asks in On Monsters, “Are the current films and novels about apocalyptic, monstrous disease epidemics the result of contemporary anxieties over biochemical warfare?” (Asma 201). I think so. Zombiism, often created by a government for warlike purposes, affects everyone, including children and civilians, just as biochemical warfare does. A zombie apocalypse, like war, usually results in the murder of innocents, destruction, chaos, and terror for the middle and lower class, and relative safety (for a while) for the big wigs.
“Apocalyptic” seems to be the most appropriate description for these films. Most people associate the word apocalypse with the end of the world or, at least, the end of the world as we know it. Zombie movies certainly seem to present that. In the 1978 Dawn of the Dead, Peter, a descendent of a voodoo priest, suggests that the zombie epidemic happened because, “When there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.” In The New International Version of the bible, Revelations 9:4-6 says of the angels during the battle of Armageddon:
“They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or tree, but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. /They were not given power to kill them, but only to torture them for five months… /During those days men will seek death, but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them.”
Some people have suggested that those words refer to the living dead and, by extension, zombies, present during the biblical endgame. What many people do not realize is that the term “apocalypse” originally referred not to the events in the book of Revelations, but the revelation itself and, by extension, “[a]ny revelation or disclosure” (“Apocalypse”). If we choose to read zombies as a revelation of human nature, the word becomes even more apt.
Zombies as Monstrous Humanity
Zombies in film tend to exemplify the greed, thoughtlessness, and violence that make humanity monstrous. Greed is illustrated in the form of cannibalism, or consumption. These flesh-eating ghouls are exaggerated representations of the Americans and other capitalists: zombies as uncontrolled hedonists who consume mindlessly. Being dead, zombies don’t have to eat for survival, and yet they are willing to destroy and devour anyone they can catch, including their own family members. Taken less literally, this behavior can be compared to the way that some see big business and unethically ambitious individuals. Many people assume that leaders of the business world are willing to use up or destroy anyone or anything that gets in the way of what they want. Big business, when unethical, uses people up by way of sweatshops and near-slave wages, similar to the concept of eating the workers alive, taking without really giving back. Those in charge have everything to gain, and they do not seem to care that the people they use lose everything. Resources are used up faster than they can be replenished, much as the zombies use up or contaminate their food supply faster than can be sustained. For example, in 28 Days Later, the so-called zombies are essentially rabid, living human beings. At the beginning of the sequel, the zombies have begun to starve to death because there are not enough uninfected humans left for food.
Alternatively, if we choose to see the zombies as representative of ambitious individuals, we see that the zombies have no loyalty, and are willing to destroy men, women, children, family members, and the occasional horse in order to satisfy their own desires. Cannibalism, in zombie films, functions as a sort of osmosis of health, power, and purity. It is the theft of the “self” of the victim, replacing choice with desperation and thoughtless instinct.
The zombies do not think. Some people would (indeed, do) say that the majority of the population is already experiencing this condition. The opening scene of Shawn of the Dead illustrates this metaphor in a deliberately obvious way. As the scene opens, the camera pans up from stumbling feet to an open maw… which turns out to belong to a yawning slacker who has no idea that the zombie outbreak has begun. At the end of the film, the zombies are given minimum-wage jobs, and the post-apocalyptic world is shown to have changed very little. Politically, socially, and personally, humans, or at least Westerners, are often criticized as being oblivious to their impact on the world around them. Activists point out that Americans buy chocolate, coffee, and clothing that were brought about via slave labor, incidentally preventing the employment of those who refuse to work for such little pay. A majority shops at big-box stores that put local companies out of business and then move production away to those places where slave labor is available, inevitably destroying the economy wherever those businesses go. Environmentalists complain that people plant bulbs imported from Holland, allowing native species of plants to go extinct, which, in turn, allows the native insects and then the predators of those insects, the native birds, to go extinct. The underlying commentary of these socially-inspired zombie narratives is that the unthinking zombie who simply exists by following the path of least resistance is really not so very different from the human it used to be. Violent pacifists, zombies are unthinking wanderers and followers with no purpose other than the most basic instinct to feed. They make no effort to change the way things are in order to ensure that feeding will be an option in the future.
The worst part is that this thoughtless greed is contagious. Surrounded by people who are ruthless in regard to the achievement of their desires, each individual must also become ruthless or risk being consumed completely. Thus it is with the zombies. If they catch you, you will either become one of them or be ripped apart and devoured. They function as avatars for stereotypical religious extremists: Zombies as unthinking destroyers of lives and differences. Their influence is widespread and complete, creating a mindless pack of followers with no leader. And yet, without real guidance, they do not stop moving. They never stop. They just wander aimlessly and corrupt everyone they meet. Stephen T. Asma says in his book On Monsters that monsters represent the culturally foreign:
“Godless communism creates nihilistic, immoral monsters; Rabid capitalism and consumerism create hedonistic zombies (Karl Marx actually referred to capitalism as a “vampire” sucking the blood of the labor class);theocracy creates uncritical fanatical zealots. We know these are monstrous societies, the logic goes, because they produce monstrous results: genocide, terrorism, and torture” (Asma 243).
But every society has its version of monstrous results. Some are just more obvious than others. With globalization, all of these monstrous results are connected in a vast web of causes and effects.
Globalization, too, may be critiqued in zombie fiction. Often the outbreak is said to become global within days, spreading from one country to another by the influence of travelers, just as the monstrous aspects of culture are being spread by global contact. The countries of the East despise Western consumerism at the same time that they emulate it. America dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. The entire world was disgusted by the devastation. So disgusted, in fact, that they began developing their own monstrous weapons just in case they should ever “need” them. The citizens of each country do little or nothing to contest the government’s decision. Politicians dazzle and distract the voters similar to the way in which the operators of the military vehicle Dead Reckoning distract the zombies of Land of the Dead with fireworks. The zombies watch the show, fascinated, as machine guns cut them down. In this case, it is not the monstrousness of the zombies (or voters) that is being criticized. The censure relates to the human habit of “looking the other way.” This scene is a zombified version of claims that Americans gave up their first amendment rights in allowing the passing of The Patriot Act in 2001.
Survivors as Monstrous Humanity
If the zombies represent the monstrous side of humanity, one might expect the survivors to represent the more noble side of humanity. A few characters might, such as Deputy Rick Grimes in The walking Dead. He puts the needs of others before his own, and he tries to remain honorable and ethical throughout the first season of the series. But Officer Grimes is the exception to the rule. In a good deal of zombie fiction, the humans are also shown to be selfish, greedy, and monstrous, as if even the best side of humanity has a tendency to be horrible. This is reminiscent of American Literary Naturalism, a movement in which pessimism seemed to reign, and humans were characterized by “the beast within” while nature was characterized as an uncaring, amoral actor.
Uninfected survivors in zombie fiction are often beastly when other humans may be infected. In 28 Days Later, Selena, a true survivor, brutally murders her companion, Mark, immediately after he is bitten by one of the infected. One might argue that her actions were only rational, but to what extent is rationality monstrous when not tempered by compassion? This alludes to the same kind of ethical dilemma of sacrificing the few to save the many. In some zombie films, the possibly-infected are abandoned, in others, destroyed. In a few cases, survivors deny that their companions are infected, threatening to murder the humans who want to destroy the potentially infected before they turn into zombies and attack. In the most disturbing cases, such as Day of the Dead (The Romero version) and Dead and Deader, survivors keep the zombies as entertainment or experiments. Government quarantine is another common scenario. The government or military in zombie fiction frequently traps large numbers of survivors in an infected area in an attempt to contain the outbreak, effectively sacrificing those survivors to save themselves. On a purely rational level, this action makes sense, but many would call this purely rational method “inhumane.” To make matters worse, the Government usually causes or exacerbates the epidemic, as in 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, Day of the Dead (both versions), Land of the Dead, Resident Evil, Dead and Deader, Zombie Strippers, and Planet Terror, further demonstrating human monstrosity.
Aside from the government’s treatment of survivors, the general treatment of the zombies or potential zombies is usually represented as callous. While the zombies kill by whatever means is most convenient (sometimes they just take a bite), in many films the humans kill in whatever way is most amusing or satisfying. Zombieland in particular is a great example of this. One subplot of the film seems to be ever-more creative zombie executions. An even more disturbing illustration of human violence against zombies can be found in Zombie Diaries, where a character called Goke literally tortures zombies by binding them and then cutting off parts of their bodies. In Survival of the Dead, a group of loutish bigots stake the still-animated heads of zombies in the woods just for fun. The fact that humans are capable even of imagining such things seems fairly monstrous.
In their zeal for zombie-slaying, the humans also have a habit of accidentally slaughtering humans. Most famously, Ben, the last human survivor in the farm house of Night of the Living Dead, gets shot by a trigger-happy cleanup crew at the end. Similarly, the group of survivors in Zombie Diaries mistakenly shoots a young woman and a little girl during one of their daily zombie slaughters. Zombieland tries to make this phenomenon funny when Bill Murray (as himself) dresses like a zombie and tries to scare characters “Columbus” and “Little Rock.” Columbus shoots Murray in the chest with a shotgun. Oops. The survivors seem a little broken up about the accident for a short time, but they eventually move on.
Another way that the survivors in zombie movies tend to be monstrous relates to the competition for resources. I mentioned earlier that the National Guard officers in Survival of the Dead robbed college students in Diary of the Dead. They didn’t take money. They took supplies: food and weapons, effectively dooming the kids to death either by starvation or zombie attack. In “Vatos,” the fourth episode of The Walking Dead, a group of apparent thugs takes one of the survivors hostage, asking for a bag of weapons as ransom. The survivors refuse to trade and threaten to kill one of the thugs if their friend isn’t released. At a time when most of the population is walking dead, both sets of survivors seem ready to kill the few who live over material things. Soldiers in 28 Days Later try to hold a woman and teenage girl prisoner because not many females have survived. They need the women for reproduction, and are willing to kill Jim, the ladies’ companion. The girls in Zombieland take everything, even the vehicle, from the guys when they first meet, which sets the guys after them on a mission of vengeance. In some movies it is food, in others it is shelter, weapons, transportation, or general territory, but nearly every example of zombie fiction contains a reference to competition for resources, and, in almost every case, the survivors are willing to kill or die for those resources. This demonstrates humanity’s warlike nature. The zombies, by contrast, seem willing to share. Maybe this is commentary about class distinction. A biased person might romanticize the metaphor to say that the upper classes who have everything are selfish and prone to fighting, while the lower classes (who seem to be running out of food) are willing to share what little they have got. Maybe zombies aren’t so monstrous.
Why we fear zombies
So, if zombies are slow and generally no more monstrous than the humans, why do we fear zombies? Well, obviously we would rather not be eaten. Pain is not pleasant, especially when you can watch the predator tear your body parts off and make a meal of them right in front of you. Worse than that, the condition of zombiism spreads by bite. It is terrifying to imagine being the mindless creature with no control over its own actions or desires, no choices, and no understanding. And think of the decay! It cannot be pleasant to wake up dead, or to be aware that you are going to wake up dead, possibly with your entrails falling out, or your lower half missing entirely, like one zombie in the premier of The Walking Dead. Neither does it sound nice to smell of rotting corpse, or to randomly lose pieces of flesh as it decomposes. Perhaps the fear we have of becoming a zombie is related to the fear we have of aging, becoming senile and decrepit.
Conversely, our fear of becoming a zombie may be based on the unpleasant thought of becoming the thing that you hate, the destroyer of everything that you love, and the thing that everyone else hates too. Although we do not like to admit it, I agree with Stephen T. Asma when he says that “[e]veryone has the potential to be monstrous” (Asma 8). Perhaps zombie imagery taps into our self-conscious fear of turning into whatever we consider to be monstrous, whether that is our parents, our countrymen, our enemies, or, my personal favorite, “sheeple.”
Aside from becoming a zombie, being surrounded by zombies may be even more frightening. Politically, zombies are selfish, stupid, creatures who consume obsessively and destroy anyone who isn’t like them. If they dominate, violence and persecution abound. What is more, if your group is surrounded by zombies, one or more of your loved ones may become a zombie also. This relates to the concept of situational evil. In On Monsters, Asma discusses the experiments of Stanley Milgram, an American psychologist who, in the 1960’s, performed a series of experiments that suggested that “evil” is often based on the situation in which the evil-doer is placed. The main focus of this experiment series was to determine the relationship between obedience and authority. Reflecting on the Nazi Holocaust, Milgram wanted to show that the Nazi soldiers were not inherently monstrous. Rather, they did monstrous things because they were told to and because everyone else was going along with the orders. This relates to zombies because the contagious nature of the condition can be compared to the communicable nature of behaving monstrously. If we are surrounded by monsters, we may become monsters ourselves and, if not ourselves, our loved ones may be bitten (or “brain-washed”). As Asma points out, monsters after the end of the Enlightenment could not be defeated by reason. They are, as he says, “features of irrevocable irrationality” (Asma 202).
On a more personal level, we do not want to be surrounded by zombies because zombies want to take everything from us: our lives, our loved ones, our individuality, our brains, our humanity, our personhood. Perhaps this is how Americans felt about communists during The Red Scare. Zombies could be seen as a more rabid illustration of that fear than George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Socially speaking, zombies are the ultimate conformists, and they have no personality. They would be quite boring as casual companions, and they would insist that you become just like them. Zombies, then, can represent the dangerous power of conformity. If large numbers of people were to conform to certain wicked ideals, the entire world would be in danger.
In this situation, the numbers would be overwhelming, and we, as humans, are terrified of feeling or being helpless. Zombies are scary because they usually win: they are too powerful for us to fight (like bi-partisan government, capitalism, communism, terrorism, war, human nature, cancer, AIDS, God, etc.).
So we fear the idea of feeling helpless, but we partake of zombie fiction anyway. Why? Because it offers hope. When we watch the films, we see the mistakes made by the survivors, and we think that we would be smart enough to not make that mistake. We see how long they survive against the odds, and we begin to think that perhaps we are not as helpless as we tend to believe. But that leads to another fear.
We fear being the only one left. In a zombie apocalypse, that usually means the last one left alive, isolated, estranged, and lonely, like Dr. Robert Neville in I Am Legend. The last survivor in New York, Neville begins to go insane, talking to mannequins and staging them as citizens of the city in which he lives. While that situation would certainly be horrible, in real life we could apply similar feelings to being the only one who cares about a certain thing or the only one who feels a certain way. We could apply those emotions to the fear of being abandoned by God, our friends, our family, or even our colleagues. Humans are social creatures by nature, and our inherent need to be with others of our own kind certainly plays a part in our fear of the zombie narrative.
Most importantly, we fear zombies because they are, or were, us. As zombies, they are no one. Zombies are mindless, bloodthirsty automatons, and we all have the potential to become one. We all have the potential, too, to alienate our peers, leaving us isolated, and it doesn’t even have to be deliberate. Another accurate and relevant thing that Asma says is that “[m]odern organization alienates us from each other and from our own self, reducing our humanity and tilting us toward zombie status” (Asma 245). I think all of us feel this way on some level, and that is another reason why zombies are uncannily frightening.
Why We Love Zombie Fiction
It may sound odd to say that we love stories of things that we fear, but it is not a new concept. In the eighteenth century, during the rise of the gothic novel, the feeling we feel when encountering something horrible from a safe distance was referred to as a frisson, or a pleasurable shiver or thrill. Horror has a strange attraction to it on multiple levels. Many contend that horror is enjoyed as a socially-sanctioned way to exercise aggression. It is perfectly acceptable to hate zombies, and also acceptable to kill them in as violent a way as you desire. There is merit in this theory: it explains the popularity of videogames in which the player must attack and destroy zombies, or indeed any enemy. This popularity can also be explained by morbid curiosity to see what it would look like if certain disturbing things were to happen, so the violence and gore do play their parts in attracting an audience for zombie fiction. Other lures include a vent for frustration with human nature or with political situations. As social creatures, we are programmed to respect our own kind, and we are all supposed to be proud of and loyal to the groups to which we belong. When we are feeling at odds with this programming, the metaphors to be found or created in zombie fiction can help us to relieve this frustration. No matter how misanthropic we are feeling, we always find ourselves hoping that the “good” human will survive in the end, and, though many zombie movies or stories have ambiguous (or, in the case of Zombie Diaries, downright pessimistic) endings, the ends of most zombie fiction offer some kind of hope. In 28 Days Later, the zombies have essentially destroyed themselves with their rage and greed, love survives, and one can infer that the three protagonists will be rescued by the plane flying above their distress signal. In The Walking Dead, the survivors have met other survivors, many of whom seem to be “good” people, Officer Grimes is reunited with his family, and the lot of them is on their way to somewhere that might be better. In the original Day of the Dead, we find that the zombies are capable of developing affection and being trained, and the three most moral humans board a helicopter and fly to an island where they can start over.
Conclusion
Zombie fiction, like all speculative fiction, gives both the creator and the audience a safe venue in which we can critique society at a nearly subliminal level, suggesting that science may be going too far or that the government has become heartless, without actually saying it explicitly. We can express our horror at the monstrous behavior of humanity, and we can take an exercise in imagination to see what it might be like if a large part of the population were wiped out, or if the “good guys” finally turned on the “bad guys.” What we find in that last situation is that by turning to violence, the “good guys” become as bad as the zombies. In this way, one could even say that zombie fiction is a didactic brutality-deterrent.
Additionally, Zombies provide an outlet for violence against humans by absolving guilt with the excuse of monsters. When we watch zombies getting hacked to pieces, we don’t have to feel guilty about enjoying the gore because, hey, they’re zombies. It is only rational to kill them before they kill you.
Most importantly, however, zombie fiction provides a venue to explore human nature, asking questions like, “What would a mother do if her daughter became a flesh-eating monster and ate her father’s arm?” Seen as a metaphor, the question becomes, “How should a parent react when a child takes unfair advantage of the family or puts others in danger?” or “What do you do if your child is a sociopath or serial killer?”
The biggest question, since zombies were once human, is, of course, ” What makes us human?” Empathy? Is that humanity? If so, do we lose our humanity when we lose the ability to empathize with the zombies? Would the zombies be less monstrous if they could empathize with humans? In the Day of the Dead remake with Mena Suvari, one zombie seems to remember some of what he thought in life: he’s protective of the girl he was attracted to, and even sacrifices himself to save her from the other zombies. This is the only case I can remember where zombies attacked and destroyed a fellow zombie… but was he a fellow zombie, or was he something else? If he did not eat human flesh and empathized with the humans, maybe he was human. On the other hand, the “zombies” in 28 Days Later and I Am Legend are not actually dead; they’ve simply been infected with a virus. If they aren’t zombies, are they still human? Do the infection and the beastly behavior make them something other than human? I believe that zombie fiction, in whatever form, is related to the Gothic tales of the Enlightenment and the Literary Naturalism in the United States in that it critiques science, society, and human nature via metaphor, and it show humans to ultimately be beasts whose behavior is molded by a combination of social environment, heredity, and an uncaring natural world.
Works Cited
28 Days Later. Dir. Danny Boyle and Toby James. Star. Cillian Murphy. 20th Century Fox, 2003. Film.
28 Weeks Later. Dir. Jaun Carlos Fresnadillo. 20th Century Fox, 2007. Film.
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Asma, Stephen T. Monsters: A History of our Worst Fears. NY: Oxford UP, 2009. Print.
Boccoccio, Giovanni. The Decameron: or Ten Days Entertainment of Boccaccio. India Paper Edition. Cincinnatti: Stewart Kidd Co, 1920.
Brooks, Max. The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead. NY: THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2003. Print.
Craig, Wilson. “Zombies lurch into popular culture.” USA Today n.d.: Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 1 Mar. 2010.
Cuthbert, Alan W.. “doppelganger.” The Oxford Companion to the Body. Edited by Colin Blakemore and Sheila Jennett. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Accessed via answers.com, at http://www.answers.com/topic/doppelg-nger#ixzz1BzjszDbU.
Dawn of the Dead. Dir. George A. Romero. 1978. Starz / Anchor Bay, 2004. Film.
Dawn of the Dead. Dir. Zack Snyder. 2004. Universal Studios, 2004. Film.
Day of the Dead. Dir. George A. Romero. 1985. Starz / Anchor Bay, 1998. Film.
Day of the Dead. Dir. Steve Miner. 2007. DOD Productions, LLC, 2007. Film.
Dead Alive. Dir. Peter Jackson. 1992. Lions Gate: 1998. Film.
Dead and Deader. Dir. Patrick Dinhut. Starz Home Entertainment, LLC, 2007.
Diary of the Dead. Dir. George A. Romero. 2007. The Weinstein Company, 2008. Film.
Greene, Richard and Silem Mohammed, ed. Zombies, Vampires, and Philosophy. Popular Culture and Philosophy Series. Chicago: Open Court, 2006. Print.
“frisson, n.”. OED Online. March 2011. Oxford University Press. 10 April 2011 <http://proxy.rockford.edu:2174/view/Entry/74785?redirectedFrom=frisson>.
Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. Vampires. NY: Chelsea House, 2008. Print.
I Am Legend. Dir. Francis Lawrence. Warner Bros. Pictures, 2007.
“Invasion of the living dead.” Economist 393.8662 (2009): 147. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 1 Mar. 2010.
Jung, Carl “Approaching the Unconscious.” Man and his Symbols. N.P. Dell, 1978
Land of the Dead. Dir. George A. Romero. Universal Studios, 2005.
Lienhard, John H. “Frankenstein, Faust, and Pygmalion” Engines of Our Ingenuity. The University of Houston. 12 Oct. 2001. Web. 24 Nov. 2009.
Morton, Timothy. A Routledge Literary Sourcebook on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. London: Routledge, 2002. Print.
Night of the Living Dead. Dir. George A. Romero. 1968. Digiview Entertainment, 2005.
Phillips, Michael. “Romero’s germ-warfare thriller gets revived, ably, in Iowa.” The Chicago Tribune. 25 Feb. 2010. Web. 1 Mar. 2010.
Planet Terror. Dir. Robert Rodriguez. 2007. Troublemaker Studios, 2007. Film.
Potter, Andrew. “Undead like me: why we love our zombies.” Maclean’s 04 June 2007: 14. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 1 Mar. 2010.
Primal Fear: Our Deepest Fears Revealed. Dir. Ken Winikur. Nar. Todd Schick. A&E Television Networks, 2008. Film.
Resident Evil. Dir. Paul W.S. Anderson. 2002. Sony Pictures, 2004. Film.
Resident Evil: Apocalypse. Dir. Alexander Witt. Written by Paul W.S. Anderson . Sony Pictures, 2004. Film.
Resident Evil: Extinction. Dir. Alexander Witt. Sony Pictures, 2007. Film.
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Shaun of the Dead. Dir. Edgar Wright. Written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright. Universal Studios, 2004.
Skal, David J. The Monster Show: A cultural History of Horror. W.W. Norton & Company. NY: 1993. Print.
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Survival of the Dead . George A. Romero. 2009. Magnolia Home Entertainment, 2010.
Walcut, Charles Child. American Literary Naturalism, A Divided Stream. The U of Minnesota P, Minneapolis: 1956.
Waldman, Paul. “The Left and the Living Dead.” The American Prospect. 16 Jun. 2009. Web. 7 Mar. 2010.
The Walking Dead: Season One. Dir. Frank Darabont. AMC and Anchor Bay Entertainment, 2010. Film.
Williams, Tony. The Cinema of George A. Romero. Directors’ Cuts. Wallflower Press, London: 2003.
Wloszczyna, Susan. “Zombies rise to conquer all ‘decayeds’.” USA Today n.d.: Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 1 Mar. 2010.
Williams, Tony. The Cinema of George A. Romero: Knight of the Living Dead. Wallflower Press: London, 2003. Print.
Zombie Diaries, The. Dir. Michael Bartlett and Kevin Gates. Off World Films and Bleeding Edge Film, Ltd., 2007. Film.
Zombieland. Dir. Ruben Fleischer. 2009. Sony Pictures, 2010. Film.
Annotated Bibliography
28 Days Later. Dir. Danny Boyle and Toby James. Star. Cillian Murphy. 20th Century Fox, 2003. Film.
Explores what would happen in a world where a zombie-causing rage-virus epidemic took over Europe. In this series, the zombies may not actually be dead, and some might argue that, being alive, these creatures are not true zombies.
28 Weeks Later. Dir. Jaun Carlos Fresnadillo. 20th Century Fox, 2007. Film.
Explores how human bonds would be affected in a zombie epidemic if some humans were found to be immune to the zombies-causing virus.
Adams, John Joseph, ed. The Living Dead. San Francisco: Nightshade Books, 2008. Print.
This is a collection of zombie-themed short stories by popular authors such as Sherman Alexi, Neil Gaiman, George R.R. Martin, and Stephen King.
Asma, Stephen T. Monsters: A History of our Worst Fears. NY: Oxford UP, 2009. Print.
This Book looks at the human fascination with monsters from a psychological perspective.
Boccoccio, Giovanni. The Decameron: or Ten Days Entertainment of Boccaccio. India Paper Edition. Cincinnatti: Stewart Kidd Co, 1920.
Boccaccio wrote a fictional tale of several young people who go to the country to escape the plague.
Brooks, Max. The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead. NY: THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2003. Print.
Craig, Wilson. “Zombies lurch into popular culture.” USA Today n.d.: Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 1 Mar. 2010.
This article discusses the prominence of zombies in pop-culture.
Dawn of the Dead. Dir. George A. Romero. 1979. Starz / Anchor Bay, 2004. Film.
This film uses a zombie epidemic to explore consumerism.
Dawn of the Dead. Dir. Zack Snyder. 2004. Universal Studios, 2004. Film.
A remake of the original.
Day of the Dead. Dir. George A. Romero. 1985. Starz / Anchor Bay, 1998. Film.
This film uses the zombie epidemic to explore the themes regarding government and science.
Day of the Dead. Dir. Steve Miner. 2007. DOD Productions, LLC, 2007. Film.
A very loose remake of the original.
Dead Alive. Dir. Peter Jackson. 1992. Lions Gate: 1998. Film.
This film uses a campy, humorous approach to explore psychological themes in a zombie-ridden world.
Dead and Deader. Dir. Patrick Dinhut. Starz Home Entertainment, LLC, 2007.
This comedy takes a satirical look at both the US military and the scientific search for human immortality.
Diary of the Dead. Dir. George A. Romero. 2007. The Weinstein Company, 2008. Film.
This film uses the zombie epidemic to explore themes regarding the media.
Greene, Richard and Silem Mohammed, ed. Zombies, Vampires, and Philosophy. Popular Culture and Philosophy Series. Chicago: Open Court, 2006. Print.
This book includes philosophical Essays regarding the living dead and society.
I Am Legend. Dir. Francis Lawrence. Warner Bros. Pictures, 2007.
Mutant plague victims resembling both zombies and vampires (zompires, if you will) have taken over NYC. The virus was caused by scientific meddling, and one surviving virologist has made it his mission to find the cure.
“Invasion of the living dead.” Economist 393.8662 (2009): 147. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 1 Mar. 2010.
This article discusses the history of zombies in pop-culture and the explosion of zombie culture in recent years.
Land of the Dead. Dir. George A. Romero. Universal Studios, 2005.
The fourth in George Romero’s Dead series explores corporate greed, class distinction, intelligence, evolution, and human nature.
Night of the Living Dead. Dir. George A. Romero. 1968. Digiview Entertainment, 2005.
The first modern zombie movie, this film explores multiple themes regarding society, race, family, gender, and war. Many people associate this film’s social critique with the Vietnam War.
Phillips, Michael. “Romero’s germ-warfare thriller gets revived, ably, in Iowa.” The Chicago Tribune. 25 Feb. 2010. Web. 1 Mar. 2010.
This article reviews The Crazies, a 2010 remake of Night of the Living Dead, and discusses the various movies which may have impacted its making.
Planet Terror. Dir. Robert Rodriguez. 2007. Troublemaker Studios, 2007. Film.
In this film, a bio-weapon has created a zombie epidemic.
Potter, Andrew. “Undead like me: why we love our zombies.” Maclean’s 04 June 2007: 14. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 1 Mar. 2010.
This article claims that zombie movies have a way of “commenting on humanity’s suicidal tendencies [such as] [n]uclear Armageddon, biological warfare, toxic pollution, genetic engineering.”
Primal Fear: Our Deepest Fears Revealed. Dir. Ken Winikur. Nar. Todd Schick. A&E Television Networks, 2008. Film.
This film discusses fear and monsters from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Resident Evil. Dir. Paul W.S. Anderson. 2002. Sony Pictures, 2004. Film.
In this video-game-inspired film, secret scientific research to create a super soldier has led to a virus that creates zombies. The heroin of the film is a prototype super soldier trying to fight off the zombies and super-zombies created by Umbrella Corp. The film explores corporate corruption and the dangers of unrestrained scientific exploration.
Resident Evil: Apocalypse. Dir. Alexander Witt. Written by Paul W.S. Anderson . Sony Pictures, 2004. Film.
This film continues the story line from Resident Evil with Umbrella Corp trying to cover its mistakes by sending a super soldier to assassinate the survivors of the first film. The virus mutates, causing new creatures.
Resident Evil: Extinction. Dir. Alexander Witt. Sony Pictures, 2007. Film.
In the third installment of the Resident Evil series, humanity faces extinction at the hands of zombies, bio-engineered super soldiers, and other genetically mutated creatures, all the result of Umbrella Corp’s meddling with nature.
Shaun of the Dead. Dir. Edgar Wright. Written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright. Universal Studios, 2004.
This comedy satirizes nearly every aspect of western society and nods to all of the most well-known zombie movies. The most obvious theme is that society is already functioning as if most of the population were zombies.
Skal, David J. The Monster Show: A cultural History of Horror. W.W. Norton & Company. NY: 1993. Print.
This book chronicles the horror movie genre and America’s obsession with monsters. It includes interviews with writers, directors, and other participants in the making of the genre.
Waldman, Paul. “The Left and the Living Dead.” The American Prospect.16 Jun. 2009. Web. 7 Mar. 2010.
This humorous article discusses the value of the zombie in relation to politics.
Williams, Tony. The Cinema of George A. Romero. Directors’ Cuts. Wallflower Press, London: 2003.
This book discusses the walking dead as envisioned by George A. Romero, considered the father of the flesh-eating zombie genre.
Wloszczyna, Susan. “Zombies rise to conquer all ‘decayeds’.” USA Today n.d.: Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 1 Mar. 2010.
This article lists and describes zombie movies since the beginning of the film industry.
Zombie Diaries, The. Dir. Michael Bartlett and Kevin Gates. Off World Films and Bleeding Edge Film, Ltd., 2007. Film.
This documentary-style film drives home the concept of the zombies as foils for the humans, asking which of the two is more evil.
Zombieland. Dir. Ruben Fleischer. 2009. Sony Pictures, 2010. Film.
This film takes a humorous approach to examining the concepts of family and entertainment in a world where few humans have not become or been killed by zombies.
Inflamed Frontal Lobe 