Opinion

Viewpoint: Zombies among us

It’s almost Halloween time, so I figure now is as appropriate a time as any to discuss a cultural phenomenon that is near and dear to me.

This phenomenon is slowly finding itself in almost every nook and cranny of our culture.

This phenomenon refuses to slow or die, surviving the years, and now has slowly become more and more prevalent into the mainstream culture, like a potent viral infection in the bloodstream of our society.

Yes, there is a reason behind all of my seemingly viral word choice and undead imagery. It’s because the topic of this editorial is zombies. The walking dead, if you will. In recent events, I can’t help but notice a greater permeation of zombies into the overall culture of ours.

Zombies have always been popular with a select portion of the population, but now zombies are working their way into our media with the Nazi Zombies level of “Call of Duty: World at War;” the recent success of such films such as “Zombieland,” as well as the upcoming release of the TV series “The Walking Dead” on AMC, based on the comic book series of the same name.

Zombies have also found themselves in classical literature, thanks to the brilliant merging of Jane Austin and the undead in “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.”

Not to mention that there was a bidding war in Hollywood over the rights of making the zombie epic “World War Z” into a legitimate film between production companies owned by Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio. Pitt won out, and now director Mark Forester, the director of such cinematic glories such as “Monster’s Ball,” “Kite Runner,” “Quantum of Solace” and “Finding Neverland”, and with a screenplay written by Matthew Michael Carnahan, writer of such things as “State of Play,” “Lions and Lambs” and “The Kingdom.”

I have reason to believe this could be one of the first legitimate award-winning zombie films, which means zombie films are becoming a critically recognized genre of film.

Thanks to usatoday.com, I also found out that zombies have found themselves in young adult literature, including “In the Forest of Hands and Teeth,” “Zombie Queen of Newbury High” and “You Are So Undead to Me.”

Now, the fundamental question of this recent cultural phenomenon is the why. Matadornetwork.com provided me with a bit of possible insight into our recent societal obsession.
According to the site, “They’re mindless, self-centered, shabbily dressed, incredibly impolite and surprisingly ineloquent – everything you’d find in a beloved pop culture figure, except zombies at least have a goal in life (brains).”

The fact that they want to kill or harm us further endears us to them, like the charisma that some serial killers might have. As a plausible threat, they can be something to observe and study, like killer aliens or sharks.

I personally cannot wait for Discovery Chanel to have a Zombie Week. Another possible reason is that we can indulge our violent tendencies on zombies without any of the guilt we might have on non-zombie people.

Like robots or Koopa-Troopas, we see zombies as an un-empathical enemy that we can do horrible things to without feeling guilt.

Like the Skinner’s Box experiment, we can hurt and injure the zombie as much as we want, because the zombie will not hold us accountable for what we do; the zombie is just a mindless automaton of flesh and hunger and our own cultural fears.

Another possible reason is that the zombie captures or cultural fears. Culturemagazine.ca gives compelling evidence into this idea, stating imploring people to “think Cold War and the great atom bomb scare, AIDS and its Reagan-era depiction as the gay plague, terrorism, Anthrax, chemical warfare, West Nile, Global Warming and Bird Flu: it’s a shaky, infectious world.

No wonder our favorite horror creature — promising the apocalypse through its deadly, unstoppable pandemic — seems so familiar.”

I concur with this notion; in our post-9/11 world, where the landscape is dominated by viral terrors, faceless enemies, and the fear of losing ourselves in the pursuit of our dreams, who isn’t afraid of becoming a mechanical effigy of themselves, working mindlessly at their tasks while spiting those who can still flourish in the world and seek to tear them apart and re-absorb some of their success?

It seems the zombie genre has a much deeper cultural and philosophical impact than one would have initially suspected.

Zombies are a favorite scapegoat, and expression of our cultural terrors. I mean, it’s either them or vampires. Personally, I’ll take the zombies any day.