Zombie Madness!

Zombies are everywhere! Not just on game consoles or your local movie screens, they've  take over television with Frank Darabont’s adaptation of The Walking Dead comics on Foxtel. Though zombies have been a part of popular culture for almost half a century, there’s simply no doubt that they are currently a prevalent topic of entertainment and media coverage these days. It’s as if a virus was released into the media back in the 1960′s that is spreading and taking hold of more creative properties every year.

Is there really a connection between zombie movies and social unrest? Chart by Stephanie Fox

Why do zombies continue gaining popularity? What’s so lovable about them?

Frankly, nothing is lovable about zombies. Zombies are dead people who should be flat on morgue gurneys or buried six feet underground. They’re bluish-pale, vein-y, leaking bodily fluids from all their orifices, and (I imagine) they smell like unflushed wet feces stirred into old hamburger that’s been sitting out for a week. They shouldn’t be walking around, but they are, and it’s disgusting. To top it all off, they want nothing more than to consume living human flesh, which basically means you and me… and maybe the dog. There is no reason that any sensible person should like zombies. Yet the sales numbers prove it; we don’t just like zombies, we love them. Resident Evil Afterlife debuted this weekend at #1, earning $43 million. The 2009 film Zombieland took in $24 million during its opening weekend. The Dawn of the Dead remake took in $102 million worldwide before leaving theaters. And the reason the The Dawn of the Dead remake got a green light was because the zombie-deviant film 28 Days Later exploded in America after a more modest release in England. The next zombie film is more successful than the last.

Brief History
The modern zombie evolved very gradually. The word “zombie” is derived from African and Haitian legends regarding voodoo doctors who could temporarily resurrect the dead and turn them into mindless slaves. But researchers like Wade Davis later figured out that these voodoo doctors were administering a powerful narcotic to people that induced a coma-like near death state, making them seem dead to anyone without a medical degree. The person was thought dead, buried, and then dug up by the voodoo doctor and sold into slavery. But Davis then went on to write The Serpent and the Rainbow and let Wes Craven make a zombie movie out of it, so maybe he was just making all this up for cash. He’s had problems proving his story ever since.

Greek Influence

The dead are sometimes called νεκροὶ ἀφραδέες, “unthinking dead” or “senseless dead,” but that’s not quite the same thing. The word ἀναβιόω means “to come to life again,” a feat accomplished by Asclepius, the legendary doctor, and the word ἀνάστασις is used of “resurrection,” as in the New Testament. The nearest is probably δισθανής (disthanes) which is a strange word used only one time at Odyssey 12.22. It means “twice dead” or “having two deaths” and it is used of Odysseus and his men after they return from the land of the dead. They don’t actually enter Hades, like Theseus or Orpheus, but just summon the spirits of the dead with a strange ritual involving a dagger, milk, honey, wine, water, blood, and barley, which is very similar to a Hittite ritual. The pale ghosts rush forth to meet them, and he has to keep them away from the blood until he wants them to speak.

There is also a strange story about a man named Aristeas who drops dead one day in his father’s store, but his body disappears before they can bury it, and he is seen again a few times. Perhaps the closest thing to zombies, though, is the story of the Spartoi. Their name means “the sown ones” and they are created by Cadmus (and then again by Jason) by sowing dragon’s teeth in the earth. They spring up fully armed from the earth as an army and in some versions they get confused and start fighting among themselves.

So… what major films and media are calling a zombie isn’t really a zombie at all. There’s not even any flesh eating involved. A shambling corpse with a hunger for living flesh is much closer to the ancient Arabian legends of ghuls, or “ghouls” in our Western spelling. Ghouls arise from burial grounds or abandoned houses. They are shape shifting demons that typically assume the form of hyenas. They slay desert travelers, attack small children, and dig up graves to consume rotten flesh. They can take the form of what they eat, thus sometimes appearing as the recent dead.

Ghouls appear in literature as far back as the 9th century, in the Arabian compilation of folk tales titled One Thousand and One Nights. Poets Lord Byron and Edgar Allan Poe reference these creatures in their works. And it’s well documented that Lord Byron was summering with Mary Shelley when she came up with the idea for possibly the most enduring piece of Gothic literature to this date: Frankenstein. The monster in the famous story is basically a vengeful ghoul, returned to life to wreak havoc on its creator. At first the creature is wild and violent, but quickly becomes more thoughtful in plotting its revenge; yet the wild and violent version is a lot like what we see in zombie films these days.

But the author who played with the archetype and blurred the line between ghouls and zombies to give us our modern day version is H.P. Lovecraft. In one of his most famous short stories of the 1920s, Herbert West — Reanimator, Lovecraft came up with a Frankenstein-inspired mad doctor who brought the dead back to life scientifically. However, Dr.West’s zombies came back to life as murderous and violent cannibals. The full serialized story features dismembered limbs still working independently, severed heads speaking. The mad doctor continues his experiments without regret or conscious, reanimating corpses until there’s a freely roaming zombie army running around seeking revenge. West is eventually murdered by his test subjects in the most gruesome way: live disembowelment. Even while watching Shaun of the Dead or Night of the Living Dead, you can tell what an influence this one story had on the zombie genre.

So what makes zombies so popular with the public? What is it that makes us want to watch zombies come back from the dead, vomiting blood and bile, and go after the living with mindless glee? This is what researchers who study the fascination tend to focus upon: the zombie itself. They believe that people are fascinated with being frightened, and that the thought of being bitten by a zombie and then turning into a zombie is scary. The alternative in the context is to fight to survive against a foe that is impossible to beat: mindless, shuffling masses of cannibals. But as I stated near the start, zombies are disgusting. Some of the fascination with zombies is to see what kind of disgusting stuff they’re going to do, that much I admit. But that kind of fascination takes just a few minutes to satisfy, and really doesn’t explain an enduring popular culture that’s been going on and gaining popularity for more than fifty years.

I’m going to cut this short and tell you exactly why people like zombie movies. The ugly truth no one wants to admit. The fascination is not because of the zombies themselves, they are merely the catalyst; the real fascination is with surviving a zombie apocalypse.

Being a survivor, playing the odds, making your own rules. You don’t have to report to some stupid job every day; in fact, if your boss or someone else you hate is bitten, you may have a opportunity to bash their smelly head in. Food, liquor, cigarettes, cars and guns are all free for the taking, if you can find them, regardless of your age, because no one’s standing behind the counter waiting to collect money or check your ID. That cute girl or guy you’ve always wanted a chance to kiss is now a possibility, because everyone else is a zombie and suddenly that makes you a whole lot more attractive. Plus you might get an opportunity to rescue them from being eaten, making you a real hero. Then you’re certain to get a kiss.

The zombie apocalypse scenario changes all the rules for the people who must live on afterwards. And compared to other apocalypses that could happen, it remains the most appealing. The film 2012 showed us its version of what the Mayans predicted millenniums ago, that the climate is going to shift suddenly and the entire planet will be rocked by earthquakes, volcano explosions, and tidal waves. Even if you’re one of the lucky 1% to survive all this, you get to look forward to a lifetime of scrounging for food and drinking water, not to mention breathable air. That’s probably why 2012 tanked at the box office, and not just because of its implausible scenario or horrific dialog. This apocalypse just doesn’t have any appeal.


Links
Zombie Attack at Hierakonpolis