Taking a stab at explaining why we love zombies
The latest Hollywood heartthrobs are strong silent types who like you for your brain — its taste, that is.
The living dead, aka zombies, made their film debut about 80 years ago in 1932’s “White Zombie,” starring horror legend Bela Lugosi. Since then, they’ve gone A-list — shuffling down the red carpet for nearly 60 films last year, according to the Internet Movie DataBase.Some zombie films target children, like “ParaNorman,” which opened Aug. 17 and features a boy medium (voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee) who saves his town from a zombie invasion.
Beyond the silver screen, zombies have scored starring roles in video games, music, television shows and, in Louisville, an array of annual events like the Zombie Attack on Wednesday, in which hordes of “the living dead” will descend upon the Highlands.
But why, exactly, do we have zombies on the brain?
Antonio Smith, 16, who fought against a 60-some-strong onslaught of the “undead” during a zombie-themed game of tag earlier this summer at the Louisville Waterfront, said the obsession might have something to do with survival.
“You see the movies and it’s kind of like, ‘What would I do if (a zombie attack) ever happened?’ ” said Antonio, who was armed with foam weapons and was foxholed behind an interstate support beam.Piggy-backing on that idea, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched a tongue-in-cheek “zombie apocalypse” preparedness campaign to teach school-age children about preparing for real-world disasters.
But University of Louisville professor Aaron Jaffe, who taught a course on the undead in pop culture last semester, said the truth about our zombie obsession might be buried a little deeper, and likely has something to do with the fact that those stiffs are surprisingly flexible. Zombies are “generic — not branded property like the monsters of the Universal Studios era,” said Jaffe, who’s co-editing a book called “The Year’s Work in Zombie Research.”
That “generic” quality makes the undead convenient, if slightly disgusting, tools for exploring lots of not-so-comfortable topics like natural disasters, politics, poverty or whatever fears and issues happen to be troubling society as a whole.
Verity “Vice” Jones, the upright bassist for the Louisville-based band Vice Tricks, agreed. Her band played to a partially zombified crowd during a theme event at Diamond Pub, Billiards & Concert Hall earlier this month. “People (don’t) really want to deal with their fears,” Vice said. “They need, not necessarily a scapegoat, but ... something they can put that fear into that’s an expression of it.”
Take, for instance, writer/director George A. Romero, who turned his 1968 movie “Night of the Living Dead” into a six-film franchise. In the first installment, Romero used a mob of flesh-hungry undead to explore class and racial tensions. It’s no coincidence this was in the ’60s, when sit-ins, marches, boycotts and other desegregation protests dotted the country.
In later films, like 1978’s “Dawn of the Dead,” Romero’s zombies shuffled through mall department stores in thinly veiled commentary on ballooning American consumerism. Stephen, the film’s male protagonist played by David Emge, says browsing sale racks is “some kind of instinct. Memory of what they used to do. (The mall) was an important place in their lives.” And there you have it — the search for the perfect pair of jeans is officially so important, it carries over into the afterlife.
Of course, the undead can also be used to explore death, in which they have first-hand experience. Louisville-based filmmaker Roni Jonah is directing a film called “The Zombie Movie,” due for release in October. It stars Jonah, co-writer Jason Crowe and legions of rotting, animated corpses. “I think we’re kind of obsessed with death,” Jonah said.
“There’s this question of what happens after we die, and with zombie movies, you get to see maybe just one person’s imagining of what that’s like.” In the tradition of horror-comedy hybrid films like 2004’s “Shaun of the Dead” and 2009’s “Zombieland,” Jonah’s film blends death with humor.
Zombies are loads of flesh-eating fun, after all. And it’s that counterintuitive blend of corpses and comedy that keeps zombies grounded in the realm of fantasy, Jaffe said. “If zombies are real, they are no longer as fun,” which is why zombies continue to star in video games, movies, books and an endless stream of pop-culture media, he said.
And don’t expect them to crawl back in the grave any time soon. “I hear things like ‘zombies are so over’ or ‘zombies are so dead,’ ” Jaffe said. “It’s not hard to agree, but isn’t that the point: Zombies are dead but they’re not.”
~courier-journal.com
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