Comments on: It's All About the Zombies

By: Richard S. Crawford

Richard S. Crawford — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:58:39 +0000

Well, kids certainly do like their toy lions, don’t they?

By: Richard S. Crawford

Richard S. Crawford — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:58:06 +0000

That makes sense. I hadn’t heard the notion that vampires represented a fear of blood-borne diseases in the 80s and 90s, but that makes sense too.

Of course, there were zombies in the 50s and 60s prior to Night of the Living Dead, but they were of a more traditional sort; mindless automatons who were subject to the will of a sorcerer or other master. Perhaps the zombies of that time represented the fear of depersonalization that people thought would be a side effect of Communism?

By: Joel A

Joel A — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 14:59:23 +0000

Well, as you ended the post, zombies are a different story if they are real. Predators are cute, amusing, etc…from a distance.

By: ruidh

ruidh — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 12:21:20 +0000

In the post-911 world, Zombies are like terrorists. They want to kill you. You can’t reason with them. And they just keep coming. Killing zombies allows people the opportunity to fight back and preemptively kill their foe on sight without guilt. The killing is in self-defense because they will try to eat us if they can get close enough. It also allows people to deal with that fear of sudden and unexpected death with fantasies of heroic action.

Just like the horror movies of the 50s were expressions of Cold War and nuclear fears, zombies reflect our current fears in a way that we can handle. Giving people a sense of control over their fate allows them some respite from the fear.

Vampires represented a fear of blood-borne diseases in the 80s. Vampires were AIDS and sexually-transmitted diiseases — at least until Twilight came along. That seems to be about teenaged chasteness.