Boluk And Wylie Lenz: Article Analysis

Geraldine Brook’s novel, Year of Wonders is based on a true story which recounts a 17th Century Plague, which struck the English village of Eyam and put many in strife. The story revolves around the protagonist, Anna Frith as she develops strength throughout the novel from being a maid in the beginning of the novel and eventually becomes a midwife. Similarly, Steven Soderbergh’s Film, Contagion is set in 21st Century America, which narrates the epidemic of the MEV1 virus, which causes dispute amongst many characters and has a manipulative effect on the characters in the film. In both the text and the novel, Diseases not only attack individuals but also causes the breakdown in society. Diseases cause the greed and the want for money in some characters, which has a huge impact on society as a whole. Similarly, diseases cause the need for self-preservation in order to survive. On the other hand, diseases cause characters to lose faith.

The article “Dead man still walking: Explaining the zombie renaissance” by Kyle Bishop is about the revitalization of the zombie genre. The article talks about the inception in the late 1960’s, the category of zombie films has had its roller coaster ride of ups and downs, starting with its decline in the early 1980’s with the release of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video. Furthermore, during 1990’s, due to the shift in the cultural consciousness that came with the Clinton Administration and the countries isolation from global tragedies, the popularity of these films continued to decline. Cultural consciousness refers to the understanding and awareness a shift in feelings, sensations, thoughts, of not only our own culture, but adjoining cultures.

Klosterman uses elaborate metaphors and similes to seamlessly compare modern-day life to the prevalence of zombies in society’s media and entertainment, as well as using words with a negative connotation to influence his readers’ view of modern-day life. Through the comparison of the daily

In this paper, the author, Olivia Miller, examines how zombie media texts affect presidential rhetoric through analyzing two of Obama’s foreign policy apologia speeches, one at the National Defense University and one at the Justice Department. She mentioned that the zombie narratives such as the Walking Dead and I Zombie have proliferated across media text and this popularity of Zombie text has caused the past decade’s cultural zeitgeist, “a fascination with the zombies that has been acknowledged by scholars as a response to the theorist attacks of 9/11 and a reflection to public uncertainty” (Olivia, 2016). She found a connection between the post-zombie apocalypse narrative, a differently structured narrative with more potential as a metaphor for the current political landscape and new terrorist threats, and Obama’s political efforts. That is, the post-zombie apocalypse narrative couches on surviving rebuilding society, reinstitution morality, and learning to live withe the threat of zombies while striving to regain normalcy. Obama’s speeches convey the similar thoughts that even

No book has captivated the zombie apocalypse better than World War Z. Max Brooks creatively presents “a worldwide zombie pandemic from outbreak to aftermath” (Boyd, Tristan). His book encompasses many social and political themes in the world today. The book

The Plague of Athens, taking place in 429 B.C.E., is the first mass killing plague known to historians today. However, this doesn’t mean that it wasn’t as dangerous as plagues later on in history. In total 100,000 people died which is equivalent to more than one-third of the Greece population. In the book “The Plague”, the city of Oran is overrun by a deadly disease. In both the Plague of Athens and the novel “The Plague” by Albert Camus, similarities occurred such as the diffusion of the disease, the symptoms and causes, and the social change.

The narrative of McDonald’s film, Pontypool, displays the power of linguistics and opinion within the public sphere. The vehicle of the illness is unorthodox and unique for the zombie genre but does not take away from its society commentary expressing the importance of counter-public discourse that challenges the legitimacy of the public opinion. In commonality with the genre, in McDonald’s film, they share a sense of unconsciousness, which as stated by Drezner, “Both informing and enabling effects highlight the positive ways that the living dead can be expropriated as a metaphor to spark interest in new ideas. The moment zombies are added into the, a dry public policy problem suddenly becomes a rollicking argument accessible to ordinary citizens.” (Drezner 833). Through the representation of the zombie in McDonald’s film, the mind of private opinion masses into the public sphere as radical thought causing the victim to reform their behavior to that of commonality with the social structure of the zombies. The illness of Pontypool is one that affects the linguistic ability of the victim. The power of words is the catalyst that brings the epidemic into motion, therefore, as the disease progresses they cannot control their minds. The solution to prevent the virus from infecting further is to disassociate meaning from word and redirect it

The popularity and appeal of the undead has greatly increased in the past few years with the rise of the popular television show, The Walking Dead. The show began in October 2010, and is still on the air today. Before the show was created, there were The Walking Dead comic books that were first published in 2003, and continue to be published today with over 148 issues. The fascination did not begin with The Walking Dead, though. Many movies were produced, and many books published before The Walking Dead was even thought of. An extremely influential individual to note is George Romero. Romero is an American-Canadian screenwriter, film producer, film director, and editor. He is best known for his series of apocalyptic films, beginning with Night of the Living Dead in 1968. Romero has been nicknamed the “Godfather of the Undead.” Some other works of fiction and film to note include 28 Days Later, I am Legend, Pride and Prejudice Zombies and The Zombie Survival Guide, also by Max Brooks. Our cultural fascination with “the return of the dead” can be traced back to the events and the general morale leading up to World War Two, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

I found Bourdieu’s article extremely difficult to understand. Although I read it in its entirety multiple times, I was still unable to comprehend what it was he was trying to say with his writing. Perhaps the text would have made more sense if I had read the Panofsky text it is responding to. However, I feel that even this exposure wouldn’t have been too helpful, for the majority of my frustration came from the lack of cohesion and long, convoluted sentences.

Since the dawn of gothic horror, zombies have played an essential role in this genre. Used as a fictional stimulus for a gruesome story, they have evolved through years of imagination, science-fiction and screenplay cultivation. Zombie Apocalypses have been the main developments for these frightening stories; however they have also been motivational in creating pleasant and even comical endeavours. Most people don’t realise that almost everything has at least two sides; this includes zombie apocalypses. Some crawl away in fear at the mentioning of the idea (like me) and some who have prepared their whole life, can’t wait for a biological outbreak. Regarding this, today I will be comparing two well known texts. The first one I will be analysing

(2003). Message Beneath The Horror. Cbsnews.com. Retrieved 12 October 2015, from http://www.cbsnews.com/news/message-beneath-the-horror/. This article explains that horror movies have a message behind them. The movies illustrate the current state of social rage. Drezner argues that people are constantly wanting bigger, better and faster services. We turn against each other when we experience disappointment in the traffic, airports, and hospital waiting rooms. The author puts emphasis on the zombies being the modern infantile method to cede control. Also, the same zombie worlds are characterized by love and heroism

In Elizabeth McAlister’s excerpt, Slaves, Cannibals, and Infected Hyper-Whites: The Race and Religion of Zombies she aim to inform her readers about the understanding of zombies and the symbolic meaning they have on cultures. Once she gives information about zombies, she also informs her readers how zombies are symbolic in culture and how they play a part in religion and pop culture phenomenon. McAlister credits her findings by first linking the existence of zombies to Afro-Haitian culture, then to present day, and finally, how they are perceived in American culture. To help her readers understand zombies, she provides examples as to how zombies are seen as mythical, racial ethnicity, and capitalism symbols.

Is it possible to kill an idea when it is undead? Classic movie monsters tend to fade in and out of popularity as audiences grow bored and move on to fresher concepts. But there is one that has risen up and does not seem to slow down: zombies. Zombies have gone from being a small subgenre of horror film to a staple of popular culture across various media. This paper will explore the rise of zombies in popular culture and why it continues to remain relevant.

In the modern movie genre, horror movies accounts for very great proportion of the number of followers. Relevantly, the zombie film genre has been developed into a dominant part of mainstream horror, replacing the previous monster such as vampires and werewolves. In Max Brooks’s essay “The Movies That Rose From the Grave”, he offers his opinion that throughout the process of zombie film transformation, it increasingly captivates viewers while gradually generates the modern horror. Brooks’s essay should be an appropriate inclusion of a college textbook which explains the phenomenon of the “undead explosion” in various kinds of media, proving to the audiences with enthusiasm, interest, credibility and specific examples that zombie culture is resurrecting a formerly obsolete genre.

In “The Journal of the Plague Year,” H.F praises the power of government to regulate urban spaces, shut up houses, and impose quarantines on potentially dangerous Londoners. However, he also pushes back against this authority by critiquing the inefficiency of the practice and expressing empathy for the people it harms. H.F’s contradictory attitude is also displayed in his treatment of the bills and documents used to control the public’s access to information. While H.F occasionally enforces the regulations of these papers, he also questions their accuracy. Observing the lives of everyday people, H.F gathers personal anecdotes and experiences that suggest the plague cannot be quantified by charts and statistics. Lastly, while H.F initially