Culture of Consumerism, Gender Roles, and Violence in Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and Boyle’s 28 Days Later

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

Do you enjoy watching murder, the paranormal, and any other morbid scene which makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, your palms sweat, and your adrenaline surge? Why people enjoy watching murder, tragedy, and carnage in their spare time has been a mysterious phenomenon. If these gruesomely horrific scenes would not be enjoyable in real life, why is watching a recreation of it so riveting? Stephen King, a world-renowned horror novelist, wrote “Why We Crave Horror Movies” to give insight as to why horror movies, although gruesome and morbid, captivate audiences. King also aims to persuade readers to continue to watch horror movies, arguing that they are a crucial part of keeping sanity. King delves into this psychological aspect of humans and believes that the desire to watch horror films is a normal tendency of humankind. “Why We Crave Horror Movies” includes appeals to emotion, logic, and author credibility in order to convince readers of the positive, normal desire to watch horror films, why it is important to watch them, and why the reader should believe what the author is saying. King utilizes the rhetorical devices—pathos, logos, and ethos—in an effective way through the use of metaphor, logic, humor, and emotion to persuade readers that watching horror films is normal.

In a response to the polio outbreak of 1916, Dr. Haven Emerson, the Health Commissioner for New York City, stated: “we have learned little that is new about the disease, but much that is old about ourselves.” The meaning of this has to do with the ideology that no matter the era, people have a common response to the outbreak of contagious disease. Human nature supplies us as humans with a common reaction to dealing with disease, and it is one that can be seen during the Black Death, polio epidemics, and ebola epidemics, as well as many other epidemics. These responses can be both positive and negative, and often have to do with containment of the disease, preventative measures - which may or may not be effective; and scapegoating. Although there may be individualized responses for each of these diseases, the way in which the health-care officers and the public handle the outbreak of disease generally follows the same pattern overall.

The book The Great Influenza by John Barry takes us back to arguably one of the greatest medical disasters in human history, the book focuses on the influenza pandemic which took place in the year 1918. The world was at war in the First World War and with everyone preoccupied with happenings in Europe and winning the war, the influenza pandemic struck when the human race was least ready and most distracted by happenings all over the world. In total the influenza pandemic killed over a hundred million people on a global scale, clearly more than most of the deadliest diseases in modern times. John Barry leaves little to imagination in his book as he gives a vivid description of the influenza pandemic of 1918 and exactly how this pandemic affected the human race. The book clearly outlines the human activities that more or less handed the human race to the influenza on a silver platter. “There was a war on, a war we had to win” (Barry, p.337). An element of focus in the book is the political happenings back at the time not only in the United States of America but also all over the world and how politicians playing politics set the way for perhaps the greatest pandemic in human history to massacre millions of people. The book also takes an evaluator look at the available medical installations and technological proficiencies and how the influenza pandemic has affected medicine all over the world.

Pandemics have been recorded throughout history taking the life of virtually anything in its path. A pandemic is defined as a widespread disease crossing international borders with a high death count. The first ever recorded pandemic was The Peloponnesian War Pestilence. The Peloponnesian War Pestilence is dated to be around the years 430 B.C.E. It took place during the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens, this excessive pestilence killed an estimation of over 30,000 of Athens’s citizens. The most recent pandemic record was the Influenza AH1N1 virus strain in 2009. The H1N1 virus was later globally spread taking 17,000 lives by August 2010 when it was officially declared to be over. Pandemics have been

It would be so easy for a viral disease to break out and spread across the world in a matter of days or even weeks. One of the movies I saw that would be an example of this would be World War

In the many years since the Black Plague we've seen many scary diseases; one that is very similar to the plague is HIV/AIDS. Some similar symptoms are fever, swelling of the lymph glands, body fatigue, and vomiting/diarrhea. Not only do these illesses have similar symptons but they were also treated very similarly. HIV/AIDS was even at one point caled "the Gay Plague", and people thought you could get it from just being around an infected peron; like the plague. New illnesses will always scare peple and get bad reputations.

Can you imagine waking up one day learning that a vast amount of people in your city is dying or is dead from an idiopathic disease? What would you do and how would you feel? I know that I would be terrified; not knowing if I would be the next person to become infected, would destroy me. This was the case for millions during the 14th century. In the middle Ages, the plague disease eradicated one-third to one-half of Europe’s population. No one knew the cause of this deadly disease. Many started to believe that the plague was a curse from God. Some people started hurting themselves and others lived everyday as if it was their last.

Print. The zombie has been described as one of the most dominant monsters in films towards the end of the twentieth century. It has always resurfaced in British and American films in the last five years. The essay explores zombies from historical times to the living dead zombie of a modern film who seems to be most common in the real world. Reading about the zombie as a haunting object reveals a crisis of human personification, that is, the way power works and man’s history of oppression to others.

“The single biggest threat to man’s continued dominance on the planet is the virus” Nobel Prize winner Joshua Lederberg once said. Throughout history, this statement has proved to be true. In fourteenth century Europe, the Bubonic Plague killed off almost half of the European population. During the first interactions between Columbus and the natives, Smallpox eradicated entire Native tribes. And in the time of the Industrial Revolution, cholera outbreaks have left millions dead. Since their outbreaks, many of these deadly viruses have been met with cures, saving millions of lives to come. However, for almost 3,500 years, one incurable virus had been attacking humanity: the poliovirus.1P

Humanity, we as a whole are all aware and cautious about obvious illnesses and viruses that spread and how to avoid catching it with the right hygiene, flu shots, health care, etc, but how do we know we won't face a deadly pandemic like the one's humanity has faced throughout history and the 1918 pandemic. These viruses move around and adapt to any living thing it can find off of. Virus pandemics have left a huge amount of people dead and ill fro symptoms they faced from a small virus that started and spread in military camps in the US. Back then no one had acquired and immunity and care compared to our medicine and flu shots against almost every known virus that can be caught. We as a society are so careless when it comes to these things,

The Contagion film is about a present day episode that is comparable from multiple points of view to H1N1. The film demonstrates how the administration handles the flare-up and after that how the general population handles the circumstance. There were three specialists that they took after on following where the malady was originating from, where they utilized the CDC to do a great deal of the exploration. They were attempting to discover the people who had be effected by the illness, where it could have originated from, how it was spreading, and what sort of side effects the general population were having when they got it. The specialists then think of an antibody which can help cure the illness but rather unfortunately it could not work

For some inexplicit reason, people are obsessed with the idea of an apocalypse. Steven Soderbergh's, Contagion, depicts what could happen if a viral outbreak lead to a worldwide pandemic. What makes this piece so unique to the apocalypse genre is the director’s ability to focus on the societal impact rather than the virus itself. This pandemic leads to a momentary collapse of social order, commenting on how self-absorption plays a role in times of disaster. Soderbergh uses numerous cinematic and narrative elements to display how an ultra-realistic viral outbreak would spread and ultimately impact society.

Classic violent thrillers and horror movies provide insight of the social and cultural events as portrayed through film. Nyny’s ‘The Thing’ is a representation of communism and the rise of the nuclear age in the 1950s whilst the ‘Zombie’ films appearing in the late 1960s and 2000s are indicative of the social and political alienation highlighting consumer society. Whilst violence thriller fans relished Hollywood splatter films such as ‘Texas Chainsaw Masacre’ (Hooper 1974) and ‘The Hills have Eyes’ (Craven 1977) filmmakers and sociologists as opinion recognised the demise of the nuclear family. The ‘Saw’ franchise (2004-10) continues to draw audiences in large numbers of predominantly young cinema goers which demonstrates the enduring pre-occupation

For thousands of years throughout history, humans have had to contend with the spread of infectious diseases. One of the greatest concerns in today’s society is the constant fear of a potential outbreak of an infectious disease. A disease for which society does not have a cure or vaccine available, thereby obliterating the human race if it were to spread. Notable cases include the emergence of HIV/AIDS in the 1970s and 1980s, and the more recent 2014 outbreak of Ebola in Western Africa. Examining the distinctions between the two can give us a better understanding of how to combat potential outbreaks in the future.