Our Cultural Fascination With The Undead

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.

Zombies, as we know them today, have mortified movie viewers for the last forty six years. Modern zombies first appeared in George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead in 1968. These zombies were the slow moving, staggering ghouls that one has seen in countless films, but in 1985, Return of the Living Dead featured a new kind of zombie, the first fast moving and talking ghoul. Both Night of the Living dead 1968 and Return of the Living Dead 1985 feature the zombie as its villain, but Return of the living dead’s fast moving, talking zombies are a more modern take on the movie monster.

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.

Continuing on, zombies have had a huge pop culture impact on the world. The peak popularity time of zombies every year is undoubtedly the month of October as Halloween approaches. During the Halloween season many zombie movies, books, video games, etc. are released and a lot of them have a major “hype” factor around them. For example, the popular video game series “Call of Duty” tends to

George Romero was an actor, writer, and director that had mixed success throughout his career. He claim to fame came from what is known as his Dead Series but he made less known films like Martin and the Crazies. While all of his Dead Series films are centered on an emergence of zombies taking over the world, none of them are direct sequels to one another, which have no reoccurring characters. The Dead Series is special because they used the undead to reflect the world of living, and showed us our own drawbacks and issues as a society.

The name of the article is Our Zombies, Ourselves written by James Parker. In this article Parker discusses the historical backdrop of zombies and talks about where it is that they started from. Parker additionally raises exceptionally fascinating point on the notoriety of zombies and a short timeline on zombies. He also talks of different sorts of popular cultures which incorporate zombies and are utilized, for example, the movies Night of the Living Dead, White Zombie, the books The Zen of Zombies, Zombie Haiku, and the television series The Walking Dead.. By utilizing these references Parker helps demonstrate to us how zombies appear to ceaselessly draw our interest. The article additionally educates the reader about how zombies came

1968 was the year that North Vietnam launched the Tet Offensive against the United States and South Vietnam, the year that Martin Luther King JR and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, the year that started student protests and riots, the year that Black Power salute occurred and finally, the year that Night of the Living Dead came out. You may be wondering why a film would have anything to do with these historic events that occurred in 1968. Well, Night of the Living Dead is a zombie horror film directed by George A. Romero, this film that Romero created was a game changer for the film industry it lead to something bigger than purely entertainment. Romero’s goal behind his low budget black and white film was to construct subtext about social issues such as the Vietnam War and many other issues that went on during 1968. Romero’s zombie film’s present a sense of the failure of human co-operation.

Today, the new movie "Zombieland" has just been released into theaters so the zombie is still going strongly through culture. Night of the Living Dead was a serious horror look at zombies but society has turned a once terrifying genre into some humor. Spoofs like ‘Shawn of the Dead’ and ‘Zombieland’ “has fun messing around with the rules of the post-apocalyptic zombie movie genre” (Machosky). However the reason the undead have survived so long is because they have broadened their publicity range. Not only does the world see zombies in movies, but mankind must “watch out for Nazi zombies rising from the grave in videos games like ‘Dead Snow’ and ‘Call of Duty: World at War’” (Greene). Zombies have been expanded into music as well with the Kingston Trio’s release of the song “Zombie Jamboree”. Even books have been used to spread the disease, such as “at Borders zombie literature runs the gambit from Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to Zombie Haiku” (Greene). In addition, David Lubar has just recently expanded the zombie craze to elementary school children with his newest novel, My Rotten Life (Lauer-Williams). This is a children’s book about a middle school student who is also a zombie. Zombies, once a scary menace only for the brave at heart, have become a friendlier topic for everyone.

Ever since the first zombie movie was created in 1932, there has been a constant rise of zombie appearances in popular media. Like with all monsters, the majority of zombie media aimed to represent a certain aspect throughout the society in question. Whereas vampires represented romanticism and Dracula represented how a certain social group was viewed during a certain time period, zombies in Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” aimed to create a situation whereby a group of people had to survive a night together, despite their racial tensions between one another. Being the founder of all subsequent zombie films, “Night of the Living Dead” provided a guideline for zombie behavior. As time passed, more and more versions of the zombie came out, whereby zombies stopped being a plot device and turned into the focus of the film itself. The Walking Dead, currently standing as the fourth most popular TV series, took a turn from this progression and decided to imitate Romero’s take on zombies. By including zombies which simply aimed to sustain themselves by consuming the flesh of the “live,” the creators of The Walking Dead caused the remaining survivors to gather together and rely on primitive human instinct to survive. Even though the zombies in this series run rampant, they play a very minimalistic metaphoric role. Instead, by presenting the zombies as a plot device, the characters in this series were able to demonstrate their true prejudiced view on society, ultimately revealing

The area is relatively clear of undead as the General’s men regularly patrol and kill any that they see. They’ve been vigilant in the preceding years in exterminating the walking dead with extreme prejudice.

“The Walking Dead”, produced by Frank Darabont is a thrilling zombie apocalypse TV series. The series came out in 2010 and with the growing zombie popularity in recent years, it was an instant hit. Over the past five years, the show has continued to grow in popularity, and has become one Americas most popular shows. The zombies are your usual flesh-eating creatures that feast on human flesh. Their image is true to the genre as well as the main character, and hero Rick Grimes.

The author showcased through his writing that survival is critical in the world and also pointed out that Americans like the zombie genre because they believe they can survive anything with the right tools and

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

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.

The topic of the undead coming back to life to feast on the living has been around since the first zombie movie White Zombies in 1932; however, just in the past few decades has the threat of a zombie apocalypse enter the realm of international politics. The threat of a zombie apocalypse is a very serious concern of the international communities. Many political scientists are not sure how the world leaders would be able to work together if this issue were ever to arise in the world today. In the book “Theories of International Politics and Zombies”, Drezner uses the threat of a zombie apocalypse to show how the different theories of international politics would eliminate the threat; however, are the living dead a real international concern or are they just a brilliant metaphor for something much greater that could happen to the world.