Personal Narrative: Why I Love Zombie Movies

The word zombie apocalypse nestled together bring imagines of a catastrophic nightmare. Nevertheless, we have all at one time or another heard this phrase mentioned on television. In the war against the undead who will be the victorious. We have seen zombie movies, but is there actual truth of their existence. The forthcoming of a zombie apocalypse has been predicted for decades. People fail to realize that the ranks for the undead will be in the millions not thousands. All public services would be rendered obsolete within hours once the madness begins. Hollywood has profited from our fears of a zombie pandemic. Our moral beliefs have become uncensored as hundreds of movies have foretold of a plague affecting the entire globe. As technology as progressed through the decades zombies have become such a mainstream phenomenon. Nevertheless, a theory has been planted into our subconscious through social media and people are less likely to be afraid of a zombie now in

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.

War. We are always at war, with ourselves, others, with life ,and with death. We are constantly fighting to come out of these wars as victors, but something is always lost. While fighting to survive, and fighting to keep loved ones safe, innocence is thrust into the backseat. Morals, laws, and order is all lost when our brains and bodies kick into survival mode. When fighting zombies there is no chance to second guess or take a break to question one's actions, because it's a life or death situation. So in this war with zombies, we fight for survival, family, and pray our innocence stays intact. The loss of innocence is inevitable in a zombie apocalypse, because when we are fighting to survive, there is no way to save or maintain our innocence.

Just as some psychiatric disorders may be intensified modulations of ordinary feelings like fear, so, too, whole societies may suffer from intensified fears, especially if their mass media stimulates such feelings. …. may be the neurotic cultural response of a paranoid society (Asna 239) The evolution of zombies due to social anxiety is most noted after the attacks on 9/11. Since a greater sense of anxiety arose post 9/11, zombies in the twenty first century took advantage and adapted to the social anxiety after the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

However, it illustrates the real threat of the human body. The zombie terrifies as a representation of the lived human condition (Allthingszombie.com

“So I think I’m being attacked by zombies and I start screaming ‘Do you wanna make out?’ And I make out with it.” This quote from the hit show Bob’s Burgers is a brilliant representation on just how much the Zombie Apocalypse has evolved, yet still maintains the fear of being mauled by the undead hordes. Today, various form of media and literature have taken the classic sense of a zombie infested world and turned them upside down. Instead of only having insatiable hunger, they can talk, walk, and have problems just like their human counterparts. On the flipside, stories presenting the original zombies still thrive. These two genres are zombies are presented in movies, books, and tv shows. the contrast within the subgroups and is outstanding.

Once you break it down, as repetitive and one dimensional as the concept appears to be, Zombie lore is clever for one reason; the survival aspect. In a sense, zombies play off our natural fears when it comes to our own preservation of survival. Because of this, it also personifies viruses; which can elevate to the same magnitude of a plague, often presenting  themselves as the embodiment of what a plague means.

As humans we are obsessed with this idea of zombies. Zombies are in films, novels, television shows, and comic books. We watch them constantly consume others, and spreading this terrifying disease. Most people do so without even questioning the reason zombies intrigue us so much. What is this disease? And more importantly how does this disease affect us?

Zombies are so much a part of our culture because they are complex creatures. Throughout time there have been countless movies, shows, articles and books on the identity of zombies and how they came to be. One thing is for sure that zombies will always intrigue us. They’re a pop culture phenomenon that continues to shock many as overtime they become more monstrous and more deadly. Zombies are one of the closest monsters of a human. They have many human-like characteristics because in fact they were once human themselves. This relates them to our culture because at one point in time they were a part of our culture before being turned into this gruesome monster.

The zombies are used to represent the mass panic of a containable situation, and the government is portrayed as safe keepers of people, but also critiquing the government’s actual response time and effectiveness to situations. Both the story and the movie utilize zombies as a substitution for a more real and occurring matter. The nationwide panic that is represented through a zombie apocalypse can be interpreted as a problem that the country is facing or may have faced before. The fact the most zombie apocalypse has one person who was infected and that person infected someone else and so on shows that most of these occurrence could have been prevented, but due to the response time of related officials, problems arise quicker than they can be solved. These events that could have been contained, but manifested and turned into something more than it should have been. The appropriate measures on a personal level could also have prevented the situation, if the person would have been more wary of what was around them.

In “The Movies that Rose From the Grave”, Max Brooks shows that over the years Zombies have long since evolved and throughout those years has become a very popular genre for audiences’ viewing. As it reaches peoples top interest it is unpredictable when its existence may cease.

Scary movies are one of the most popular genres out there, as well as mystery and crime books— this is because deep down people love to be scared. People are attracted to things they can’t explain and feelings, like fear, that they can’t control. The idea of zombies taking over our world is a very scary thought and it has been a growing fear in recent years in our society. Not only is the thought of our loved ones, neighbors, friends, or possibly even yourselves being undead and attacking your fellow community is a terrifying and disturbing thought. Fear of the unknown also plays a major role in the interest of zombies, and because no one knows exactly how our society will come to an end, we are terrified at the thought that it could be by a horrible outbreak. We like structure and safety in America, and for the most part we favor on the side of having more control. In the event of an apocalypse, all of those things would crumble, and the world would become complete chaos. That factor scares people, but also entices them at the same time. We are worried about a time with no rules or order, but also we are curious about what it would be like to lash out and act violently without getting in trouble. We also are fearful of a time when status and wealth does not matter. For example, in World War Z, the

First off, zombies are a figment of our imagination, beings made purely for our enjoyment. The zombie apocalypse is also made up. A land of horror made simply for the zombies. A land brim full of death and decay. Many games are made to show the land with a physical form. But none of them would come close to how frightening the experience would be if that world was real. If we were to experience this full on, the ‘player’ would be much, much more frightened because they wouldn’t know what to do, I sure as heck would be. Weapons wouldn’t be lying around and such for you like within games. So, dear ‘player’, let me tell you a few tips to survive a world of ‘deceased’ fiction.

Sarah Juliet Lauro, an assistant professor of English and claimed “zombie scholar”, supports Kozma’s argument by mentioning how zombie stories gained popularity after the Cold War and World War II due to a distrust in military technology and weaponry (Lauro). By creating weapons proven to bring ruin to communities, technology was seen in a different light during and after the 1900s. Its threatening potential caused humans to view such advancement in a mistrusted and suspicious manner. Thus, it makes sense that the zombie apocalypse craze emerged once these attitudes took shape after the wars of the 1900s. Technology with the potential to end humanity causes individuals to be constantly on edge and apprehensive, slowly creating a wish to end such feelings through a fantasy such as the zombie