As Discussed earlier this the semester, The idea of the “Zombi” originated in the Vodou religion in the Caribbean, specifically Saint Domingue or modern day Haiti. When the Zombi originated, it was deeply rooted in Slavery. The original Zombie was when one would dig up old corpses and control them to work as free labor(White Zombie). The “Zombi” would be under the control of another. This idea was well depicted in the film “White Zombi” When Beaumont took control of Madeline Short, and make her a zombi, and listen to him. The Zombi has since emerged, and is represented in mass media much differently than it was back when the idea of the zombi emerged. Today, The zombi is a slow moving, flesh eating monster that we all love to watch on television …show more content…
During this time, there was a great amount of racial tension going on. Civil rights movements were occurring, such as the civil rights act of 1968. Because of this, we begin to see the Fears of race and the Vietnam war. A good example of this is in the film “ Night of the Living Dead”. “Night of the Living Dead” was released shortly after Civil Rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr, was assassinated, showing a good connection to the civil rights movement within the Film. The bigger example is the tension , symbolically racial tension, that occurs between Ben and Harry throughout the film. Ben has a room upstairs boarded up, but Harry insists the cellar is the best place to be. The two are arguing about this when Ben say “We’d all be alot better off if we were all working together” (Ben, Night of the Living Dead”). This quote in the film is symbolic of how “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend”( M.L.K.) by saying love is capable of transforming an enemy into a friend, he shows how as friends we would all better off if we worked together instead of against each-other. In the film, Ben’s request/offerings of everyone staying in America is ignored, which is symbolic of African-Americans being oppressed.Additionally, This film was the beginning of seeing “hordes of Zombies” or a mass number of zombies. This was a result of the vietnam war. This was the …show more content…
During this time period, the Sexually Transmitted Diseases, AIDS, was just now becoming a relevant problem that must be dealt with. There were about 200,000 people living worldwide with Aids at this time (Avert). In June 1982, it was discovered that this disease was very common among gay men, and it was suggested that the spread of the disease was sexual( Avert). In 1983, it was confirmed that this disease was not transmitted through contract, or through pathogens, but rather that it was a Sexually Transmitted disease. By 1993, the number of aids cases worldwide had reached over 2 million( Avert). In addition the the fear of aids becoming a huge issue, The Ebola virus was also another huge scare. The Ebola virus came about 10 years later, in 2014, to America. Although the CDC said that “Ebola is not spread through casual contact; therefore, the risk of an outbreak in the United States is very low.”( EBOLA). Although there was never a huge outbreak in America, it was still feared, which is why the CDC made a page on how to deal with it and how to avoid it. These fears of diseases is what transformed the zombie yet again to reflect the fear of diseases, or contagions. This fear is demonstrated in the film “ 28 Days Later”. The film opens with a group of people trying to free the “Captives” that are the Monkeys. Little do they know that the monkeys have been infected with a disease called “Rage”.
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.
Night of the Living Dead (Romero, 1968) is a movie that contains a large amount of historical significance. This movie is well known for its incredible relevance to the year that it was released. The movie has been described as “A Newsreel of 1968”, and there is ample reason to make that statement. The year 1968 was a very tumultuous period in American history that saw a great deal of violence overseas and in the United States itself. There were many history altering events that took place during 1968, which would all serve to rile up and instill fear and anger in the American people. 1968 saw the latest presidential election in which there was great division amongst the parties, and was the election in which Robert Kennedy was assassinated. Not only did that year see the assassination of another Kennedy, but it also bore witness to the assassination of the most prominent civil rights leader of the time, Martin Luther King Jr. With these tragedies a war in Vietnam raged which had riled much of the country into protest, especially young people.
The disease developed in humans through blood-to-blood contact, which occurred in hunters from rural villages found within the Congo Basin. The hunters most likely came into contact during the hunting and butchering of chimpanzees and other monkeys, which carried the SIV virus. At first the disease wasn’t a threat to humans because for one not a lot of people were being infected, and secondly the immune system would have been able to fight the SIV virus. However, over time with more cross-species transmission, the virus would replicate and through different mutations, it would evolve. Eventually, there would be a mutation in the virus, which would allow the virus to successfully attack a human immune system. This scene explained that since not many were effected to begin with, and because to begin with it wasn’t threatening, that when it became dangerous it didn’t grow at an alarming rate like it would in Haiti in the future. I believe this scene is very efficient at explaining how the virus can adapt so that it would be able to effect the human population like it has to someone who has little knowledge of how viruses work between species. Also I think it is an effective scene, because people are often a lot more sympathetic to animals, and the deaths of animals, so I think that this scene would stick in their brain a lot more than other scenes even if they were just as, or even more
Fears and misconceptions regarding AIDS began when only the homosexual community contracted it. Therefore, people started to believe that only the homosexuals would get the AIDS and blamed them for the cause of the disease. The public was not in fear until some people who were not homosexuals contracted the disease. It was at this time, that the public’s attitude shifted into the fear that anyone was able to have AIDS; it was a sexually transmitted disease. Many were also deceived by the government’s actions. For example, one woman in the movie began to become sick after a blood transfusion. She always thought that it was due to surgical problems, but actually she had contracted AIDS and the doctors knew but didn’t do anything about it. This also caused panic because, even though the government knew AIDS was spreading around they did not do anything about it.
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
In both Ebola Outbreak by Dabbous and A mask on the Face of Death by Seltzer they discuss the social and political problems contributing to the spread of Ebola and HIV/AIDS. These Epidemics continue to spread thought out the world to millions of people. The main areas that these diseases began to spread began in very poverty stricken countries. Not only did poverty play a role in the spread but both Dabbous and Seltzer pointed out the lack of education in the area which leads people to easily be manipulated by stories about the diseases. The cultural practices in these areas contribute majorly to the spread of the Ebola and the AIDS virus. These viruses continue to spread to other parts of the world and is hard to contain to a specific location.
Evaluation of Warm Bodies “When I saw you I fell in love and you smiled because you knew” –William Shakespeare’s quote agrees to why love is the most ground breaking, mysterious and mischievous thing in the world. Warm Bodies, both written and directed by Jonathan Levine, alludes to William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet with the characters of R and Julie in their star crossed romance of two opposing sides the living and the not entirely dead. R, a zombie, comes back to life due to a new love in his life that makes him feel alive inside from the first glance while choking down Julie’s dying boyfriend. The fun-loving sci-fi movie shows the world how the mind of a zombie really works.
The degree of connection between all of the characters in the movie is so coincidental and interrelated to emphasize the point that we do not always know what is going on with everyone else we may encounter. It also accentuates the fact that racism is not one particular race against another. It also shows that we never know someone’s situation and what is happening in their life to make them act the way that they do if
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
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.
As we were watching this film I could tell that there were many messages that the director wanted the audience to gain from this movie. One of the messages I got from this movie is that every single person is extremely similar however racial issues hold us back from discovering that. I believe the director wanted viewers to realize that stereotypes and discrimination keeps us from learning about one another. With the way things came
Throughout the Age of AIDS film many topics that were related to AIDS were brought up that I did not know anything about before. I did not know that there could so many strings attached to a disease and have such an influence in people’s lives whether it was negative or positive.
In the infectious disease unit, the main focal point consisted of showing the audience how the spread of a major virus may occur in population. In this case, we were presented with two movies: Contagion and 28 Days Later. These movies both displayed an infectious disease, which is spread through animals causing harm to people. A scenario that presented in Contagion seemed to be realistic possibility because a simple transmission of disease from an animal can happen. If the virus is unknown and no vaccine is available, it could certainly cause a lot of harm to a large population of people. Likewise, another possibility was also presented in 28 Days Later, where the viewers see scientist talking about monkey being infected with a virus.
When picturing a zombie the image of a undead person looking for its next human meal comes to mind. While this is the foundation of what the contemporary belief of a zombie is, the actual origin has a far deeper and darker history than what is portrayed today. In the 17th century, Haiti; at the time known as Saint-Domingue, was colonized by France. Slaves were brought in from Africa to work on the sugar plantations. These slaves were subject to such brutal and horrible conditions that many of them died after a few years of service at a rate two to three times higher than any other type of plantation (Berlin 21). A belief rose among the slaves that if they died, they would return to la guinée (Africa) and be free - but there was a catch. If they committed suicide; as many did, they would not be allowed to return to la guinée and instead would spend eternity at the plantation as an undead slave (Mariani).
Anxieties and misunderstandings in relation to AIDS began when the homosexual community was affected. Consequently, people started to believe that it was only homosexuals would contract AIDS and accused them of the cause of the disease. The public was not worried until some people who were not homosexuals got the disease. Because of this, the attitude of the public changed into the fear that anyone could get AIDS since it was an STD. Numerous of people were misled by the actions of the government. An example in the film shows one woman who started to become sick after her blood transfusion. She always believed that it was because of the surgery, however, she actually she got AIDS. The doctors were aware but did nothing to notify her. This triggered fear because the government was aware that the AIDS prevalence was increasing and being spread yet