Zombie Pop Culture

First off, zombies have a unique history. The first part of this exclusive history is that zombies have a few originating points with places ranging from ancient past times to well known movies. According to an archaeological study

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

When analyzing this piece of writing it is clear that the purpose is not to entertain or persuade. The purpose, instead, is to inform and give a new perspective on zombie movies in a simple way that an audience of all ages can understand. In Andrew Cooper and Brandy Blake’s, “George Romero Zombie Films: A Plague of Meaning,” the authors walk the reader through how as time changed zombie movies changed with it. The authors further explain how zombies in many movies represent the time and culture. The writers inform the reader through their use of information from past zombie movies and analysis of the events of the times they were made.

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 article “My Zombie, Myself: Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead,” written by Chuck Klosterman, discusses the reasons behind zombies becoming so popular. Klosterman writes that rise of popularity of zombies is different than that of vampires. He states that most monsters are initially created as representations of fear. Similar to that of Frankenstein or vampires, Klosterman explains that zombies could be viewed in the same light; however, zombies are better explained as an allegory for our day to day existence. Rather than some innate fear, Klosterman highlights this fact to be why zombies have risen to such high popularity.

The article “The Tragic, Forgotten History of Zombies,” written by Mike Mariani, was published on October 28, 2015. Mike Mariani is a writer in Hoboken, New Jersey with many of his stories published to The Atlantic. Mariani’s main audience is anyone in the general public or any individual that could be lacking information in history of zombies. There have been many myths of zombies. But the oldest ones first appeared in Haiti during the 17th and 18th centuries. This form of zombies is described as slaves that were brought in from Africa and worked to death. Once they were worked to death, this lead to the importation of more. Once a slave was worked to death, they were denounced to the Hispaniola plantations for life. Their bodies had no use

Zombies today are more popular than any other movie or television show. Zombies are popular today because most people can relate to them and it ties into our everyday modern life. In the article “My Zombie, Myself: Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead,” Chuck Klosterman offers insightful commentary on why zombies are so popular.

While the idea of zombies or where they were first originated from can be debated by many different countries, several of these myths have reoccurring plots of how humans passed away, and found a way to come back from the dead. No matter what story is being told from around the world about zombies, they all seem to originate from a dark power being used to bring someone back from the dead. Throughout the centuries; however, we have adapted towards our new technology and now many zombie stories include either a deadly virus that escaped from a lab or a biological disease that somehow evolved and helped reanimate people; yet, didn’t completely bring them to life as the functioning citizens they used to be. Although the story of how zombies came to be has changed due to technological advances, in both cases zombies seem to represent a punishment and a plague to the human species and are condemned as evil beings, or ungodly. With increasing popularity in American society, it is evident that the main explanation its popularity are because it depicts survival or an individual or group of individuals, shows a new society that isn’t overly sanitized or censored, gives people with regular lives an opportunity to live vicariously through the characters and furthermore shows that consumerism isn’t a necessity.

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 undead are everywhere in popular culture. Zombies appear in video games such as Doom, Zelda and Left 4 Dead. They are in movies like 28 Days Later, Dawn of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead, and Zombieland. They are in books like those of Max Brooks. However, I am no expert when it comes to everything that zombies are in, just what has caught my attention.

Social anxiety caused the the zombie movement to gain a lot of movement between the late twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty first century. In this time frame, zombies were no longer the spawn of Voodoo, a black magic that traditionally turned the dead under control of a Voodoo master. Additionally, zombies started to shift , going against the concept of zombies being dead people, to people infected with a virus. Zombies between this time were able to evolve into fast agile, crafty, and otherwise smart monsters. This is a major change mostly occurred because of society's fear, like pandemics and biological warfare.

Nowadays some people still think historical background of zombies as the past but some people think zombies are dead body who came from science experiments. Zombies are found in many series, movies and animations,

Zombie actually exists for many people in different places and people thinks zombies are very real. Zombies are said to be brought back after death using various magical process. According to an article,” Zombies: The Real Story of the Undead” by Benjamin Radford, zombies were used to work as a slave in past times. Zombie takes part in troubling human beings and other living creatures by killing as well as

The meaning of the word zombie has shifted in public perception rather drastically a number of times over the last fifty years largely as a result of their rise in popularity in the zeitgeist. What we think of as zombies today are largely myth of course, but there is a grain of truth. It dates back to the 8th century, (possibly earlier according to some speculation in fact) the word 'zombie ' is said to have come from nzambi, which in Kongo means 'spirit of a dead person ', or zonbi, used in the Louisiana or Haitian Creole that represents a person who died and was then brought to life without speech or free will. For the purposes of this paper I’ll be tracing the Haitian route. (Zombies: A Living History)

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).