I don’t think saying that the zombie trope has completely taken off since its introduction about forty years ago would be a surprising statement to anyone, nerd or otherwise. Zombies have swiftly grown into a major cultural phenomena, infiltrating movies, video games, books, comics, and television. Not only are zombies everywhere now, but they are even evolving. From the slow, staggering, recently risen dead, to the terrifying, running-fast-as-any-sprinter, infected pseudo-human, zombies have made quite the transformation since their American cultural debut in the 1960’s. So what’s up with this big change?
In a 2010 interview with Wired, George A. Romero stated:
“Zack Snyder, in the remake of Dawn [of the Dead], has them running, and he under-cranked it so it made them seem even faster, which never made any sense to me. I think subsequent people caught on and said, ‘Wait a minute, if they’re dead they can’t do these superhuman things, so we won’t make them dead! We’ll make them have caught a virus or something. Or they’ve got the Rage bug, and all of the sudden they’re these superhuman things. I don’t like that — to me it fights tradition.”
In the interview, Romero also credits the inclusion of zombies in video games with their gradual “speeding up”. Now, as an avid zombie lover, it pains me to disagree so heartily with the “Godfather of the Dead”…but that’s what I’m about to do, anyway. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
The most striking refutation to this claim is the fact that the canonical beginning to the “zombie-via-infection” trope was actually well before Romero’s iconic Night of the Living Dead, in the novel I Am Legend which was published in 1954. The “zombies” in this novel are certainly more vampire than shambling dead, but it was still the defining moment of mass apocalypse through metamorphosing-infection. In addition, Romero’s own film The Crazies (1973), utilizes the idea of a bio spill inducing homicidal madness (quite similar to the “rage bug”). So it is very apparent that infected zombies have been around since well before video game dynamics dictated the need for a faster enemy to mow down.
I can’t claim to have any insider information on the film industry, so whether the desire to simply have faster, and therefor more threatening, zombies really was the driving force behind the first infectious zombies, I can’t say. But, even if that was someone’s reasoning behind their creation, I think it is far from why they seem to have stuck so well within the genre. Zombies have always served as a great horror antagonist upon which we can place all of our fears; they serve as a blank slate for social commentary and as a mirror to what fears currently drive us. Given this, the rise of the infected zombie seems well placed in our modern times.
The rise of globalization has spawned a new world with new advantages, new problems, and new fears. While disease has always been a black cloud of dread over humanity, until modern times it hasn’t been seen as a truly global threat. A bad bout of plague or smallpox could wipe out entire communities (and the Black Death certainly came close to ending Europe at one point) but a truly apocalyptic pandemic is something we could never truly fear except in an age of rising urban areas, quick global transportation, and surging populations. We truly fear for our species as a whole for the first time in our existence. This fear goes beyond disease, but encompasses the fear that we will destroy ourselves, whether by degradation of the Earth, nuclear war, or depletion of resources. This rise of infectious zombies is simply continuing what the zombie genre has always done by giving us a way to superimpose our fears within the traditional horror medium; it is acting out our prevalent fear of human-like beings swiftly destroying the world.
The more classic zombies that follow Romero’s model had a way of infecting others, with the well-known idea of transfer through bite. This mode of “zombie infection”, while terrifying in and of itself at the time of its creation, contains the spread of zombie-ism to pre-globalization standards; entire communities and maybe even countries may fall, but with physical quarantine and other containment measures, the idea of a truly global zombie apocalypse seems less likely. The use of a contagion that is spread more easily than the necessary physical act of being caught, bitten, and killed, helps promote this modern fear we currently hold of a catastrophic pandemic.
I would go as far as to say that this “speed up” we have seen in zombies is yet another way of capturing that fear of a quickly-spread lethality. The “rage virus”, featured in 28 Days Later, would have been severely hindered if not for the very fast zombies that carried and spread it. In this film the disease is infectious and can be transferred without a bite, but it does rely on the blood as a mode of transport for the disease. If these zombies were truly dead, and had the hindering muscular effects included with that state, the spread of disease would have been greatly slowed. It is this fast spread of disease via fast zombies that truly encompasses this modern fear of a sudden apocalypse; the idea that humanity will end so swiftly that we won’t even have enough time to comprehend what is going on, let alone stop it. This greatly reflects the state of global threats other than disease as well. It seems we are only truly becoming aware of environmental threats as they loom apocalyptic before us, growing and spreading quickly out of control just as we are beginning to understand their workings.
This new fear of global catastrophe is both depressing and real, which is another reason that I believe the infected zombie trope will continue to be popular. Not only do they accurately represent our new fear in this modern age, they also grant us one thing the merely undead zombies simply couldn’t: Hope. While undead zombies have fought against nature to walk once again, we are never given any indication to believe that death is a truly reversible thing; that these walking dead humans will ever return to what they once were. The idea of a spreading virus, however, grants viewers the hope that humanity may not have lost just yet. Whether through development of an actual cure, or through a small cadre of humans hiding out until the disease has finally run its course and consumed all of its infected, it leaves us with the idea that even if humanity brings itself to its knees, that there may be hope for recovery. And that what will rise from this recovery will hopefully be a wiser and more resilient humanity than that which came so close to ending itself.
(Too lazy to proofread this rant, ignore the errors!)
I am going to take a more conspiratorial look at the zombie craze, bear with me!
It is my feeling the zombie trend is popular as it is seen as informal training for a variety of possible disasters which could collapse most of our institutions; economic collapse, revolution, civil war, foreign invasion, disease, natural and manmade disasters, nuclear war, or whatever else. Zombie films could be survival manuals of a sort, disguised as entertainment while providing cynical and pessimistic social commentary. They are a more entertaining version of shows like “Doomsday Preppers.”
I tried to find videos of military drills where they train to shoot citizens or protesters, but could not easily locate one. They do not present the military in the most positive light to say the least. Lately our government institutions have seemingly adapted the zombie meme to make preparedness drills and plans seem more “fun” for the public, like the CDC’s zombie preparedness, various armed service zombie documents and training scenarios, and this recent Homeland Security zombie drill:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwKSJQI3tco
Sure, this could just be a very expensive and dark humored public relations stunt to make us think the military is cool, hip, and prepared for anything. Speaking of “cool” and “hip” how about that Kay Perry Marine recrui… I mean music video? (which has nothing to do with zombies, damn my non clinical A.D.D.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuwfgXD8qV8
I will add many people are concerned that the DHS has recently purchased over a billion rounds of ammunition (much of that in deadly hollowpoint rounds, which are not generally used for target practice).
http://www.businessinsider.com/dhs-fletc-ammunition-purchases-750-million-200-million-40-caliber-rounds-2013-1
Another thing to add here are the various “continuity of government” plans the government and military have drafted over the years.
Here’s a brief wikipedia overview:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuity_of_Operations_Plan
And here’s the wiki for “Rex 84″ which was drafted by Col. Oliver North (who is most famous for secretly selling weapons to Iran and using the profits to illegally fund the Nicaraguan Contras back in the 80′s)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_84
Here is congress questioning Oliver North about it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug0IL7k3elQ
And just for fun here is an American Dad song about Oliver North:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QikSorPak6M
(Oliver North is now generally regarded as some sort of very well paid right wing hero)
Why would the military train for fighting U.S. citizens? Well, there are plenty of precedents of the army being used to crush dissent in US history. A few examples:
MacArthur attacking the Bonus Army WWI vets who wanted to be paid during the Depression
The Zoot Suit riots in LA during the 40′s
Several race and poverty riots between the 30′s and 70′s
The Civil Rights movement
The anti war protests
Or how about this police bombing in Philadelphia in 1985″
“In 1981, MOVE relocated to a row house at 6221 Osage Avenue in the Cobbs Creek area of West Philadelphia. On May 13, 1985, after months of complaints by neighbors that MOVE members were broadcasting political messages by bullhorn at all hours and also about the health hazards created from piles of compost, as well as indictments of various MOVE members for crimes including parole violation, contempt of court, illegal possession of firearms, and making terrorist threats. The police department attempted to clear the building and arrest the indicted MOVE members, which led to an armed standoff with police. The police lobbed tear gas canisters at the building and the fire department battered on the roof of the house with two water cannons. MOVE members fired at the police, and the police returned fire with semiautomatic weapons. The house was heavily fortified with old telephone poles lining the interior walls and a bunker was built on the roof. A police helicopter then dropped a four-pound bomb made of C-4 plastic explosive and Tovex, a dynamite substitute, onto the roof of the house to clear the bunker so that police would not be injured.
The resulting explosion caused incendiary materials listed in the police indictment, and stored by MOVE in the house, to catch fire, therefore causing the house itself to catch on fire. The resulting fire ignited a massive blaze which eventually destroyed 65 houses nearby. Eleven people, including John Africa, five other adults and five children, died in the resulting fire. The firefighters were stopped from putting out the fire based on allegations that firefighters were being shot at, a claim that was contested by the lone adult survivor Ramona Africa, who says that the firefighters had earlier battered the house with two deluge pumps when there was no fire. Ramona Africa and one child, Birdie Africa, were the only two survivors. Police shot at those trying to escape the house and acknowledge firing over 10,000 rounds.”
(to be fair to the police, these people were a kind of militant cult, like the Branch Davidians who the feds burned alive in Waco TX. Both incidents killed several children.)
There are many other riots and incidents I can’t think up off the top of my head, but assuredly can be googled.
Recently we have seen the coordination of federal law enforcement and government, the DHS, and CIA working with local police (who are being militarized with surplus military gear) to break up and crush the Occupy protests and other related and non related recent activist movements. Thousands have been arrested and intimidated by the police, coordinated by the federal government. Watching many of the videos of police brutality against these mostly peaceful protestors shows the mechanical nature of the foot soldiers who carry out orders from their bosses to crush opposition to the government. Lt. John Pike and his bear strength pepper spraying of college kids at UC Davis is a good example… and he was JUST A CAMPUS COP! Luckily he wasn’t armed with a rifle like the National Guardsmen at Kent State during the 60′s, where they fired 67 rounds in 13 seconds and killed 4 students. These days our local police can easily top that when shooting black men reaching for wallets a few times a year. I fear what our military is capable of these days…
To summarize, I suppose aside from creepy entertainment value, the zombie craze at best could be a useful survival guide for dealing with disaster. At worst this conditioning could lead to knee jerk dehumanization of everyone outside a person’s close associations during a disaster in which we would be better off working together. I really hope if I seek help from any organized forces of government during a crisis that I am not seen as a “zombie” through the eyes of soldiers aiming with their rifles.
Here’s the DHS zombie video, again!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwKSJQI3tco
I ABSOLUTELY think that a reason the zombie genre has become so popular is it’s ability to show problems within our social systems. You definitely see this when government groups prove unable to control outbreaks or simply fall completely apart in the face of a true disaster (not that they seem to do all that well with notably smaller ones…). More specifically, look at the reaction of the remaining military members in 28 Days Later. Definite social commentary on the state of the military there. I’d even argue that the zombie genre portrays a turning of public blame for any myriad of problems away from *insert social scapegoat here* and turns it towards the government (much more appropriately placed blame, in my opinion). I have a whole article planned to discuss exactly this in the future as well as a few others pertaining to the popularity of the zombie trope.
I definitely think it reflects a growing fear that in a mass catastrophe the government will not only not be able to protect us but may actually serve as our end (the well played plot of being quarantined away with the very creatures trying to rip you to shreds). As for the DHS video, I think that this looks like a convenient use of the zombie trope to do something rather horrible by dehumanizing civilians in the people they’re training. I don’t think I’d say the zombie trope thrives because of ideas like that, mostly because I doubt that the government is producing any of these films which are typically so critical of such institutions
. But the best of things can be used for horrible ends and, lets face it, zombies are pretty freaking awesome.
Thanks for your original and well cited response!