About zombies

[ksmith]

I don't get it. The popularity. I really don't.

Comments

It's a guilty pleasure thing

[(Anonymous)]

It's a guilty pleasure thing. Take all the troubles of the world, wrap them up into a ball and forget about them -- then lose yourself in a good old-fashioned zombie story. It's about having fun.

Ditto steampunk.

John D.
SF Signal

It's about politics and culture

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

I've thought about it some, and I think it has to do with political climate--stay with me a minute. In the 1950s, the scare was aliens from outer space, a threat defined by difference, a lack of understanding, and a fear of annihilation. What was going on in the world? McCarthyism. The Cold War.

In the sixties, what scared us? Change, and so we got movies about mutants and creatures that caused changed inside us, like zombies and "Psycho" with its identity-morphing villain. When did "Night of the Living Dead" come out? 1968: Vietnam, Summer of Love, the Civil Rights Movement.

In the '70s and '80s, it was all about the horror from within: Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, even Alien, where you had the creature erupting from your own chest. And there was the rise of the serial killer series (Halloween), explicit horror (The Fly), etc. What was going on in the world? Reagan was fanning the flames of nuclear nightmares.

And now it's the '90s and 00's. With Republicanism becoming a king of take-no-prisoners fundamentalism, we have zombies again: unthinking creatures that devour and assimilate--but now they're figures of fun and the terror has been leached out of them. If you're part of the reality-based community, it's fun to dress up as the unreal, the undead.

All this, of course, is just one woman's view, but that's how I see it.

[daveamongus.livejournal.com]

Whatever the awesome socio-political underpinnings (and scarlettina does have a nice analysis there), I don't really get zombies either. Just not my cuppa, in any respect.

Same goes for steampunk, although there I can appreciate why someone would be attracted to the aesthetic.

[michaeldthomas.livejournal.com]

Agreed. I think they're boring.

[jemck.livejournal.com]

Me too - cannot see the appeal from a reader/viewer/writer/whatever point of view.

But the teenage sons love'em. To the extent I have had to ban 'how to deal with the zombie apocalypse' dicussions from the breakfast table. Weird.

Re: It's about politics and culture

[windrose.livejournal.com]

This, yes.

Plus, they're a lot of fun to shoot in arcade games. *g*

[pbray.livejournal.com]

I just like saying "BWAINS! ZOMBIES NEED BWAINS!"

Re: It's a guilty pleasure thing

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

There's a weird beauty to steampunk.

But except for Reg Shoe, no zombies for me.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

And I have even said it myself at times, but...

I like vamps. Shapechangers and were don't do much for me.The fae are kinda cool when they're not being sociopathic...or maybe when they are.