The Need to Feed, Research Paper Example

Introduction

In recent times, a preponderance of books and films present, to typically eager audiences, horror in the form of zombie populations terrorizing ordinary people.  While there are technical variations within the definition of “zombie”, the most commonly employed one is that of a dead human being who has been reanimated, usually by means of dark magic.   Equally common is the factor of appetite; zombies in popular entertainment invariably seek to consume human flesh, and particularly human brains.   As a sub-genre of horror, then, the zombie formula fulfills all the classic requirements for any medium with the agenda of producing fear.

What is interesting, however, is why this specific form of horror should remain as consistently successful as it is.   Certain other types of horror are more explicable, in that psychological undertones are more evident.   The vampire fascination, for instance, which appears to surface in popular culture cyclically, is endowed with powerfully blatant sexuality aspects.   Then, entertainments which rely upon threats from alien beings have always been easily translated in terms of societal acceptance.   In the 1950s, such books and films represented the Cold War menace felt by most Americans, as today alien horror films and books reflect the inherent insularity, or xenophobia, within most cultures now compelled to interact on all levels.  The zombie genre, in contrast, is remarkably unsophisticated. This very lack of apparent depth, however, actually serves to clarify the popularity of the form, for the grotesque appeal of zombie entertainment surely reflects deep cultural issues regarding man’s fear of his fellow man. There are as well the factors of the innate terror within humanity of death that is not death, or rest, which goes to a dreaded perversion of most conceptions of an afterlife. Ultimately, however, the relatively raw and plain horror component within the zombie resides in what it is.  It is not an alien creature, nor is it a human being changed into a different state of existence and/or power, as with a vampire or werewolf. The zombie terrifies because it is, essentially, simply mankind, and mankind distilled to its most savage and hideous nature. Moreover, it is mankind as a repercussion of the war mankind wages; the zombie fascinates today’s culture because the zombie is nothing more than the audience itself, returning to avenge, and as both murderer and victim.

Background

In popular ideology, the concept of the zombie, or walking dead, is largely Haitian-driven. That island nation does indeed have a unique history with zombies, and one which was catapulted to global attention with the 1985 publication of Wade Davis’ bestseller, The Serpent and The Rainbow. Nonetheless, cultures throughout history have promulgated legends based upon zombies, and the creatures play, in fact, an important role in early American folklore. Such an extensive history of fascination is crucial in understanding the enduring popularity of the subject, and particularly in modern years.

It is important to note that, in old accounts of zombie activity, an interesting disregard as to the state of living is conspicuously absent at times. That is to say, based upon records and firsthand accounts, the zombie and the cannibal were somewhat interchangeable creatures. For example, in the ship’s log of Ponce de Leon’s final voyage to Florida in 1521, there is a lengthy entry concerning attacks from the Calusa, the area’s indigenous Native Americans. The Calusa poisoned the sailors with something which induced “furies”, compelling them to bite others (Miller  18). This of itself is hardly cannibalism, much less actual zombie activity. What matters, however, is that the episode fueled the concept of possible zombies as a threat in the New World. Similarly, zombie legends have attached themselves to the notorious disappearance of the colonists of Roanoke, North Carolina, in the late 1580’s. It seems that, whenever the unknown combined with either unexplained losses of people and/or evidence of a kind of savagery, the undead were selected as the cause.

Nor has this predilection for “creating” zombies been limited to early American settler concerns regarding native tribes and/or unknown territories. Ancient Viking folklore strongly hints at zombie interference in Norse attempts to capture European domains, and zombies figure prominently in both African and Tibetan legends (Gothoni 214). Then, as noted and as made internationally famous by Wade Davis, the voodoo culture of Haiti is centered on the raising of the dead, usually for other than benign objectives. The zombie is, in fact, somewhat unique in the lexicon of horror, in that it transcends cultural barriers; it can be detected in one form or another in virtually every human culture on earth, unlike the more limited and predominantly Western icons of the werewolf and vampire. If any single element marks its appearance in the life of a culture, it is that of confrontation and change. Zombies appear to capture interest, or to be promoted as actual forces, when societies literally venture into unknown landscapes, and usually for reasons of war and conquest.

The Creature Itself

What, exactly, is a zombie?  The question is valid, as well as essential to any understanding of its modern attractions. The word itself offers some assistance: as Wade Davis notes, “zombie” is most likely derived from the old African word, nzambi, which is loosely translated as “spirit of the dead” (12). Such a definition, however, actually serves more to confuse than to clarify, for the meaning as stated could easily be interpreted as a gentle being. Technically, in fact, the Christian concept of the angel could then be identified as a belief in zombies. This lack of clarity of definition is, moreover, hardly abetted by the beings themselves, and in any incarnation of them presented to audiences of any kind.   Unlike the creatures well known to the world of horror, the zombie is the quintessential blank slate. Zombies do not speak.   They do not relate their ambitions, their histories, or their states of mind. They can be known only by what they do, which typically takes the form – as put forth in fiction and film – of a relentless desire to kill and consume the living with whom they come into contact.   The agenda is, even more frighteningly, not a malicious one. Zombies do not hate because zombies do not feel, a fact frequently in evidence when, in films, they “die again” in an almost compliant manner.

This singular lack of a purpose to their existence is part of the explanation for the modern, and enduring, popularity of zombies. In a sense, they are the ultimate villains because they answer to no leader, cause, or even circumstance.   This renders them ideally symbolic, in that creative symbolism of any kind may be conferred upon them:  “With nothing to say on his own behalf, the zombie is in a position of great semiotic vulnerability; meanings are plasters on him” (Parker 33).    A fear or dread of any nature, from a Freudian death-drive to a communal horror at the repercussions of war, and from the terrifying possibilities lying within the id to a blanket assessment of an unknown and potentially dangerous people, may easily be infused into the zombie being.   It is the all-purpose thing of destruction and darkness, as adaptable to cultural purposes as the Barbie doll.

It is worthwhile, also, to return to that original, African definition of the zombie, for its very tameness points to vast potentials for cultural unease. If the zombie is a spirit of the dead, there are few religions not blatantly defied by its presence. Death is, according to most prominent creeds, when an afterlife of peace is provided for those deserving of it.   As depicted commonly, the zombie is a literally monstrous perversion of such a concept. For the zombie to exist, there can be no guiding power above to ensure a correct eternity. The zombie then stands, or stumbles, as a horrific representation of a nothingness even more awful to contemplate, one in which a human’s actual being is nothing more than a grotesque instrument. As portrayed in media, zombies arise for a variety of reasons, usually when mankind has committed acts of foulness so dramatic that the dead are “woken”.  It is a resurrection, but of a completely contrary kind to the Christian and/or Western ideologies of any return to life. These factors in mind, the definition of the zombie gains precision, for it is the undead as a self-inflicted retribution. As will be examined, this very much goes to the immense modern popularity of the zombie.

Psychologies Behind the Popularity

It is prevalently believed that zombies possess the power to terrify because, psychologically speaking, they represent humanity’s greatest fear, that of death. They are death, manifested in the most horrifying way imaginable (Greene, Mohammed 21).   They are rotted, decomposed, and they usually betray the decomposition through clumsy and sluggish movement. They are undead, but they are never fully alive. The horror they generate, then, is dependent upon the perversion of the resurrection concept and afterlife belief so cherished by most people; if the zombie is what death is, it is an ugly, and insatiably hungry, affair.

However, more must be in place to account for today’s vast cultural interest in zombies, and an excellent avenue to approaching this is achieved by turning to the year of George Romero’s classic film, Night of the Living Dead, which firmly stamped the zombie on the modern cultural consciousness. The year was 1968 and the United States, at least, was both enjoying unprecedented prosperity and undergoing vast social conflict. On a relatively topical level, it could be argued that Romero’s film triggered so massive a response because it was, in essence, a mockery of the sophistication and advancements  Americans were so proudly asserting as their own. It was a slap in the face, and one embraced because it openly and outrageously defied notions of evolved civilization, and gave the country authentic, sloppy, old-fashioned, scary monsters.

Such a point of view, however, ignores what was so pivotal about that specific time. For one thing, civil rights movements, reflecting racial, gender orientation, and feminist concerns, were exploding everywhere. If there was still a “mainstream” America, it was surely terrified at this outburst of the unknown coming to stake a claim. It is perhaps specious to suggest that the enormous and rapid embracing of the zombie in the late 1960s was a direct response to the new threats to the established social order, but the fact remains that the upheavals of the time were extreme and unprecedented. That the re-introduction of a relic of old horror, the zombie – which is the horror of the unknown and the devouring – should have suddenly enjoyed huge popularity, seems a rather strong coincidence. Moreover, and critical to the impact, the zombie is almost never a single threat. Zombies induce horror as a mob. In a nation stunned by gatherings of blacks, gays, and women suddenly banding together to demand status and rights, the parallel is perhaps not at all misplaced.

Something else was going on during those years, however, and with a power of creating divisiveness as potent as any civil rights movement. The Vietnam War has been an ongoing controversy for some years, fueling debate nationally as it annually took the lives of young American soldiers. Moreover, in those less technologically-advanced years, the greater number of Americans were largely ignorant of the mechanics of the war itself.  Vietnam was an unknown Asian land, and its people were equally subject to ignorance. What was chiefly reiterated in those days was that the war was “immoral”, and that the United States was engaging in a violent conflict it could not ethically support.

Enter Romero and his zombies. “Zombies have regularly sprung out of the simple need to find a way to cope with the human horror of war” (Stocking 8).  As has been noted, the creatures seem to surface whenever a culture is in a state of confrontation, and this most certainly applies to that turbulent year of 1968. Viewed in this manner, the zombie becomes explicable. For the audience at the film or reading the zombie comic or novel, the being is something of a moral backlash.   For the Americans in the late 1960s, it may well be that the monsters clumsily moving toward their victims were both the Americans unjustly sent to die and the mysterious “enemy” overseas the Americans were killing. The explanation has an eerie symmetry to it; as the public consciousness cannot digest horror that it manufactures, it demands that the horror knock at its door.

So, too, is the current zombie rage understandable. The United States is engaged in multiple military conflicts, and for years. Modern telecommunications allow for various media to instantly transmit images and information regarding slaughter occurring globally, and in which the country most definitely plays a part. Then, the 9/11 attacks stamped on the cultural mindset a vulnerability not easily eradicated. Attacked and attacking for a lengthy period of years, the many and varied effects of being involved in war have very possibly prompted a recurrence of the desire and/or need for self-abasement which marked the Vietnam era. Simply put, there has been sufficient killing to generate a cultural impulse to acknowledge it, and in the only manner the culture can: through the horrific images of undead beings returning, to claim a mindless revenge.

Conclusion

As popular as zombies are in today’s media, there is a further belief held by many that a zombie “apocalypse” of sorts is on the way. This, however, is most likely a reaction to the enormity of modern warfare. It is not a reinvention of the zombie, nor a new interpretation for its existence, but merely an extension of the suppressed moral outrage triggered by massive violence. Ironically, there is no psychological need for such an apocalypse, for each instance of zombie popularity is an apocalypse of itself, in that man is out to devour – and punish – himself. The zombie is a repercussion of the wars mankind fights because mankind must ultimately know that war itself is monstrous, and the zombie fascinates modern culture because it is nothing more than the audience itself, returning to avenge, and as both murderer and victim.

Works Cited

Davis, W.  The Serpent and the Rainbow.  New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1985.  Print.

Gothoni, R.  Pilgrims and Travelers in Search of the Holy.  New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing, 2010.  Print.

Greene, R., & Mohammad, K. S.  Zombies, Vampires, and Philosophy.  Chicago, IL: Open Court Publishing, 2010.  Print.

Miller, W.  A Zombie’s History of the United States.  Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press, 2010.  Print.

Parker, J. (2011.) Our Zombies, Ourselves.  The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 307, No. 3.  pp. 31-33.

Stocking, C.  Zombie Myths of Australian Military History. Sydney, AUS: University of New South Wales Press, Ltd., 2010.  Print.