True Zombie Anthropology
Dissecting the Infected: The Adamant Notion of a ‘True Zombie’ Definition
An inefficient virus kills its host. A clever virus stays with it. – James Lovelock
Pre-Code Hollywood broke horror barriers in 1932 with the independently produced film White Zombie by brothers Victor and Edward Halperin, a work strongly considered to be the first feature-length zombie film. Prior to the film’s creation, articles and journals on the subject of Voodoo in Haiti had been already published in the U.S. (Rhodes, 2001), leading this picture to derive its routes and zombie from this origin. In 1985, Hollywood brought Lovecraft’s 1921 short story Herbert West, Re-Animtor to theatres in a based horror-comedy film Re-Animator, which has been nominated #14 on …show more content…
This is largely in part due to “social anxieties within the nation’s populace” and the reaction of the people who, instead of dealing with their anxieties concerning terrorism, war, and government corruption turned to metaphorical means to express their horrified unease. (Soloff, 2006). These fictional horror creatures evolved and changed to implement new fears and social anxieties which had shifted from fear of terror and war to a muted form of hypochondriasis. We see this in 28 Days Later (2002) and its sequel 28 Weeks Later (2007), when the plot deviates from including the popular undead zombie, a form which came to life 24 years earlier thanks to the box office success of Romero’s 1978 film Dawn of the Dead. Elfring argues in his article “Overused Comic Book Gimmicks: Zombies” that because the zombies in 28 Days Later are a mutation of the rabies virus, they “weren't true zombies” (Elfring, 2011). Far be it from me to criticise the creative opinions of others but this notion of a ‘true zombie’ is largely incorrect and serves little purpose when defining a landmark fictional …show more content…
I too used to be among the population to believe that ‘Infection ≠ Zombie’, but after delving further into zombie media and consuming it from a purely academic standpoint as opposed to an entertainment one, I’ve now thought to be more inclined to include the infected with the brain-philic zombie undead. Taking on the notion that the infected simply are not zombies because they are infected seems far-fetched and baseless. When asked to name a classic and true zombie film, mostly anyone would tell you that Night of the Living Dead fits the definition; and even though its zombie had been previously dead, the cause was radiation and not magical re-animation. A 1996 video game held as a first-era zombie game, Resident Evil, has its very own T-virus to explain the zombification of the masses. Good storytelling, if it is not of the suspense variety, involves explanation. Though some authors choose the route of “it’s magic, just go with it”, there is no wrongdoing when a creator chooses to explain the origins of a fictional creature. The infection origin is simply that, just as is its ghoulish creation:
An inefficient virus kills its host. A clever virus stays with it. – James Lovelock
Pre-Code Hollywood broke horror barriers in 1932 with the independently produced film White Zombie by brothers Victor and Edward Halperin, a work strongly considered to be the first feature-length zombie film. Prior to the film’s creation, articles and journals on the subject of Voodoo in Haiti had been already published in the U.S. (Rhodes, 2001), leading this picture to derive its routes and zombie from this origin. In 1985, Hollywood brought Lovecraft’s 1921 short story Herbert West, Re-Animtor to theatres in a based horror-comedy film Re-Animator, which has been nominated #14 on …show more content…
This is largely in part due to “social anxieties within the nation’s populace” and the reaction of the people who, instead of dealing with their anxieties concerning terrorism, war, and government corruption turned to metaphorical means to express their horrified unease. (Soloff, 2006). These fictional horror creatures evolved and changed to implement new fears and social anxieties which had shifted from fear of terror and war to a muted form of hypochondriasis. We see this in 28 Days Later (2002) and its sequel 28 Weeks Later (2007), when the plot deviates from including the popular undead zombie, a form which came to life 24 years earlier thanks to the box office success of Romero’s 1978 film Dawn of the Dead. Elfring argues in his article “Overused Comic Book Gimmicks: Zombies” that because the zombies in 28 Days Later are a mutation of the rabies virus, they “weren't true zombies” (Elfring, 2011). Far be it from me to criticise the creative opinions of others but this notion of a ‘true zombie’ is largely incorrect and serves little purpose when defining a landmark fictional …show more content…
I too used to be among the population to believe that ‘Infection ≠ Zombie’, but after delving further into zombie media and consuming it from a purely academic standpoint as opposed to an entertainment one, I’ve now thought to be more inclined to include the infected with the brain-philic zombie undead. Taking on the notion that the infected simply are not zombies because they are infected seems far-fetched and baseless. When asked to name a classic and true zombie film, mostly anyone would tell you that Night of the Living Dead fits the definition; and even though its zombie had been previously dead, the cause was radiation and not magical re-animation. A 1996 video game held as a first-era zombie game, Resident Evil, has its very own T-virus to explain the zombification of the masses. Good storytelling, if it is not of the suspense variety, involves explanation. Though some authors choose the route of “it’s magic, just go with it”, there is no wrongdoing when a creator chooses to explain the origins of a fictional creature. The infection origin is simply that, just as is its ghoulish creation: