Ethology of zombies - Eugene Krivoruchko

Ethology
of zombies
Ethology
of zombies
Eugene Krivoruchko,
Intermediate side topic
Supervised by
Prof. Björn Bartholdy
audiovisual media
I hereby guarantee that I have completed this work on my own.
In addition I have not used any other sources than those that
have been quoted and properly documented.
Eugene Krivoruchko
Cologne, March 2014
Introduction
7
C H A P TE R O NE
Zombie myth: pre-Romero
Brief historical overview and first
cinematic appearances of the zombie
9
C H A P TE R T WO
Romero and successors
Establishing a paradigm of the
modern zombie, political references
14
C H A P TE R THR E E
Post-Romero
Post-9/11 zombie Renaissance
and paradigm shift
21
C H A P TE R FO UR
Memetics and taxonomy
of the zombie
Evolutionary approach
to a cultural entity
31
Resume
38
Bibliography
42
Introduction
“They’re us... We’re them, they’re us...”
— Barbra, Night of the Living Dead
The zombie myth has gained a substantial significance in the
pop-culture during the last three decades. Since Romero’s influential
Night of the Living Dead (1968) more than 300 feature length high-budget films has been released, accompanied by countless amounts of other appearances in literature, comics and table games. Nearly every large
western city holds one or two annual zombie walks where thousands of
people dress up and pretend to be decaying corpses.
Existential anxieties about our mortality are characteristic for the
most of the horror genre’s appeal. Zombie narrative though manages
to deliver more than that, it seems that it has a rather unique ability of
reflecting the society and tapping on a wide range of issues within the
cultural context. On top of that, no cinematic monster has experienced
as much variety in interpretation across its appearances in film and
literature. This might be the reason for the increased popularity of the
subgenre over the last three decades.
Aim of this work is to trace the changes in the concept of zombies
across three major periods of it’s existence and provide the link to societal changes and the anxieties corresponding to them.
7
Zombie Myth:
pre Romero
What is now most commonly understood by a zombie—decaying
corpse with flesh-eating propensity, is a concept that has emerged from
horror cinema, and more specifically, from the mind of George R. Romero in the end of 1960s. Before entering the mainstream discourse, zombie myth had two more significant periods—with its beginning in the
beliefs of African tribes; and later on transforming through Caribbean
religious practices.
The concept of zombie originates in the religious beliefs of Bantu
and Bankongo tribes of lower Congo River area. Not unlike in many conventional religions, the God, Nzambi is a spiritual entity with superhuman abilities that watches over man and is responsible for bringing
man to life and taking it away.
In between 16th and 18th centuries, during the atlantic slave trade
substantial part of congolese population was transported and sold at
the colonies of the New World. Migrating to Caribbean, tribe members
brought their faith with them, and during the nineteenth century,
colliding with the western culture, the word “zombie” came to represent a spirit that can occupy people. According to the spiritual belief
9
ZOMBI E MY TH : PRE RO ME RO
system of Vodou a dead person can be revived by a sorcerer (“bokor”) to
serve him as a slave without the will of their own. A rather interesting
view on this transformation of the zombie myth throughout its history is expressed by Kevin Boon1. He suggests to look at is as an analogy to
the history of the western thought, admitting the nature of truth to be
sacred and external (coming from God) before the Enlightenment; and
afterwards coming down to rationalism, which mandates that the truth
is uncovered within self internally (coming out of reason). Towards the
end of nineteenth century it was already common among general public to look at the world empirically, from the position of science, which
enabled in a way the objectification of self. In the medieval times the
concept of self was perceives as a whole, and rationalism made it philosophically possible to for the self to examine and question itself. This
observation might be an important cultural context to the change in
the zombie mythology, which essentially now proclaimed that a state
of a zombie is a state of loss of self.
The concept of the zombie-slave controlled by some sort of zombie-master was introduced to the american culture by the people coming back from Haiti after the american occupation that started in 1915.
As it appears in literature and film of the first half of the twentieth century, a physical body lacking consciousness and occupied by nothingness, is the type of zombie that can be found in the first zombie films
such as White Zombie (1932), King of the Zombies (1941), I Walked with a Zombie (1943), and Revenge of the Zombies (1943). Controlled by the mystical
villain, often played by Bela Lugosi, zombies are used as slaves lacking
free will in order to profit from their labour in an exploitive business
such as, for example, a sugar plantation. These films are stories of the
1
— See Christie, Lauro, 2011, p. 50
10
oppressor and largely employ the metaphor of colonization which was
relevant to recent geopolitical events1. Cannibalistic nature of the zombie that we are familiar with now, was not yet present at that time, and
the main terror was not to be killed by a zombie, but becoming a zombie oneself.
It is worth mentioning that unlike all the other popular monsters,
that usually find their roots in the european Gothic literature, zombies
entered the cinematic mainstream almost avoiding the phase of literary manifestation. Before the White Zombie film there was only one
publication by of William Seabrook, Magic Island (1929) bringing zombie
to the light of the american mainstream.
Illustration from the book
Magic Island, 1929
1
— See Aizenberg, 1999
11
Bela Lugosi in White Zombie, 1932
Filled with casual racism, and overly caricaturist illustrations this
book inspired the first zombie film ever made, White Zombie. In this
film creole is pictured as a principle evil, the villain Murder Legendre
(Bela Lugosi) threatens to infect white people with the contagion of local magic and pharmacology and transform them into zombie slaves.
This reveals american anxiety raised by Haitian occupation over race
relation and possible miscegenation. As Gyllian Phillips1 puts it:
“The central anxiety in Halperin’s film, White Zombie, is revealed
by its title: zombies are one thing, but a white zombie is a sign
of horror. Like “white trash” or “white slavery” the term “white
zombie” implies the violation of a racial norm.”
1
— See Boluk, Lenz, 2011, p. 28
12
ZOMBI E MY TH : PRE RO ME RO
The concept of zombie for Haitians resembled the fear of returning
back to the colonial state, however, for the white american audience, as
Bishop points out, the anxiety comes from possible change of places
with “naturally” enslaved black population through zombification. In
the film, a white woman gets turned into a zombie which is a threat to
white supremacy, and also may represent a threat to racial purity. Not
really managing to raise above racial paranoia and cultural ignorance,
early zombie films of 1930s and 40s still remain to be important historical artifacts, for their ability to reveal those socio-cultural shifts of the
earlier decades.
Mostly, the same fears were exploited later in the beginning
of World War II, but new anxieties has developed in the american society as a reaction to Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Development of science and technology symbolizing the
human desire to gain control over nature leads to something terrifying to happen. Voodoo sorcerers at that time got replaced by aliens
(Invisible Invaders (1959), The Earth Dies Screaming (1964). The anxieties
connected to the start of the Cold War were also tapped on and combined with the established ones: loss of freedom, mind control and invasion from afar.
13
Romero
and successors
Back then zombies were still those boys in the Caribbean doing
the wet work for Lugosi. So I never thought of them as zombies.
I thought they were just back from the dead.
G. Romero, from the interview to www.horror-movies.ca
By the late 1960s ties to Voodoo mysticism gradually died down
among zombie movie, and instances of the subgenre has become rather stale and predictable. In 1968 George R. Romero has reinvented the
genre with his film Night of the Living Dead. There was no literature
pieces or films predate 1968 featuring the new concept of zombie: plentiful, mindless, flesh-eating and contagious horde is being opposed to
the minority of protagonists.
14
Zombies of Night of the Living Dead,1932
Almost every manifestation of the zombie in pop-culture after Night
of the Living Dead employs the fundamental concept invented by Romero. It may appear that the new paradigm is completely original, however on a closer investigations of Romero cinematic zombie show that
it was essentially a compilation of previously known ideas, borrowing from Caribbean zombie, Gothic tales, vampires and ghosts. Romero zombie narrative is a synthesis of the variety of the most exciting
elements from preexisting traditions in the horror genre. Film scholars provide probable Romero’s cinematic inspiration sources listing
among others Hitchcock’s “The Birds” (1963) and Robert Wise’s influential
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).
Zombies now infect and transform their prey into one of their kind,
which for the outnumbered protagonists of Romero zombie movies means that the threat now can come from what just recently has
been their trusted friends and loved ones. Being put in such context,
besieged humans transform into what might even be more monstrous
than the monsters that surround them. They quickly devolve into a barbaric state—survival and not the society becomes a main priority.
The first Romero’s film pushed
the boundaries of graphic violence in the horror film genre. It is
widely believed that the excess of
violence is pictured as a critique
of devastating Vietnam War1.
Another interesting aspect of
the Night of the Living Dead is not
very subtle racial relationship be-
1
— See Higashi, 1990, pp. 175-88
Ben, Night of the Living Dead,1932
15
ROM ERO AND SUCCE SSO RS
tween the characters, reminding the viewer of old stereotypes and referring to Civil Rights Movement. The lead of the protagonists group
which is trapped in the country house and defending from the hordes of
zombies happens to be black. In the end of the sixties, Ben represented a
great fear of many white americans—that black men would become socially empowered and pose a threat to the safety of a white woman. His
conflicts over leadership with the man of white Cooper family continues the metaphor, although in the interviews Romero claims that picking a black actor for the lead was not intended to pose such allegories.
In the end of the movie Ben dies which can be reminiscent of the recent
assassination of Martin Luther King. Still images of militia men dragging Ben’s body with meat hook completes the analogy with the notion
of violent racial conflicts involving white lynch mobs which were still
happening in the south of the US. As we see, with Romero’s zombie the
politicization of the fear factor has reached new heights.
Further into the seventies a new motif of social criticism came to
light, with the development of anxieties related to consumer culture,
energy crises and the environmental catastrophes. These anxieties got
depicted mainly through the origin of the zombie’s existence or the
— What are they doing, why are they coming?
— Memory, what they used to do... This was
important place in their lives.
Dawn of the Dead, 1978
16
seeting. In the italian movie from 1974 “Let Sleeping Corpses Lie”, corpses
are brought to life by the chemical pesticides used by area farmers. The
mall from Romero’s Dawn of the Dead provides a stark and witty comment on contemporary american consumerism — human protagonists
are trapped inside with unlimited consumption possibilities (what can
be call a consumerist dream), unburdened, but without possibility to
quit, which turns out to the breakdown of their little new society. First
providing shelter and protection and then loosing its functions the
mall turns into an uncanny place filled with monsters.
Towards the middle of 1980s, low-budget production studios started to capitalize the success of the early zombie movies. That resulted
in a less dramatic and sophisticated zombie films, turning it in what
is called a slasher horror — exploitation of excess of sex and violence
which was meant to attract younger audiences with the shock-value.
(Return of the Living Dead (1985), Dead Alive (1992), and Redneck Zombies
(1989) That although still serves as a mirror of social anxieties — increasing fear of drug abuse and AIDS epidemic which started in the US
around 1980.
After the 1983 Michael Jackson’s Thriller video, it has become clear
that zombie as species have become quite familiar to the american audience. The novelty of cinematic narratives featuring cannibalistic infectious corpses has palled and more comedic manifestation of the
genre started to gain popularity. Initial Romero’s concept of the monster has suffered various radical reinterpretations, involving things like
speaking zombie with a specific interest for human brain (as in The Return of the Living Dead (1985), but hence their parodic nature, they have
little to do with social anxieties. During this, as Bishop1 calls it, parod-
1
— See Bishop, 2010, p. 181
17
ROM ERO AND SUCCE SSO RS
ic cycle of zombie cinema, Romero attempted to revitalize the subgenre
with the Day of the Dead, but the movie failed miserably in the box office. As pointed out by Joseph Maddrey1, “audiences in the carefree, consumer-friendly 1980s apparently did not feel the need for such a serious
examination of personal and societal values”.
Zombie scholars find signs of the more humanized zombie in the
Romero’s Day of the Dead, something to which the horror film industry
will come much later. Blurring down the boundary between the living
and the dead, Romero introduces the bits of residual memory in zombie
behavior, something that would help the viewer to empathize to monsters, and in the same time reminding that essentially the zombie is
their own reflection. Even in appearance, Day of the Dead zombies have
less horrible wounds and signs of decay, as it was before, especially for
Day of the Dead, 1985
the humans that had recently zombified.
1990s turned out to be a politically comfortable time for the US. Cold
War was over with the fall of the Soviet Union and Berlin Wall. During
1
— See Maddrey, 2004, p. 129
18
Clinton presidency, governmental sexual affairs
got Jackson’s
more press
Michael
Thriller,atten1983
tion then global genocides or mass tyrannies. America was mostly disconnected from global warfare, and noticeable conflicts has only taken place in the Middle East. As we have observed previously, a classical
serious zombie narrative is highly reactionist to the social and political injustices and fears, and with nothing specific to react to, in the
90s zombie appearances in cinema were steadily declining. With little exception in the more farce comedic field (Braindead, 1992), no other
notable piece of the subgenre appeared in this time of stability.
On the other hand it is worth mentioning that in the emerging medium of video gaming zombies made significant appearances in the
nineties. Doom (1993) was a revolutionary sci-fi first person shooter featured zombified marines, and Resident Evil (1996) which gave a start to
survival horror video game genre followed by a successful franchise involving cinema.
Resident Evil, 1996
19
Post Romero
Zombie scholars consider the post 9/11 era to be what is called a zombie Renaissance1. After the Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (2002), zombie
films started to appear with an unseen before frequency. The trend affected all mediums and still continues at the time this work is being
written.
“Scenes depicting deserted metropolitan streets, abandoned
human corpses, and gangs of lawless vigilantes have become
more common than ever, appearing on the nightly news as
often as on the movie screen.”
Bishop, 2010, p.11
28 Days Later introduces a faster, more feral monster of biological origin, who is technically not dead, but just infected with a rage virus.
Yet still flesh-eating these zombies are rather alive than dead, sprinting rather than walking, spitting blood onto their victims in pursuit of
1
— See Bishop, 2009
21
P OS T ROMERO
spreading the infection further. What all the different versions of the
zombie throughout its evolution in cinema and literature have now left
in common, is the absence of a certain essential metaphysical quality,
that a human had prior to zombification — it might be mind, soul or
will, in the same time being dead is not a necessary attribute any more.
This novelty introduced by Boyle expanded the possibility for new interpretations of the monster later on.
The main character of 28 Days Later, Jim, ends up using the infected to help him over-through violent militant group that initially gave
shelter to his little group, but then kept women as hostages. Jim did not
get infected with the rage virus, but he can’t take control over his own
inner rage, which in a way connects him to the zombies.
Social decay would become a highly common theme in the zombie
genre since 28 Days Later. Structures that were entitled to protect, in a
post-apocalyptic setting start pose a threat to the survival of the protagonists, which may address the increased distrust towards the authorities in the post 9/11 era.
Romero’s Land of the Dead (2005) takes the class issues further — in
a zombie apocalypse sequence an elite group of citizens is living in a
Fiddler’s Green skyscraper, the area of which isolated and well defended and guarded by sodiers shooting the intruders on sight. Not only is
depicts the quite expected societal decay within the group of survivors,
but as well it (not too subtly) refers to America’s immigration policy.
What Romero himself says about the film might as well be heard from
a political tribune:
“Thematically, what the film is about is a bunch of people trying
to live as though nothing has changed. Or at least that’s what
the administration believes. The protagonists understand that
the world has completely changed.”
Mansi, Undead Again via Bishop
22
Abandoned London
28 Days Later, 2002
Big Daddy’s impressive cognitive skills
Land of the Dead, 2005
This point is strenghtened by the fact that in Land of the Dead Romero continues to push the image of a more humanised zombie, showing
zombies remebering their past lives and even skills that they used to
have. Increased cognitive abilities and centralized organisation with a
defined leader serve not only as mechanism of fear, but as well of a potential empathy.
Reminiscent to the epidemic outbreaks that were happening in the
second half of 2010s and featuring Danny Boyle’s infected zombie type,
one of the recent high budget films, Marc Forster’s World War Z (2013)
contains a substancial amount of political references regarding authorities and societal decay. The scene where fierce horde of zombies force
Jerusalem wall
World War Z, 2013
23
P OS T ROMERO
climing over the defensive wall of Jerusalem could possibly not be less
subtle in its allegory to the Middle Eastern conflicts. Optimistically,
World War Z shows a humanity that has united and eventually succeeded against the common enemy.
Apart from the quite obvious update in allegorical references, ethological novelties and more transparent symbolism, zombie narratives
remained essentially the same as they were back in their classical
Romero’s setup. What has dramatically changed in the post-9/11 era is
the society and the reception of those narratives. The viewer is almost
forced to see zombie films through new lenses of the new context, and
the film industry adapts to that.
Taking into account the amount or tributes payed to video games in
film and vice versa within the last 15 years, it is evident that in the age
of digital cinema, the cultural distance between film and video games
has shortened. The two medias borrow from each other, creating market and production interdependencies with shared narratives and aesthetics. Bolter and Grusin1 refer to this process as remediation—games
incorporate certain traits of the film and films widely remediate elements of games. More than 50 video games featuring zombies in one
way or another has been released since the year 2005, therefore it seems
necessary to mention some of the most cinematic representations of
zombie genre in this medium.
Among popular names: coming from TV series The Walking Dead
(2012) featuring classic Romero zombie, Red Dead Redemption (2010)
bringing zombie into western aesthetical setting, and exceptionally
well received2 The Last of Us (2013). Unlike the Walking Dead narrative
featuring tribal structure of the post-apocalyptic society and the diffi-
1
— See Bolter, Grusin, 1999, p. 19
2
— score 95 on metacritic.com
24
culties the come with it, the story of Last of Us explores more the ramifications of the world turning into an overprotective police state with
dictatorial control and strict curfews. This may be seen as a reactionist metaphor in the light of recent societal unease relating excessive
counter-terrorstic measures and revealed by NSA contractor Edward
Snowden governmental control initiatives over internet privacy such
as PRISM surveillance program .
Somewhat reminiscent to the film scene of the end of 1980s, comedic slasher representations of zombie appear in video games as well —
Lollipop Chainsaw (2012) and Dead Rising series (2006-) exploit gore
and ridiculous violence.
Familiarity to the zombie narratives has reached new heights by the
middle of 2010s, which inevitably gave birth to the stream of tributes of
a comedic sort, some of the most successful among which were Shaun
of the Dead (2004), Zombieland (2009), Dead Snow (2009) and Warm Bodies
(2013). Romantic, funny and somewhat ridiculous these movies are different from the parodic splatter films of the 80s mainly in a sense that
Execution of the potentially infected
The Last of Us, 2013
25
P OS T ROMERO
Zombie protagonists of Warm Bodies, 2013
mostly the tradition of the zombie-apocalyptic setting is being well
respected, and comedic elements of the narrative do not disrupt it to
the point where it is not recognizable. Although presumably this is a
stage that every successful cultural entity passes, it can be assumed that
these movies may serve as a revelation from developed societal fear of
the fictional zombie-apocalypse.
Already since Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, zombies being a majority opposed to the small group of surviving protagonists became
a commodity. In the renaissance period of zombie cinema although,
Corporate zombies of Occupy Wall St., 2011
26
Photo credit: Associated Press (left)
and MCPIX (right), via Daily Mail
concept of zombie-protagonist started to gain weight, mostly in the comedic setting. In connection to flash-mob culture, zombie walks have
started to take place already in 2000, and by the beginning of 2010 they
are happening annually in every large city of the United States. Ironically, with the uprising of democratic protest, which started to appear
widely all over the globe in the reaction to injustices caused by difficult
economic situation, the protesters became this majority which normally would be compared to the crowds of zombie. In Romero’s movies zombies are 99 percent and participants of 2011’s Occupy Wall Street
protests recognized the analogy with a healthy sense of humor.
By the end of 2000s, mainly thanks to more than 70 high-budget feature length films produced in the first half of the decade, the concept of
zombie had left the boundaries of entertainment industry. Not only in
the area of information technology (quite expectedly), but as well in biology and finance the word “zombie” have entered professional terminology.
“As the world’s financial system teetered on the brink of the
abyss in late 2008 and early 2009, articles about the crisis in
publications like The Economist and The Financial Times began to make frequent reference to zombies [...]. This development would have been peculiar enough if it had been restricted
to journalists. Many of the articles, however, carried quotations
about zombies from such high-ranking public officials as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke (PBS 2009). This newfound
interest in zombies also crossed ideological lines: 2009 saw the
publication of reflections on zombies, capitalism, and crises by
such diverse figures as former US Treasury Secretary and Secretary of State James Baker and the late Marxist scholar Chris
Harman [...]. Zombie analogies have become so widespread (a
27
November 2009 Google search for the phrase “zombie banks”
turned up 473,000 hits) that the current period might be referred
to as the “zombie crisis.” Indeed, with apologies to Marx and Engels (who wrote in The Communist Manifesto that “A specter is
haunting Europe—the specter of communism”), it seems that
since mid-2007, a horde of zombies has been shambling after the
global economy, flailing at the doors and moaning “brains”.
D. Hall, 2011
28
Memetics
and taxonomy
of the zombie
From the previous sections we have seen how the concept of the zombie has been evolving throughout the history of the last hundred years.
It is tempting to look at such evolution of a cultural entity through its
correspondence to the evolution of organisms, undergoing similar processes of variation, mutation, inheritance and natural selection.
In his book The Selfish Gene (1976), evolutionary biologist Richard
Dawkins has introduced the concept of a meme1 — a cultural replicator,
an element of culture such as a tradition, belief, idea, melody, or fashion,
that can be held in memory and transmitted or copied to the memory
of another person. Analogously to genes, memes differ in their degree of
fitness, which can be estimated as adaptedness to the social and cultural environment within which they propagate2.
Heylighen defines four stages of meme replication — assimilation,
retention, expression and transmission. To be assimilated, upon encounter a meme must be respectively noticed, understood and accepted by
1
— See Dawkins, 1976, p. 189
2
— See Heylighen, 1999, p. 5
31
M EM ET I CS AND TAXO N OMY OF T HE ZOMBI E
the host. By definition, a meme must stay in the memory for a certain
time; and the longer the meme stays there, the more opportunities it
will have to spread further by “infecting” other hosts. Assimilation and
retention are the stages most affected by selection — we indeed do not
memorize most of the information we encounter, but only the most important or relevant pieces of it reaches a place in the long-term memory. On the stage of expression, the meme is being communicated to
other individuals. Transmission requires a physical carrier of the expression which is sufficiently stable to transmit it without too much
loss of information. Hence the emergence of mass media, transmission
is as well the stage where selection happens to have an impact and the
Feature-lenght high budget zombie film
production in the US over time
White Zombie
1932, Victor Halperin
I Walked with a Zombie
1943, Jacques Tourneur
1930
1940
Great Depression
US occupation
of Haiti
32
WW2
Night of the Living Dead
1968, Romero
1950
Hiroshima
1960
Vietnam
Cold War
1970
contrast between successful and unsuccessful memes is large1. Fitness
of the meme is naturally defined as a measure of survival rates throughout those four stages.
If we look at the cinematic representations of the zombie as a cultural meme, we can trace the variation of its traits over the three major
phases across zombie’s history. The measure of fitness can be with certain level of simplification tied to the amount of high-budget zombie
movie production per year. Indeed, from all the mediums which zombies have invaded, such as literature, graphic novels and video games,
cinema has most coverage and therefore can be considered as the most
fertile ground for the meme to spread. The financial success and good
“Reniassance”
peak
Fido
Zombieland
2006, A. Currie 2009, Ruben Fleischer
Shaun of the Dead
2004, Edgar Wright
Developmental
peak
Classical
peak
The Walking Dead
2010, TV-series
Parodic
peak
Warm Bodies
2013, Jonathan Levine
World War Z
2013, Marc Forster
Dawn of the Dead
1978, Romero
28 Days Later...
2002, Danny Boyle
Day of the Dead
1985, Romero
1980
1990
AIDS epidemic
2000
Gulf War
9/11
2010
Indian ocean
earthquakes
2013
Swine flu
pandemic
Iraq War
1
— See Heylighen, Chielens, 2005, p. 11
33
34
MEM ETICS AND TAXON O MY O F T HE ZO MBI E
reception of a certain movie “infects” more people with the meme and
produces market demand for the similar narratives to be reproduced.
The zombie meme first has been restricted to the traditional
mass-culture producers such as writers and directors as carriers of the
meme, later traveling across all possible mediums and invoking the expression and transmission among the masses, allowing, for example,
for events such as zombie walks. Apart from general popularity of the
zombie, development of the internet being an especially nutrient medium for memes, allowing more people to create and spread their own
content might have been a reason for that.
As we have seen in the first section, unlike other undead, zombie
does not have a gothic literary tradition as a backbone, allowing for the
meme to undergo more various mutations.
It is hard to assemble a sensible taxonomy of the zombie monster
across all its diverse interpretations by many directors and screenwriters—hence the openness of the concept such taxonomy would turn out
contradictory within itself, and the research value of such data presumably would not turn out to be high. Although there are attempts
of creating such taxonomy, one of them is called The Map of Zombies is
created by comic artist Jason Thompson (raised more than $20 000 on
Kickstarter), features over 350 different zombie types based on its appearances across cinema, literature, graphic novels, video- and boardgames. Yet being visually appealing, it seems troublesome to address
this sort of classification academically, since the amount of properties
is quite large and repetitive, and, more importantly, even the most intelligible dichotomies such as dead—alive, slow—fast, dumb—”smart”,
horrific—comedic do not seem to have any resemblance to the nature
of origin of zombienesss, nor does such resemblance actually matter
for many of the zombie narratives across mainstream film production.
Artwork credit Jason Thompson,
The Map of Zombies, 2012
mockman.com
35
M EM ET I CS AND TAXO N OMY OF T HE ZOMBI E
A more comprehensible classification is proposed by K. Boon1 which
features nine types based solely on the origin of the zombie. Although
only three types are featured substantially in the mainstream cinema: zombie drone—the pre-Romero interpretation that involves a master
who had enslaved people through zombification; zombie ghoul—classic
Romero cannibalistic corpse; and bio zombie—infected alive popularized
by Boyle’s 28 Days Later.
This taxonomy, although valuable in its completeness, does not involve some other important properties such as physical or intellectual
properties, and thus does not suffice in the pursuit of creating a meaningful resemblance to the social anxieties that are being reflected on
throughout the film.
Boon’s nine types of the zombie
Zombie drone
a person whose will has been
taken from him or her, resulting
in a slavish obedience;
Bio zombie
similar to tech zombies, except
some biological, natural, or
chemical element is the medium
that robs people of their will;
Cultural zombie
in general, refers to the type of
zombie we locate within popular
culture;
1
— See Cristie,Lauro, p. 57
36
Zombie ghoul
fusion of the zombie and the
ghoul, which has lost volition
and feeds on flesh;
Zombie channel
a person who has been resurrected and some other entity
has possessed his or her form;
Zombie ghost
not actually a zombie, returned
from the dead with all or most
of his or her faculties intact;
Tech zombie
people who have lost their volition
through the use of some technological device;
Psychological zombie
a person who has lost his or her
will as a result of some psychological conditioning;
Zombie ruse
slight of hand common in young
adult novels where the ‘‘zombies’’
turn out to not be zombies at all;
From what we have seen, it is safe to assume that looking at the
monster itself will not give a complete information on what social issues the content creators wanted to tap on, such judgement would only
be possible while broader context of the narrative is taken into account.
Even then, any kind of such assumptions is to some extent subjective
and somewhat conspiratory.
Evolutionary memetic approach to the analysis of propagation of
cultural entities meets its criticism1 as well—it is based the argument
that, unlike genes, memes are not being carried passively by human
hosts, and the necessary process of interpretation is not taken into the
the account by this analytical model. The fact that via reinterpretation
from the host new cultural traits can be passed with the meme transmission makes cultural evolution incomparably quicker than biological one and crucially complicates the statistical approach to its analysis, not to mention the subjective nature of interpretation.
Based on the historical examples covered in this work, it seems clear
that the hypothesis of zombies having a special ability to flexibly reflect the society has its right, although it is hard to draw deep conclusions from it. We can not approach a cultural product only through the
historical context of its entities, and additional data that can be taken
into account and
1
— See Heylighen, Chielens, 2005, pp. 5, 20
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Resume
Zombie is uniquely a cultural meme which appeared and mainly existed in the New World, therefore, as most of the Hollywood production,
its context is deeply connected to the United States.
Besides providing cheap thrill and excessive violence, zombie narratives have shown to make a cultural work of providing revelation from
the wide range of social anxieties connected to the certain times of the
history. From racial miscegenation and invasion fears, to anxieties related to excessive consumerism and instability of the traditional family; from fears of nuclear warfare to concerns related to environmental
pollution and dangers of the quick scientific and technological progress; from fear of protective societal structures failing in its functions
to unrest connected to governmental surveillance of internet privacy.
In 2011, only zombie-related video games and film have contributed together more than $5 billion to the U.S. economy. We can now find
zombies in every medium related to entertainment, moreover the ex-
1
— See Ogg, 2011
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amples of zombie banks, zombie ants and mobile fitness app called
“Zombies, Run!” where zombies are employed to motivate users to run
faster, show the incredible meme’s propagation ability.
Although, as we have seen, conclusions that can be made using evolutionary memetic approach are limited in depth, it is clear that socially relevant stories are being told through zombie narratives for the wide
audience.
Attempts to analyze the ideas that trigger mass audience appeal are,
naturally, important for understanding the audience. With the development of internet the competition for people’s attention has reached
never seen before heights. To effectively tell a story in such context
means not only to understand what is relevant, but as well anticipate
the emotional response and life of the ideas undergoing multiple reinterpretation.
The world around us is changing, and as designers we must constantly adapt to those technological and societal shifts. Zombie narratives tell stories about adapting to extreme changes, and themselves
reveal a story of a continuous adaptation within the cultural context.
I mean I don’t care what they are. I don’t care where they came
from. They could be any disaster. They could be an earthquake, a
hurricane, whatever. In my mind, they don’t represent anything
to me except a global change of some kind. And the stories are
about how people respond or fail to respond to this and that’s really all they’ve ever represented to me.
G. Romero, from the interview to www.horror-movies.ca
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