It is the day to set up the county fair booths, so what am I thinking about after getting up this morning? Is it politics or the logistics of the materials needed for the booth? No, my brain is stuck on the inexplicable popularity of the walking undead, AKA zombies. No, not the drug induced Haitian slaves or the poor souls who followed the Grateful Dead around. I'm talking about cannibalistic, brain chomping, slow shuffling, spreading like lice movie zombies.
It all seems to have started with George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, a low budget B &W movie that tossed in at least a little serious social commentary on race, but mainly was about grossing people out. Ever since then, low budget horror movies about zombies have been churned out with great regularity. True, some of them are direct to video or the SciFi Channel, but they appear to be perennial favorites of horror fans. It has spread to comic books, with an entire miniseries called Marvel Zombies being popular, with heroes like Captain America, Wolverine, and the Fantastic Four becoming villains eating the population.
But why? I can understand the popularity of vampires, because that essentially has been about sex ever since Bram Stoker wrote Dracula and we all know that sex and sensuality sells. Women in particular are drawn to trashy vampire novels and there are even people who live a vampiric lifestyle. Werewolves are popular with the guys and I suspect that has to do with the whole hunting reversal theme in those movies. But what is the appeal of shambling masses of rotting flesh wandering around eating people?
I don't get it. My reaction if this happened in reality would be something like this, "Oh, look. A group of zombies is staggering down the sidewalk. I'd better walk a little faster, maybe cross the street. I bet they'll make good target practice after lunch. I wonder if I left the stove on."
The only reason I can figure for zombies being scary is we have become such a lazy society that a slow moving and unintelligent predator is a threat. Is this horror born of loafing around too much combined with our ever shortening attention spans? "DUDE! I'd have to get off this couch and walk to escape this flesh eating monster. That is so unfair! Oh look, Britney's taking her clothes off in her new video... *CHOMP!*"
Forget nukes, all our enemies need is to invent zombies like in the movies.
Reviews of movies, anime, and the occasional TV show mixed with warnings on Blogger spam. Also to be found are musings on whatever I am thinking about - all from the point of view of being left to watch everything from the sidelines of life.
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