Why don’t people realise that the sky is evil? The Day of the Triffids has a meteor shower that blinds anyone who sees it, thereby allowing man-eating plants to herald in the end of civilisation; Where have all the people gone? has solar flares that reduces nearly all humanity to white powder, while The Night of the Comet similarly has the world wiped out by a passing comet (only this time the dust is red not white).
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Lazy Zombie will eat your brains
Yet another article has been published about the prominance of zombies in popular culture: ‘Zombies emerge when the economy ebbs‘. I was pretty excited when I saw this as I thought it would have something new to say about zombies and linking the undead to the economy.
It refers to a so-called ‘Zombie Index’, stating “when the going gets tough, analysts say, the tough turn to entertainment in which reanimated corpses embody our collective anxiety.” It backs this up with a reference to White Zombie’s release in 1932 during the Great Depression and 1968 (when Night of the Living Dead was released) as an year of economic downturn. Sounds impressive. Unfortunately, this argument is rubbish.
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“Other monsters may threaten individual humans, but the living dead threaten the entire human race. Zombies are slate wipers.” Max Brooks (author of ‘World War Z’)
“Zombies connect because they’re lovable menaces, funny, and easy metaphors.” Seth Grahame-Smith (author of ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’)
“In the world of traditional horror, nothing is more popular right now than zombies. The living dead are here to stay.” Katy Hershberger of St. Martin’s Press.
All quotes from the Arizona Republic’s article, Zombies are a Rising Trend.
The Postman
Zombie Apocalypse by Konami
Normally the words ‘zombie’, ‘apocalypse’ and ‘Xbox 360′ make me weak at the knees but somehow Konami’s forthcoming ‘Zombie Apocalypse‘ for Xbox 360 and PS3 doesn’t excite me much. Not only does it have a crap and unoriginal name but the gameplay is a pretty unashamedly blatent rip-off of Left 4 Dead. ZA is a co-operative game where up to four survivors battle against a ton of zombies. It’s third-person instead of L4D’s first-person but the premise sounds pretty much the same. Zombie Apocalypse will be available on Xbox Live and Playstation Network sometime in the Summer, so at least it should be cheap.
The Postman
A Texas road sign displays warnings about zombies in January 2009
Zombies are everywhere at the moment: a book mashing up the living dead with Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) is a best-seller, numerous zombie films and games have been recently released or will come out later this year and even Woody Harrelson justified hitting a photographer recently because he thought they were a member of the living dead: “I was startled by a paparazzo,” Harrelson said, “who I quite understandably mistook for a zombie.” So why is there a cultural zombie invasion at the moment? What is it about the living dead that means they are popping up at on every corner?
Contemporary Anxieties
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Left 4 Dead
My game of choice over the last few months has been Valve’s zombie first-person shooter, Left 4 Dead. Set during a zombie apocalypse, Left 4 Dead captures the immediate aftermath of the end of the world perfectly: the four human survivors have to negotiate thousands of zombies against a backdrop of empty offices, burnt out buildings and broken-down trains, planes and automobiles. However, Left 4 Dead is more than just a brilliant game, its emphasis on co-operative gameplay is highly significant as it echoes a broader movement towards global co-operation on a political, social and economic level.
Co-operation
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Dawn of the Dead 1978 Poster
For my birthday last year my wife gave me a special box-set edition of one of my favourite films: George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978). I let the black box sit on the shelf, waiting for the perfect occasion to watch and enjoy it like a good wine. Recently, I decided the time was right to watch it again, so I ripped open the plastic cover, selected one of the three versions of the film and settled down for a night of zombie apocalypse.
And it wasn’t that good.
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Dead Set
Where would you like to be when the zombie apocalypse hits? Would you want to be hanging out in an abandoned farm-house? A suburban shopping mall? Or an underground military facility? Probably the last place I would want to be at the best of times is the Big Brother house, forced to live with a variety of wannabe-celebs while each of my words and actions were monitored by the world at large.
Imprisoned with these unappealing people while outside is being eaten by hungry zombies is even less appealing. However, this is the premise of ‘Dead Set’; an E4 mini-series for Halloween that mashes-up the zombie genre with reality tv.
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