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The idea of the dead walking among the living has been around for a long time. In Inferno, Dante meets Fra Albergio tells him of traitors like himself who are dead before their bodies die. Dante is horrified; he has seen one of these men the friar describes, one that “eats, and drinks, and sleeps, and puts on clothes” (33.141) but is, nevertheless, dead. In Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors walks Dr. Pinch, who is described as “a living dead man” (5.1.241).
Isn’t it strange that both Dante and Shakespeare conceived of the zombie, but it never caught on as a monster?
Zombies never caught on . . .until now
Zombies sure have caught on lately. The zombie is one of the most popular monsters of the last century. Over four hundred zombie movies have been made and almost half of these since 2000 (see Wikipedia, “List of Zombie Films” and do the math)
So why the popularity of zombies now and not before?
The short answer is that monsters show up when our identity is under is threatened. Not our individual identity, but our collective identity. The form the monster takes has everything to do with what our collective identity is, and where it is vulnerable. The popularity of the most recent addition to the monster pantheon, the zombie, suggests that it is representative of that which menaces our contemporary collective identity. Consequently, we can learn a lot about ourselves by paying some attention to our monster, the zombie.
George Romero’s in Night of the Living Dead (1968) presents us with the “modern” zombie. He changed earlier ideas of the undead and the transformation embodies exactly what scares the crap out of the modern identity. What is this modern identity?
[click_to_tweet tweet=”The zombie is a horrifying reflection of the modern self in a world without transcendence—it is, therefore, a monster for our time. #Zombie #TheMeaningofZombies” quote=”The zombie is a horrifying reflection of the modern self in a world without transcendence—it is, therefore, a monster for our time.”]
The Modern Identity
This is a complex question, but at its most basic, the Modern identity is materialistic.
Our society made the turn toward materialism over a century ago. Materialism in the philosophical sense is the idea reality is composed of matter. Only matter. Everything, including thought, feeling, mind, consciousness and will, can be explained in physical terms.
In other words, there is no spiritual reality, no transcendent — no God or gods, angels, demons; no objective Good, Truth, or Beauty, no universal meaning or human purpose.
This is what Friedrich Nietzsche had in mind when he voiced this idea through the madman in The Gay Science (1882) declaring the death of God. This idea didn’t immediately percolate down to the popular level of our culture. It was beginning to be felt in the 1960s.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”The implications of materialism are one of the key features of the Dead in Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. #Zombies #NightoftheLivingDead” quote=”The implications of materialism are one of the key features of the Dead in Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.”]
My thesis is that the zombie is a horrifying reflection of the modern self in a world without transcendence—it is, therefore, a monster for our time.
Next zombie post: Zombies (2): The Apocalypse
Trent, as always a thoughtful post. The zombies, though, are an new take on an old problem. Aren’t all men dead before they come to Christ? and thus all of us have some experience as “the living dead.” It’s also interesting that eating the living is a zombie and vampire trait. The prisoner in Dracula who eats living things gives the rationale to the uninitiated by explaining in the blood is the life, and that life is power. Thus by eating the blood, the life, the eater becomes stronger, powerful, and with enough — invincible. It is a ritual that may be rooted in the transubstantiation theology of the Roman Catholic Church. By ingesting the living Christ, Roman Catholics have internalized the physical blood and body of Christ. They become part of a larger entity, part of God, in fact, and one would think, more powerful by ingesting his life. Zombie-like indeed.
Thanks for the comment Jim, I agree that zombies represent a new take on an old problem. The particular problem that I am looking at in this post, and those that follow, is the old problem of idenity. Ideally, Christians find their identity in Christ, and see the identity of their neighbours in terms of being created in the image of God. One of the ways we can understand the modern secular self is to look at the monsters in modern secular narratives. This is just as fruitful an investigation to explore the Victorian self by looking at its monsters–Dracula, Wolfman and Mr. Hyde (to name a few). There are many directions to go in the study of monsters, and you open up another very interesting line of thought that bears some thinking (once I have completed the current line of inquiry). Thanks for that.
mmmm…. brains.
Zombie are fun and zombies are inherently fractional. Of course, zombie-based learning based-learning is right up my alley, see my book, In Parts: A tale of fractional zombies at https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/in-parts/id615486016?mt=11
ps- I’m more a fan of Romero’s zombies than many of the newer incarnations, but at least they keep the genre alive 🙂
An interesting commentary Trent. I found the idea that zombies are “negative mirror images of ourselves” interesting. As far as “scapegoats” – that angle is captured in my own (if I may plug) eBook, Zombie Psychology. Where I talk about what in psychology is called the “Just World Belief”: that when things go wrong we like to blame others rather than face the inherent chaos in the world: http://www.thepsychfiles.com/1621/episode-138-zombies-6-reasons-why-are-we-so-fascinated-by-them
Once I have caught up on some reading that I neglected because of my zombie research, I might just visit that eBook of yours. Thanks for the comment, even though it was unabashedly self-serving. 🙂