Zombies

Amira Heath
Rachel Hughes
Alondra Perez

Function of Monsters
in Genre Fiction
Monsters add danger and excitement, in turn
making the medium more enjoyable to the
audience.
Personify outside forces or antagonism, creating fear
the audience
Heighten menace -> unpredictable plot structure
Explore new themes and ideas -> challenging the

The History of Zombies in Pop-Culture

Zombies have been a growing myth for centuries, originating in Haiti in the 1600s.

The myth then jumped from Haitian folklore to American films with the 1932 film,
White Zombie and grew increasingly more popular as the films Revenge of the
Zombies (1943) and Night of the Living Dead (1968) created their own adaptations.

The modern day zombie, however, drew inspiration from Richard Mathesons I Am
Legend, making the living dead character more personal by using friends and family
as the ones rising from the grave.

Zombies are now fully-fledged icons in entertainment, captivating audiences in

television shows like AMCs The Walking Dead and the film adaptation of World War
Z

Their popularity continues to exponentially grow, 16.11 Million viewers tuned in to

AMCs The Walking Dead season 4 premiere and World War Z brought in an

Whats Expected?
Audience turns to a zombie movie/book and expects:

Gore, bloody guts, and decomposing body horror

Cannibalism, man-eating fiends (Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion creates an

unlikely bond between zombie and victim)

Superhuman strength, mindless, no conscience

Apocalypse --> Zombies are targeted as the cause for societal/system

breakdown

Zombie survival

Ultimately, last human survivors as well ---> struggle between the living and
living dead (AMCs The Walking Dead, epitomizes all the expectations, but
manipulates and subverts the one expectation of what to fear. The survivors
and the human cruelty they are capable of doing, is seen to be much more
deadly than the zombies around them.

Max Brooks invokes a legitimate message in his novel World War Z, of the
depth of fear that gripped
society through the plague.

Why Are Zombies So

Popular?

Director of Night of the Living Dead, George A. Romero attributes zombies as a

metaphor for everything wrong in the modern world.
Zombies were created to be relentless and almost indestructible, taking victims with a
single bite and only being killed by decapitation.
To Romero, Zombies have stood for unreasoning, destructive conformity, stating
that he created Night of the Living Dead (1968) out of anger towards the murder
of Martin Luther King Jr. and the fact that the Sixties didnt work.
Zombies continued to grow in pop-culture by latching on to the audiences fear of the
concept itself.
Unlike vampires and werewolves, zombies are unable to hide and exist in a
normal society.
They are either a consequence or a symptom of complete societal breakdown
and when theyre present, the rule of law ceases to exist as the uninfected
survivors are forced to live in a newly dystopian world.

Popularity of Zombies contd...

Zombies continued captivation of American audiences
cant be coincidental.
Their popularity reached a new high as American
society seemed to become more broken, banks
closing, outbreaks of war, terrorist attacks around
the world, climate change affecting weather
patterns and the government shutdown.
Max Brooks, author of World War Z believes zombies
personify the anxiety most people have about the future
without making any threat feel too real.
Unlike nuclear war and real plagues which are too real
of possibilities, would make audiences turn away.
Zombies allow people to witness the end of the world
theyve always wondered about, essentially, while
still being able to function in their lives because
the catalyst of that end is fictional.

Works Cited
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20131025-zombie-nation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_ELfwOkOps
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/magazine/max-brooks-is-not-kidding-about-the-zombie-apocalypse.html?_r=0
http://www.amazon.com/World-War-Oral-History-Zombie/dp/0307346617
http://www.gwthomas.org/function.htm
http://www.livescience.com/48543-how-zombies-evolved-in-pop-culture.html
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20131025-zombie-nation