Studying the modern world's most favorite monster.
The Living Dead
A zombie is defined as a corpse behaving as if alive or animated through unknown means, it is devoid of consciousness and identity (hence the living dead) and -normally- has a malevolent intent on the living. It is naturally considered hazardous to be in close promixity even with one for reasons we will read later on…
Screenshot from
Night of the Living Dead 1968. Considered as the father of 'modern' horror films for its shocking scenes of gore and social commentary faced by the Americans during that time; racism, civil rights, sexual revolution, feminism and the Vietnam war.
History points the technical origins of the zombie are from various African cultures, intermixed with Christian belief likely during the colonial times. However, the oldest recorded description of the classical flesh-eating zombie predates Christianity by 2,000 years around humanity’s dawn of civilization in the 1st Millenium.
Excerpt from the Mesopotamia-Sumerian epic-poem, the
Epic of Gilgamesh via SparkNotes.
“I will knock down the Gates of the Netherworld,
I will smash the door posts, and leave the doors flat down,
and will let the dead go up to eat the living!
And the dead will outnumber the living.”
We have always been fascinated with the afterlife and have often aligned it with positive connotations of rest and eternal paradise especially for its most faithful adherents. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, it would appear that all dead people would end up in the same place, a gloomy and horrible place of worms, shadows, and gigantic monsters.
It was so terrible the hero ripped off his hair unable to fathom the afterlife and almost losing his sanity!
Afro-Caribbean witchcraft
At times the idea of zombies have been associated with slavery and probably existed to compensate for actually using human beings as some sort of machines to do ‘slave tasks’ without complaining and without getting tired. It is explained that witch-doctors called
bokor, formulate ‘black magic‘ from chemicals including essences of some animals, plants and are able to create a ‘zombie’ as slaves who only ate once day on a cup full of sugar. Victims of voodoo are said to end up in a death-like state which then are presumed dead, mistakenly being buried by their relatives only to be taken and revived by the bokor as people with no will of their own who will do things at the bokor’s bidding.
Events of zombies like these are said to be notorious in Haiti and parts of the Carribean and
such acts are criminalized by the local police and treated as very real and very serious. These however have been largely ignored as factual by the rest of the world as scientists from all fields have not come the conclusion to how these things are made possible.
Scientific investigation of the zombie cases in Haiti. >>:http://www.biologyonline.org/articles/dead_man_walking.html
- Belief in zombies is almost universal in Haiti and practicing zombification is a serious offense with legal repercussions.
- Zombie powder always contains puffer fish.
- Flesh of the puffer fish contains quantities of tetrodotoxin.
- Tetrodotoxin can induce a state of suspended animation almost indistinguishable from death. (death-like state)
Why we easily relate to Zombies?
"We're them and they're us." -- Barbara, Night of the Living Dead (1990)
Psychological analysis of Zombism as to why (of all monsters in literature) we easily relate to them. The following are the most common
READ CLOSELY.
Anger or Rage – Zombies symbolize negative perseverance towards inflicting harm or hate to others. ie. Revenge or simply
misanthropy (disdain towards humanity in general).
Puritanism – This also involves perseverance but in pursuit of morality in a world considered by the subject as lacking in one. Therefore seeing disasters and calamities as punishment from God as a way to bring humanity back to the basics (simpler) even primitive kind of life concentrated more on
survival than vanity or narcissism.
Sexual desires – Zombies are predators and are always after for living flesh to consume without proper concerns for their well-being or their victims. This might reflect people who are sexually active or has a sexually active lifestyle that they’ll go against the norm to achieve temporary satisfaction.
Frustrated Ambition – Zombies are alive but not exactly, they can walk for miles without rest but in the end they're
simply rotting away. Its a tragic picture we can easily associate with our goals in life.
We can pursue and work hard for them but they don’t always end up the way we like it to be.
Desire for Immortality – For obvious reasons…And like vampires this quest for eternal life is a twisted version of the religious theology found specifically in Abrahamic faiths
Consumerism – George Romero’s
Dawn of the Dead 1978 version was one of the first modern zombie films and was a deliberate attack against
excessive commercialism in America.
Malls were opening everywhere, people
compete and strive to acquire things they never truly needed and today were witnessing this hurtful
materialism far worse, stealing our humanity day by day.
Stress – Routine life, work, eat, sleep are the things most human beings live through nowadays. We are mostly preoccupied with work, school, we hardly have enough time to be human beings able to do the things we like. This modern cycle of life basically has made zombies out of us and it would appear we’re trapped, holed-up by this continuing onslaught.
Scientific Irresponsibility – In the modern world
Science is the new religion. We rely believing on ‘things’ as long as it is proven with evidence. We follow its precepts, adhere to its theories and yet snub and ridicule alternative opinions science has not concluded or denies as factual or true.
Science has the final word. Zombies however are symbolic that science can never know every thing. In Zombie films, the cause for the dead returning to life are not always explained well, befuddling the brightest minds to resort to explanations closer to religious dogma. Sometimes the living dead are the disastrous result of science tinkering with nature -
Playing God.
Death – Death has haunted humanity for as long as he is alive. Death has no cure. Death might not come right away and we think we can cheat it but every waking day has the potential to be our last. Zombies are the symbols of death;
they’re very slow, you can easily out run them but in the end they’ll eventually get you.
Life is complicated death is simple
Zombie Apocalypse
For the most part the zombie apocalypse is a constant theme brought about by an uncontrollable plague usually of a virus causing the infected to become the living dead. Either it was a government experiment gone FUBAR, space dusts, God’s punishment, the reason for the dead reanimating is not always conclusive as in Romero type zombies portray those who died prior to the outbreak or those that died of natural causes with no contact with the infected return to life as an undead as well.
Rabies in humans video.
Warning this video might be disturbing for some.
The effects on the Zombie infection would likely resemble rabies.
Zombies are instantly drawn to consume the flesh of a living person. And will never attack its fellow undead. It appears they can differentiate the living and the dead based on reactive senses despite the fact they are just walking corpses, and for the same reasons it also does not fully explain their insatiable hunger, leading people to believe especially in Romero’s series that the cause for the dead to rise up precisely to consume the living are likely of supernatural origin.
The recent Miami 'cannibalism' incident and the rumored LPQ-79 "virus" caused/causing some mayhem in the US.
The End.
Zombie: Dissecting the Origins of the Living Dead
Originally Posted by yandz
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