I thought HIV lead to the vampire thing? Though I suppose some writers can sublimate just a bit deeper than others.
Nah. Zombies still the subaltern or (sub-) proletariat, as viewed by the bourgeois intellectual. Zombie apocalypse is the Revolution. Slow, stupid, indiscriminate but a relentless horde comin' to get ya.
>Dawn of the Dead said it all. Artists can play or try to invert or whatever but the myth will come back through.
Ain't no suave zombies. Ain't no zombie wit.
Disease? Real zombieism is not airborne. You need to have physical contact with those gross disgustin' critters. Ewwww.
2.last: That's kind of how AIDS works, at least with the physical contact part.
2: Helpfully, this answers two questions: why there are so many mcmanus comments these days, and what's happened to so many formerly prolific posters and commenters.
Answer: bob has bitten them, and they've turned into more bobs. Even now a shambling horde of ex-unfoggeders are neglecting their cookery, swimming, lifeguards, potsherds, entertaining children, legal practice etc, and are drooling over their keyboards about the coming revolution.
It is no coincidence that Romero brought back the zombie at almost the exact moment the intellectual left abandoned the working class.
In Haiti, that site of Black Independence forever punished, zombies are feared by proles as the return of slave labor, not something that might attack them. Classic zombie works the sugarcane, without wages or complaint.
4:"Relentless" might be my favorite word evah.
Classic zombie works the sugarcane
That could lead to AIDS, depending on prophylaxis use.
3:Pattinson sure, Del Toro maybe, but who wants to make out with a zombie? Physical contact sure, but how do "we" get so close? Well, Romero I:the country;Romero II: shopping malls.
Disease works better with vampirism, which is seductive and sneaky. And vampyrs made a comeback in the 70s with King, Rice, Yarbro. Before aids was herpes.
Zombies are something else. Our protagonist don't understand those people having contact with each other somewhere we don't go and somehow becoming a force. How'd that happen? Rise of the right, as viewed from Harvard.
Romero II: shopping malls
More specifically, the mall nearest to my house. I haven't been there in over ten years, because of my strong opposition to consumerism not going to the nicer malls.
I did like the creative use of the word "peon" in the post.
Nah, bob is not a hoard of zombies. He's just the most basic prototype that the Watson programmers developed. He might not pass a Turing test, but he'll get from any conceivable topic to "the proletariat" in five steps or less.
Or a horde, even. The Law of Correcting People on the Internet strikes again.
a hoard of zombies
You should market this idea to A&E. It's the only way I would ever watch Hoarders.
You should market this idea to A&E.
That reads even better in Britain where A & E means ER.
"Doctor, she's gone! the CPR isn't working!"
"Never mind, nurse, get one of the zombies out of store. Her husband's a bit thick, he won't notice."
11:Can't do it on the "They Shall Make Faces" thread.
What's the joke about the Rorschach tests?
But zombies are easy.
Raised elsewhere: if vampires are the aristocracy and zombies are the proles, what's the middle-class monster? My own theory was that the middle class is the nation of shopkeepers - commerce is the middle-class pursuit - so the middle-class monster is the Devil, buying people's souls and tricking them as part of the deal.
Thoughts?
re: 16
[Not really sure if I'd want to defend this one, but ...]
Mr Hyde, maybe? The bourgeois id that gets released once the shackles of politesse are removed?
what's the middle-class monster?
Us. The audience, of course. We don't go to movies to watch ourselves, we go to see our fantasies and nightmares.
16: Based on my back hair and middle class status, I'm going with werewolf.
I argued that the werewolf is the audience -- that's the monster you're afraid of becoming, rather than the one you're afraid is going to come get you. It makes sense as a middle-class fear as well: fear of ceasing to be able to function in an orderly middle-class way.
Sure, but I bet I have a better coat of back hair.
I argued that the werewolf is the audience -- that's the monster you're afraid of becoming, rather than the one you're afraid is going to come get you.
I could see how you'd get there from the werewolf story, but I'm not aware of any actual werewolf stories (film or page) that really fit this frame. Most are actually full of monsters you're scared will come and get you. (And the related fear: it might be your seemingly-normal spouse or neighbor who's the monster!) Did you have one in mind? I'd actually be interested in something that played up the "the monster might be you angle.
I'm not aware of any actual werewolf stories (film or page) that really fit this frame
Being Human kind of fits.
I Was A Teenage Werewolf? Teen Wolf? Oz from Buffy? Bisclavret from the Lais of Marie de France? Not so much "The monster might be you" -- not a mystery -- but "The monster is you, how are you going to deal?"
24: Lupin in Harry Potter kind of fits in that we see him trying to make a normal life while being a werewolf.
Not so much "The monster might be you" -- not a mystery -- but "The monster is you, how are you going to deal?"
Oh, well that's different. I was hoping for something that played more on the fact that the people don't remember being/becoming werewolves.
There's some "The monster might be you". I think Oz in Buffy was like that.
I haven't seen Buffy. I didn't realize it had werewolves. I thought it was a vampire show.
I was hoping for something that played more on the fact that the people don't remember being/becoming werewolves
I think the convention of waking up in the middle of the woods naked and covered in blood makes this difficult. But I do think of this every time I see a commercial for A/mbien, what with all the warnings about sleep-eating, sleep-operating-of-heavy-machinery, sleep-crime.
I think the convention of waking up in the middle of the woods naked and covered in blood makes this difficult.
Like there aren't hundreds of reasons for that.
I think the convention of waking up in the middle of the woods naked and covered in blood makes this difficult.
Well, probably not insurmountable, but yes, definitely difficult. Hence 24.
I thought HIV lead to the vampire thing?
Vampires are definitely "about" sex and the risks of sex. But one important distinction between zombies and vampires which would present two different sides of the disease metaphor is that vampires are intentional in their predation in way that zombies aren't.
I could see zombies as a better image for a disease that is spread by people who are unaware that they are infected.
Nah. Zombies still the subaltern or (sub-) proletariat, as viewed by the bourgeois intellectual. Zombie apocalypse is the Revolution. Slow, stupid, indiscriminate but a relentless horde comin' to get ya.
Yeah. Public health clearly can't be the main metaphor for zombies, just one tributary feeding the interest.
Part of why I found the link convincing, however, is that I recently saw somebody else making a comment along the lines of, "zombie stories are boring. Once you know the rate of infection and the size of the infected population you can pretty much tell whether the zombies will win or not." That's clearly assumes that epidemiology (rather than morality) is the appropriate frame of reference.
what's the middle-class monster?
Pod people? Body snatchers? I think the middle class threat is somebody who is so paralyzed by convention that they can no longer react in a human way.
Robots? (thinking of one variation on the Stepford Wives).
34: But that convention is the moment you're looking for. It's not an extended period in the story, but most werewolves have that process of discovery. Until some morning, they were normal, harmless people. Then they wake up naked and with blood on their hands and teeth, and wonder "What have I done?" And then they go home and hear the stories about the werewolf terrorizing the village last night, and realize that they were the werewolf. It's not the whole plot, it's an implied episode in the story. But it's in there.
I expect part of the zombie thing is just that some decent zombie movies got made in the early 2000s, after a decade or so where the zombie movies being made were cheap and shitty.*
* I'm sure a horror buff would be able to tell me which of those cheap and shitty looking movies [looking on wiki/imdb] were actually low-budget classics, but whatever ....
36: right, that is the moment I'm looking for. What I was looking for was a story framed around that moment, rathter than having it as a minor implied episode, and therefore treating "what if I'm the monster?" as a thematically significant question.
For that story, I think you want Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, at least the million derivative versions. I can't remember if the actual Stevenson story involved Dr. Jekyll being amnesiac about what Hyde was up to.
I want a story framed around the moment where Dr. Jekyll's office manager submits a claim for unemployment insurance.
36 gets it right.
It is no coincidence that Algernon Blackwood brought back the wolfman at almost the exact moment that the bourgeoisie was unknowingly savaging the life-force of the working class through industrial Taylorization.
For that story, I think you want Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, at least the million derivative versions.
I'm aware that those stories exist, but (to repeat from 24) "I'm not aware of any actual werewolf [nb: emphasis added] stories (film or page) that really fit this frame."
Rewinding a little bit, my impression was that the more recent zombie flicks (28 [units of time] Later, etc) were conceived from a more epidemiological frame, and that Romero's series of classics were more about social commentary on the horrors of conformity in various forms: racism, materialism, other unthinking horrors of the 20th century (genocide! fun!).
Which, come to think of it, absolutely reflects their respective times.
Of course, now "zombie apocalypse" is no longer a plot, it's a setting. So...that's good.
What I was looking for was a story framed around that moment, rather than having it as a minor implied episode, and therefore treating "what if I'm the monster?" as a thematically significant question.
Wallace and Gromit in "The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" has this as a fairly major plot element.
Jekyll is aware that he's turning into Hyde, even if he's only vaguely aware what he does when he's Hyde, so I'm not sure that works. Though it's very definitely a middle-class-off-the-rails story. (Metaphor for alcoholism/drug abuse?)
I have no memory of leaving comment 47. What is happening to me?
I think people are right that vampires are about sex* -- they convert others to their perversion (and what's worse, the victims like it -- and post-28 Days Later zombies are about disease, but I think the middle class monster is the slasher and/or the serial killer.
* Although in Dracula they're as much about Catholicism as about sex. Stupid Papist bloofer lady!
No, because the implicit self-discovery is still there in the story. The werewolf in the story found out he was a monster yesterday, it could happen to you tomorrow. Also, Wallace and Gromit. So I win. No backsies.
Public health clearly can't be the main metaphor for zombies
I think public health, to be precise our decaying protection of it, is *exactly* the metaphor for zombies. It's what connects the disease metaphor to the lumpenprole metaphor. If we keep defunding waterworks and making preventive healthcare rarer and not doing post-mortems if there's any excuse not to, the poor really will be sick, and some of it will be catching, and all of it will be unfashionable.
lumpenprole
I love this. I really should learn German.
53, I assume, is replying to 47.2.
But Jekyll did it deliberately. He decided to transform himself into a creature without conscience (Hyde), concocted the mixture to do so, and drank it. Then it started to take him over.
That's why it's different from a werewolf story; Jekyll's morally culpable. The werewolf is an innocent person who gradually discovers that they've been unconsciously doing horrible things. Jekyll's more like a substance abuse story.
No, 53 was replying to 52, and should also have included the words "Nuh-uh." I think you're right about J&H.
Although in Dracula they're as much about Catholicism as about sex.
Dracula being a Transylvanian, he is more likely to have been a Unitarian. Catholicism shows itself in quite a good light: communion wafers as vampire-repellent, etc.
57: ah, sorry.
Worth mentioning at this point: "Ultraviolet". Vampire miniseries with the aesthetic of "Spooks" ("MI-5") and starring Stringer Bell. Well worth watching.
But Jekyll did it deliberately.
It was more of a side effect, wasn't it? He didn't try to become a monster.
58: I can't recall that much of the original novel, but Stoker was a Protestant Irishman writing during a period when Catholics were starting to demand more things.
58, 61 - But Dracula's attempted conversion of Mina is totes the Eucharist.
I think public health, to be precise our decaying protection of it, is *exactly* the metaphor for zombies.
It's nice to see somebody unapologetically agreeing with the linked post, thank you.
I was agreeing with Bob because I think that zombies are an old enough myth, and have occurred in enough different forms that it doesn't make sense to think of them as a reflection of a single concern/metaphor.
But I like your line that, "[Public health]'s what connects the disease metaphor to the lumpenprole metaphor."
||Annoyed at UK childcare/education folks. Forcing an autistic pre-schooler to sit outside in the rain because there is a school inspection on, not cool.>|
Surely you mean a specific school? It's not like the UK education establishment has an autistic child sitting in the rain policy.
I argued that the werewolf is the audience -- that's the monster you're afraid of becoming, rather than the one you're afraid is going to come get you. ... I'm not aware of any actual werewolf stories (film or page) that really fit this frame
Ginger Snaps, and the sequel. With a female puberty/sexuality aspect, too, though; at least the first one. Good movies.
Yes, specific school, specific child, incident happened today. Just had my cousin on the phone alternatively cursing and crying about this. In general the school has been very aggressively unhelpful about dealing with the kid.
Leaving preschoolers outside in the rain in February seems like a problem with or without the autism.
It was more of a side effect, wasn't it? He didn't try to become a monster.
True, he was actually trying to become an angel:
Had I approached my discovery in a more noble spirit, had I risked the experiment while under the empire of generous or pious aspirations, all must have been otherwise, and from these agonies of death and birth, I had come forth an angel instead of a fiend. The drug had no discriminating action; it was neither diabolical nor divine; it but shook the doors of the prisonhouse of my disposition; and like the captives of Philippi, that which stood within ran forth. At that time my virtue slumbered; my evil, kept awake by ambition, was alert and swift to seize the occasion; and the thing that was projected was Edward Hyde. Hence, although I had now two characters as well as two appearances, one was wholly evil, and the other was still the old Henry Jekyll, that incongruous compound of whose reformation and improvement I had already learned to despair. The movement was thus wholly toward the worse.
But once he found out what would happen, he kept doing it, because he liked the feeling of being Hyde. So that makes him culpable, I reckon.
66: Oh, yeah, those are good movies. (I've even seen the third one, which is, uh, not a good movie.) Surely Alan Moore wasn't the first one to do the werewolfism = female sexuality thing (lunar cycles, hawr hawr), but I don't know who was.
re: 67
Well, good luck with exacting retribution on the school/teacher concerned.
70: Although surely they should be wifwolves? 'Wer' is 'man' as in male, not 'man' as in human.
Yes, specific school, specific child, incident happened today. Just had my cousin on the phone alternatively cursing and crying about this. In general the school has been very aggressively unhelpful about dealing with the kid.
Write to the governors, cc. head of the LEA (different titles in different places, all ward councillors, council cabinet member for Children and Young Persons, and MP. Concentrate on the one incident, which is prima facie abuse, and go into broken record mode if they stonewall.
Begin your letter, "I am advised..." If you get no change, think about seeing a lawyer, CAB will point you right.
Somebody'll take it up.
If it's a private school you don't have so much clarity about what to do.
67: Oh, what the fuck is wrong with people. What LB said is undeniably true (fucking February?), but I have a hard time believing that this is as likely to happen to a kid without autism as it is to a kid with autism.
This is the kind of thing - cavalier, unthinking monstrosity towards the nominally different - that makes me think Japanese robots in group and residential homes is a good idea. (That has been rattling around in my brain for a few days. I don't know why.) Not that it has much relevance to this particular situation, other than: yes, people can be unbelievably shitty.
I know nothing about the UK's legal system other than it seems to encourage the wearing of ridiculous wigs, but wow do I hope your cousin can sue. Or at least threaten a lawsuit. Threatening lawsuits works remarkably well over here.
69: Same thing happened to Pfizer.
73. cont'd. Also, go here (Ofsted) and follow their instructions.
She mentioned that she is considering a formal complaint. The problem is that my cousin is poor, overwhelmed with the general situation of dealing with the kid, and not a native English speaker. And there are serious issues with the dad which also doesn't help matters. On the plus side she is a citizen courtesy of the same historical accident that gave me UK citizenship. The father was there and was thus able to stay with the kid outside which might mean it isn't abuse in the formal sense. The school refuses to allow the kid to be there if he isn't permanently supervised by a parent, even though in theory they have to. This is the first time the father agreed to take care of the kid in over a year, and only did so after pleading by my cousin who is feverish and barfing her guts out due to some nasty bug. The guy is an alcoholic and has rather retrograde notions about gender roles. Put it all together and she is depressed and socially isolated.
The story linked in 48 is entertaining and creepy, but I feel like I'm supposed to be making some inference from the cryptic ending and I'm not getting it. Am I being dense? Or is just supposed to be creepy and that's all?
'Wer' is 'man' as in male, not 'man' as in human.
I did not know this! Is there a wifgeld, I wonder (answer: no).
"Wifwolf" is too cute.
The school refuses to allow the kid to be there if he isn't permanently supervised by a parent, even though in theory they have to.
This seems as if it's what she should be complaining about.
I argued that the werewolf is the audience -- that's the monster you're afraid of becoming, rather than the one you're afraid is going to come get you. ... I'm not aware of any actual werewolf stories (film or page) that really fit this frame
I think the classic one, which I believe provides the source material that Curse of the Wererabbit and others are riffing on is An American Werewolf in London.
79: I believe it's cognate with "vir" as in virile.
If the father was there that does rather change the situation, I'd have thought. Still, shitty situation both for your cousin and the school's behaviour.
That should have been italicized as well, but I can only remember to do so much html at a time.
re: 79
'Wif' (wife, or wifey) for woman still hangs on in Scotland, although it's now only used generally for older women.
Japanese robots in group and residential homes is a good idea.
"Japan's elderly fail to welcome their robot overlords"
83 yes, but still, kicking the child out into the rain because the inspector must only see the 'good' kids seems rather assholish to me.
87: Assholish and indicative of an unhealthy propensity for fraud.
77. What is the status of the father and what's his take on the incident?
If quality of English is an issues, draft a letter on your cousin's behalf to all the people I listed above. Run it by me for Anglicisation of the spelling if you want. Hold off on going to Ofsted until you have a response locally, but no longer.
State the facts clearly and simply, and say that you wish to see evidence that action has been taken to prevent a repeat of the incident. Don't at this stage get into a personal attack on the head teacher; that may come. Not yet.
Is it a private school? If so it still has a board of governors, but less back up in governance. Is the child known to Social Services? If so, how do they get on? Is there a trustworthy social worker on the scene?
87: Good heavens. I completely failed to understand that only the autistic kid got kicked outside for the inspection -- I thought you were complaining about something like a fire drill, where all the kids were outside while the inspection went on. That's grotesque.
78 seconded. It's important for my mental health that someone explain this to me.
I completely failed to understand that only the autistic kid got kicked outside for the inspection -- I thought you were complaining about something like a fire drill, where all the kids were outside while the inspection went on. That's grotesque.
Me too. Holy shit.
Surely Alan Moore wasn't the first one to do the werewolfism = female sexuality thing (lunar cycles, hawr hawr), but I don't know who was.
Angela Carter's Company of Wolves is complicated, but is all about female sexuality. And is the best of the best.
I'm not sure that the end of 48 is explicit, but I took it to be that the brother's body had been replaced by that of the (hitherto only imaginary) Beast that the villagers had been so afraid of.
83 yes, but still, kicking the child out into the rain because the inspector must only see the 'good' kids seems rather assholish to me.
Holy fucking shit, I didn't get it from what you had written before. Wow. That's seriously fucking appalling.
83. The father may have been given the impression the kid would be kicked out of the school if he didn't comply. He may not have good English himself, and felt unable to argue in the heat of the moment.
It's way beyond assholish. It's abusive and it would be a good idea if steps were taken to prevent any recurrence.
I shouldn't say the Carter/Jordan CoW is the best. It's idiosyncratic, relational and social more than individual, and while covering a lot of the bases, covers almost too much ground to be mythic.
Ginger Snaps I is more archetypal.
Darker Than You Think is about a violent female shape-changer, is dated 1940, and has a ton of fans who are crazy about the Unknown style. That predates Val Lewton's Cat Woman.
The tone and effect of the Williamson DtYT is closer to vampirism, seductive and attractive rather than horrific animalistic and repulsive.
51
* Although in Dracula they're as much about Catholicism as about sex. Stupid Papist bloofer lady!
In addition to disease, sex and Catholicism, Dracula is also about Jews: he has a big nose, is foreign, avoids Christian religious symbols, and there's a scene where it looks like he's cut and bleeds money. And he's about foreign encroachment in general: reverse colonization by the ugly, non-assimilating masses, who are somehow both brutish and conniving at the same time.
One problem with symbolism is that if a work has any ambiguity at all, and/or is written in a style that uses lots of allusions, almost any interpretation can be justified.
78, 91, 94: I'm not sure, but I'd guess that the story the narrator told the villagers about the brother is almost true. They killed the wolf and then got split up (maybe pursuing another, maybe they wounded it and it fled and they had to chase it down, whatever) and the narrator found a scrap of clothing, but he's so jealous of his brother's perfect life, and feels so guilty for being jealous, that he hallucinated fratricide. (Why is the coat undamaged, then? Because he had two and changed out of the damaged one right after getting home. Most people don't own just one coat anyway. This also explains why no one in town notices it.)
But who knows. Like I said, almost any interpretation can be justified.
Re: the serious topic, sorry I don't have anything helpful to add. My condolences. Good luck.
I think that zombies are an old enough myth, and have occurred in enough different forms that it doesn't make sense to think of them as a reflection of a single concern/metaphor.
But 'those other people have unfamiliar diseases, and my neighbors might catch it' is a universal human problem. Higgamus hoggamus, we can tie it back to worries about sexuality and marriage... I don't watch horror movies, what do zombie films think about marriage?
100: I'm not familiar enough with the genre to form a coherent thesis about this, but I'm reminded of the most wrenching scenes in 28 Weeks Later (spoilers, if you care about that sort of thing):
1. A husband and wife have successfully evaded the zombie hordes, and are hiding out with some others. When the zombies inevitably find their hide out and get inside, they try to flee together. Just at the moment of escape, the husband poised to go through a window or something, a zombie enters the room, cutting the wife off. They exchange a look, and then he leaves her to be eaten alive.
2. Later on, turns out she's not dead! Somehow! They're both "safe," held in a military installation. But she's a carrier of the zombie virus who somehow doesn't display the symptoms. The husband discovers her, strapped down in medical isolation, repentant and happy and overwhelmed. He kisses her. And gets the virus. So he turns into a flesh eating zombie, and devours her alive as she's strapped to the gurney.
If that's saying something big about marriage, I don't want to know what it is.
101: So basically, 28 Weeks Later is The Giving Tree.
The father is British, and yes social services are aware of the kid and my cousin has been working with/on them for a couple months now to get help for her son and indirectly for herself since between the fact that she has to be with the kid round the clock and his behavioral issues she is, as I said above, thoroughly isolated and both mentally and physically exhausted. The school has threatened to kick the kid out in the past. I gather that while they're legally obliged to deal with an autistic kid, they really, really don't want to devote the resources and between her English skills and general exhaustion/depression she is having a hard time fighting them. The father is completely unwilling to do much of anything other than give a little bit of money to help out.
what do zombie films think about marriage?
Look, there are big problems with zombieism as public health metaphor, the almost total lack of compassion toward zombies for instance. To the extant they are zombies and not people we don't like them. There are very few other stories of plague with empathy of compassion.
We feel bad about Ginger (or even most vampires) because something recognizably human remains until the very end. The point about zombies is that empathy becomes impossible.
I really dislike connecting zombies and HIV, it could only be done by someone who wants to point out somebody else's lack of empathy towards the victims of disease.
stories of plague with empathy of compassion.
s/b "without" for "with"
Should click on the link above, Zombie Honeymoon is a neat little B
102 is possibly my favorite comment ever.
It is pretty awesome, isn't it?
I don't see the use in getting caught up in monster-movie originalism. Dracula may have been about fear of Catholics or Jews, Romero may have been concerned with the proletariat. But at some point, these monsters took off and entered the mainstream consciousness, vampires became sexy-scary, and zombies became diseased-scary. Marriage and family and social ties all get dissolved in the midst of the plague; it's a back-to-nature apocalypse where you're freed from all the constraints of civilization.
I find LB's point about werewolves interesting, because it's crossed over to be a staple of most modern monsters: zombies and vampires, in addition to werewolves, involve the fear of becoming one of them, and I don't believe those were originally traits they shared in folklore, certainly not the "one bite and you're going to turn on your compatriots" form they now tend towards.
And as for the comic (which I loved, thanks for the link!) I'd see as a typical horror morality tale— character murders brother out of jealousy, evil supernatural forces haunt him. The werewolf thing I read as a bit of an intentional misdirect, or maybe a way to frame the ghost story in a more immediately recognizable form.
But 'those other people have unfamiliar diseases, and my neighbors might catch it' is a universal human problem.
Right, but not all zombies are infectious. As Bob mentioned Voodoo is the source of the word "zombie" and not, I think, based around infection.
[on preview]
Look, there are big problems with zombieism as public health metaphor, the almost total lack of compassion toward zombies for instance.
In the metaphor you'd have to say that there is compassion for the people who get infected, but not compassion for the disease itself (that feels strained).
There's an interesting example in this comment on SEK's post on The Walking Dead
I thought it was important that they opened the show in broad daylight and Mr. Rick still doesn't immediately discern that the little girl is actually a for reals live evil horrible infectious zombie... there's a lag, and what that communicates is that Mr. Rick is hoping hoping hoping and he really wants the little girl to be a little girl. But she's not she's a dangerous slavering insatiably hungry thing and that's just too damn bad for her.
You have there compassion in the sense that the task of identifying which people are infected is difficult, and prone to errors on both sides, but at the same time the sense that it's fatal to feel compassion for the zombie itself.
But it's also true that a metaphor doesn't have to be perfect to be useful and/or evocative.
I really dislike connecting zombies and HIV
I do agree that the sort of public health fears zombies embody are the SARS or swineflu type mass epidemics. With HIV (or other STD's) the presumption is that you've got someone you're really sexually attracted to putting you at risk. That's absolutely the vampire situation, not so much the zombie one.
Cat People seems like an outlier, but it's a great movie that I should have thought of. Good one, McManus. (It seems to be about assimilation as much as anything else, though.)
I've never been satisfied by the vampire-werewolf-zombie-hippie-beatnik permanent membership of the UN Monster Council. I wish someone would come up with a new monster, or revive a long-disused one.
For example, in a society increasingly dominated by The Wired Horde, I should think the Erinyes* could make a pretty good movie starring [some young actress on a CW program].
* Yes, I know.
112: Buffy was often good at coming up with new, genuinely creepy monsters. The Gentlemen, in particular.
The Gentlemen seem to resemble the baddies from Dark City.
Buffy was often good at coming up with new, genuinely creepy monsters.
That's just mean. Sarah Michelle Gellar was a delight to work with!
Buffy was often good at coming up with new, genuinely creepy monsters
Supernatural Has quite the range of creatures as well.
To the extent that recent zombie revivalism is "about" anything (and I tend towards the no fun Tim Burkean complex causation approach) I think it's about life during wartime: the world around you has changed, the rules you thought you knew no longer apply, no one can be trusted, etc. The horrible scene that donaquixote describes is I think mainly about survivor's guilt: he gouges out her accusing eyes (the eyes that are also a symbol of the genetic abnormality that has allowed her to survive) first.
I recently watched Last Man on Earth, which isn't great but has some beautifully desolate scenes, I guess around Rome and EUR, of a post-disease future in which some combination of zombie-ism and vampirisim devastated the world leaving Vincent Price as the only uninfected person. Supposedly, it had some influence on Romero, if wikipedia is to be believed.
I think it's telling that the source for the OP was inspired World War Z. It's pretty much the only zombie fiction I can think of that looks at the zombie apocalypse primarily through the lens of public policy. Public policy impinges to a greater or lesser degree on other works (28 Weeks Later springs to mind as one of the policy heavier ones, as does Day of the Dead on a more micro scale), but nowhere is it as central as in World War Z. It's all about different policy approaches to the apocalypse/plague - which ones work, which ones don't, how they interact with each other in a globalised world and of course their human toll. Consequently I think the "zombies as HIV" interpretation is coloured a bit too much by WWZ's approach. I actually think Bob's on to something, but I'd broaden it. Zombie fiction, as a general rule which is often broken, is about fear of the other. This could be, the lumpenproletariat (Dawn of the Dead). Or it could be black people (Night of the Living Dead, with intense irony), uncool people (Wild Zero) or even the part of ourselves we prefer to think is the other (NotLD again, Shaun of the Dead, The Walking Dead, Dead Set). AIDS may have played a similar role in some zombie fiction in the 80s, but I grew up a bit too late for that sense of "extant and possible AIDS victims are not like us" to be pertinent, so no obvious candidates spring to mind.
Now, that isn't to say that each of those works is fundamentally "about" the other, but they play on it while achieving their dramatic and narrative aims. Most of the best (in my opinion, obviously) non-silly zombie fiction emphasis the last of my approaches, ie the inhumanity of the non-zombies, but that's probably because I like that sort of thing in fiction generally.
A very different policy oriented zombie film.
Well, more undead than zombies, I suppose, though there is some overlap.
Oh, now that I read the linked post, I see that WWZ sounds a hell of a lot like Last Man on Earth, actually, but with changes in time in place. There's a whole series of flashbacks in the film where Vincent Price remembers attempts to identify the disease, government action to stop the spread of the plague by requiring all cases of infection to be reported and then disposing of the bodies in pits that are more or less the descendants of plague pits, except the people aren't necessarily dead when thrown in and the bodies are burned. Price tries to save his wife from that end and buries her himself after he thinks she's dead. She shows up at his door and tries to kill him later.
The movie is also based on a book which I think also has a public health allegory, and it's all mid-20th century, so, really, the allegory is an older one and HIV is a new disease to attach it to.
It's based on Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, which also served as the basis for the Charlton Heston vehicle The Omega Man.
121: Ooh, I haven't seen that. Any good?
122: The thing is, while WWZ does obviously incorporate what could be termed public health policy (eg quarantine or not, an obvious Chinese SARS denialism parallel) it's much broader than that. It encompasses military doctrine, foreign relations, martial law, reconstruction and so on.
Anyway, if you haven't read WWZ already, you should. It's really, really good.
118:112 needs to watch more J-horror
As do we all.
I should probably leave this alone, but ...
In Haiti, that site of Black Independence forever punished, zombies are feared by proles as the return of slave labor, not something that might attack them. Classic zombie works the sugarcane, without wages or complaint.
This was certainly the narrative in Clairvius Narcisse's account as popularized in Wade Davis's The Serpent and the Rainbow, but the more general fear is about being enslaved to a bokor (priest or wizard) rather than a plantaintion owner. So, yeah the loss of bodily autonomy to slavery connection seems to be right there, but this is the reductionism thing again. Sometimes wizards are wizards.
Though if you want zombie as political critique...
Mark McGurl had a terrific literary survey of zombies in the dreaded n+1. He thought WWZ was the best of the surveyed, and went further than the public health allegory to consider the allegorical value of zombies' contagion and numerousness:
The contagion narrative of world zombification is thus an allegory of the contemporary world system and its many risks, and characters exist in it to mark representative points on a much larger map. Without any protagonist among them, they present a remarkably egalitarian version of what Alex Woloch in The One vs. the Many called the "character system" of the 19th-century realist novel, which typically flattens most characters in order to foreground the ones we are supposed to care about. For Woloch this competition for our attention mirrors the competitive asymmetries of capitalism in the world at large. All the characters in World War Z are "minor characters" in this sense, and while they retain their humanity, their very numerousness points toward the undead beings Pride and Prejudice and Zombies calls "unmentionables," who rank below even the servants of Netherfield Hall in their minorness.
The essay has some very good thoughts about the overall value of allegory in fiction.
Anyway, if you haven't read WWZ already, you should. It's really, really good.
This is one of the most surprising things I've ever read.
I would say the same; horror's not normally my genre, but I thought WWZ was very good, in a weird way.
Lack of compassion towards the sick has been a standard in plague narratives since Pericles, if not earlier, Bob. Contrarianism 1, cynicism 0.5.
132:But lack of compassion toward zombies is generally so approved as to be almost the point...climax as genocide.
The empathy in zombie narratives is entirely toward the healthy and strong. They suffer, poor things, for having to shoot and decapitate their undead loved ones.
The comparison of zombies with AIDS is so lazy that I find it actively irritating. I like bob's explanation better, though I think by this point culture causes culture. It's a perfectly hermetic system that whose dynamics are largely driven by internal forces, rather than external ones. Zombies are big now because people tired of vampires. It's like asking about the greater significance of the latest Star Trek movie. Why now? What does it say about the the zeitgeist of 2008 that they made a Star Trek movie? Star Trek movies will be made every so often from now until the end of time because the money men know there's a built-in audience. Once the movie exists, it helps create the built-in audience for the next iteration. I predict that in twenty years they'll remake the original Star Wars for the same reason.
Walt gets it right. It didn't hurt that there was a cluster of compelling films/books/graphic novels that got produced around the same time to help shift zombies from cult enthusiasm to pop culture phenomenon.
It is interesting, or at least curious, though, that the zombie fad has lasted so long and has been so pervasive. There were vampire revivals around Buffy/Anne Rice and more recently Twilight, but the zombie thing has been going strong since at least 28 Days Later and permeates every part of popular (well, geek popular) culture. Whereas the vampire fads seem much more time and medium constrained.
136: I would have said the exact opposite. Vampires seem to have been continually popular since at least Anne Rice.
I am under the impression that not as many people were buyng the false fangs and playing vampire dress-up these days, but I have no data to support this. The holliday card that some friends sent us this year had him dressed up like a zombie and her as a zombie killer swinging an axe into his head. Their toddler was for some reason not included in the picture.
The string of comments from 135 to 138 is the greatest series of comments in the history of the Internet.
Though 137 is right, and I agree about Star Trek, Zombies are big now because people tired of vampires does not explain the disappearance of mummies from popular culture. The classic vampire alternatives were mummies. Nobody cares about mummies now.
And yeah, there's also the holy ghost, but I think we've agreed after the hell thread we've tired of the subject.
Nobody cares about mummies now.
You're out of the will.
And expanded. Interesting to see what happens to poor dusty old mummies.
Hi lizardbreath, thanks for linking to my blog. I think some of you might actually know me from crooked timber (where I comment as sg, by historical accident).
The debate here is very interesting, though I think a couple of commenters (and I'm looking at you here, Bob McManus) didn't actually read my post. The post doesn't intend to say that the modern zombie tale is "about" HIV; rather, that the modern zombie tale is more affected by, and focuses more strongly on, public health themes than older ones did. Particularly 28 Weeks Later, The Walking Dead and World War Z. And they're about the public health measures we don't use as much as those we did use for combating HIV. Remember Reagan did propose compulsory testing for gay men in America, HIV is the only disease ever debated in congress, etc. These measures that we dodged in dealing with HIV are the ones that get paraded through the zombie tale.
While I agree that the zombie is also a metaphor for the proletariat, it's worth remembering that the highest and most devastating concentrations of HIV on the planet are also in the poorest and most oppressed of the modern international order's subjects, in Africa. So as someone above said, zombies are an excellent way to imagine a disease model for controlling the proles.
Zombies are big now because people tired of vampires does not explain the disappearance of mummies from popular culture. The classic vampire alternatives were mummies. Nobody cares about mummies now.
144 suggests that mummies remain more popular than zombies.
And yeah, there's also the holy ghost, but I think we've agreed after the hell thread we've tired of the subject.
Well, first of all, ya never know who he's gonna be. Every day he shows up, he's somethin' different. One day he comes in the meetin', he's a dove, another day he's a tongue of fire, always foolin' around. Listen, I don't bother with the guy. I don't wanna know about him. I don't see him. I don't talk to him.
If you restrict the search to English Fiction, mummies fall to the bottom, suggesting that their popularity is propped up by Big Archeology's influence.
148 is helpful. But all of these links are only underscoring that Walt was exactly right in 137.
I find it mildly pleasing that True Blood hasn't been mentioned once in this thread, but by pointing it out I negate that. Drat.
Mummies had a great little spasm in Britain in the first half of the 1980s. Who knows why?
"fucker" isn't overtaken by "fuck you" until 1980 or so.
I think some of you might actually know me from crooked timber (where I comment as sg, by historical accident).
I do know you from that. But, "sg" isn't very distinctive. We keep a list of unused pseuds, if you'd like something more memorable.
So now I clicked through to the latest post at faustusnotes's blog and I read:
Jane Austen's work is fundamentally shallow, boring, and useless
What is this I don't even
Zombie got him, right in the middle of the sentence.
. Remember Reagan did propose compulsory testing for gay men in America, HIV is the only disease ever debated in congress, etc.
And yet zombie fiction has been most popular pre- and long post-Reagan. The Reagan era and its immediate aftermath is the least zombified in popular culture of the last 50 years. Also, I'd strongly disagree that The Walking Dead (comic version) has much to say about public health. It's much, much more about what happens to individuals' humanity when civilisation collapses.
there's nothing in the characters of her stories to appeal to either the broad populace of their time, or to the modern reader
Indeed -- that's why Austen's novels have always been doomed to languish in near-total obscurity.
155: Tragically, there's video.
(Honestly, it's not so great, but I did laugh out loud at the sight of that posh "they may be zombies but they're still Englishman!" idiot running off into the woods with a giant butterfly net.)
Not surprisingly, I'd disagree with Walt. Like I said before, zombies are everywhere in low culture these days. It seems like every single videogame either has a zombie mode or is explicitly zombie based. There have been dozens of big zombie movies in the last decade. The Walking Dead is the non-branded indie comics phenomenon of the last decade. Marvel Zombies. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. And so on.
I'm certainly not going to deny that Twilight is absolutely huge, but it's just one work. Outside of that, how much seriously popular vampire fiction has there really been recently?
One of the most reliable contrasts in the gender demographics of geek culture has been reactions to Austen, IME. (...spoken as a guy who really hated Sense & Sensibility, but is still meaning to give later Austen works a go.)
159.last sort of boggles. Meyers just picked up Anne Rice's torch, really.
Just because vampires and zombies are always with us doesn't mean that they don't represent different anxieties at different times. It seems to me that there are a set of fascinations that get expressed through vampire stories -- mostly around sex -- and another set that get expressed in zombie stories, more economic on the surface. Which one is more popular at any one time is meaningful but it's not as if it's zero-sum.
Sure, and I didn't mean to imply that. At the risk of perpetuating the side argument, I wouldn't at all dispute that vampires have historically been more popular. I'm just saying that it's pretty evident to me that zombies are more prevalent in pop culture as a whole right now, and it has bugger all to do with Reagan and quarantining HIV patients.
Mummies had a great little spasm in Britain in the first half of the 1980s. Who knows why?
Such ngram results may be skewed by British phrases like "yummy mummies" (1m hits at the moment). I've no idea if there was some similar phrase going around in the 80s, but I wouldn't be surprised.
159, 162: just look in your local bookstore's "paranormal romance" section--or even the YA section--and see if you still believe that vampires have been eclipsed (har har) by zombies.
I wonder if the earlier popularity of mummies had to do with the oriental exoticism. Speaking of which, Anne Rice's "The Mummy" was rather hott.
164: I don't know about the "paranormal romance" section, but in the regular SF/F section of the bookstore there is a great deal of vampire-with-huge-breasts literature. I have no idea how well they sell, but there seem to be more square feet of vampire cleavage on the shelves than space wench cleavage.
Outside of that, how much seriously popular vampire fiction has there really been recently?
This doesn't seriously have to be answered, does it?
And that's before you get to the various occult mytery romance thrillers in which a variety of non-zombie supernatural whatsits get into hijinks.
Partially pwned, but I gave links aplenty.
[I]n the regular SF/F section of the bookstore there is a great deal of vampire-with-huge-breasts literature.
Go on....
Imaging the zombie apocalypse is a way of examining our fears of a world after any of a number of civilization-ending catastrophes. Peak oil, say, or runaway global climate change.
166: Learning that there's an actual novel called "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" is like hearing music for the first time.
Remember Reagan did propose compulsory testing for gay men in America, HIV is the only disease ever debated in congress, etc.
Really? I am very surprised that the 1918 influenza pandemic was never discussed.
170: actually, the metaphor vampires=slaveholders works rather well.
Split rails aren't just for fences.
ajay, I got that fact (only disease debated in congress) from AVERT, whose information seems generally solid.
Ginger Yellow, I didn't say zombies are popular because of HIV. I said that modern zombie tales are influenced by and/or commenting on public health issues. I think there's a difference...
Only tangentially on topic, but this may be the best headline I've ever seen anywhere. The ensuing article has its moments, but it couldn't possibly live up to the title.
173
ajay, I got that fact (only disease debated in congress) from AVERT, whose information seems generally solid.
Sounds like total nonsense to me. And a little googling found this story about mad cow disease.
173: Congress approved a $1 million appropriation for additional doctors and nurses in 1918, in response to the flu pandemic, so I don't think it can really be true that HIV was the only disease ever debated in congress. Not to mention that things like malaria, yellow fever and polio have been big public policy issues, and surely funding related to these would have been debated?
Maybe HIV was the only disease whose existence or otherwise was debated in Congress?
176: In 1856, Sen. Sumner was almost beaten to death for comments concerning diseases which may or may not have infected his colleagues' mothers.
"I would contend that the mothers of those esteemed members who have spoken in opposition to this bill are, collectively and individually, afflicted with consumption!"
Ginger Yellow, I didn't say zombies are popular because of HIV. I said that modern zombie tales are influenced by and/or commenting on public health issues. I think there's a difference...
But do you have any examples in mind beyond WWZ, which as I say above stands out from the crowd precisely because of its commentary on public health issues and public policy in general. Shaun of the Dead, Left 4 Dead, Marvel Zombies - these don't seem remotely influenced by or commenting on public health issues.
I shall have to reinvestigate the AVERT link then - usually their stuff is referenced, but it's been a while.
Ginger Yellow, 28 Weeks Later is a quarantine story, which I think counts as "public health in the breach." It even has the asymptomatic carrier, a very post-HIV/HCV kind of a motif - and of course it's transmitted by blood or body fluids while you're still alive, not just by dying and coming back from the dead (like the older stories).
In the TV series of The Walking Dead they travel to the CDC to see if there's a cure, and there are lots of oblique references to the efforts of governments to quarantine and control the spread of the disease. I humbly suggest that the CDC made their fame in the HIV epidemic.
28 Days Later has the rage virus jumping species from monkeys to humans, a direct parallel to one of the main theories for the development of HIV.
Shaun of the Dead is a piss-take, so doesn't count. I haven't seen your other two, but I think I've covered a fair whack of ground here.
Tangential-ish, but if anyone would like a good vampire movie with bonus foreign flick hipster cred, I recomment Let the Right One In. Available streaming on Netflix.