Why Zombie?: An Examination of the Zombie in Popular Culture and Ideology

Part One: “Something has been eating me…”

In the spring of 2015, I was passing through a small town in rural Franklin County, Vermont and stopped at a local eatery aptly named Eats. While sipping my coffee, I picked up a local newspaper and was surprised to read the front page headline news: “Zombie Wedding.” According to the article’s author, “The bride and groom, as well as the entire wedding party and Rev. Dudley, came dressed as zombies.” The article provoked a question: Why zombies? What is the attraction? Why are zombies everywhere in America today? These were questions that had been eating me for several years – ever since the zombie craze started really – but, for whatever reason, this headline finally prompted me to initiate a deeper investigation.

The first thing that stuck in my mind about the zombie craze is that zombies are pretty lame as far as movie monsters go. They’re nothing but vacuous walking appetites and are easily disposed of without much trouble if one encounters them in small numbers. A vampire, on the other hand, can morph into other animals, just like a werewolf, and can appear suddenly and unexpectedly, making vampires much more dynamic. But zombies can be seen coming down the street like a parade. Vampires, werewolves, Frankenstein’s monster – all of these creatures have complex and provocative back-stories full of romance and temptation that play out in uncanny dramas rife with tragedy and real human emotion usually ending in the vindication of humanity over the undead. Zombies are far simpler. They are generally the product of accidents, not evil, and inevitably lead to killing sprees and sensational gore fests with little remorse. There’s nothing particularly poignant or romantic about a zombie or even the zombie-killer – certainly not to the degree that typifies the villains and heroes of vampire and werewolf stories. It doesn’t take a Van Helsing-like expert on the supernatural or any sort of specialist to dispatch a zombie. Generally a hick cop with a chainsaw will do. So what is the appeal?

A quick web search produced thousands of pages of commentary and reflection on ‘the meaning of the zombie’ but one which stood out to me, both for its historical scholarship and analytical depth, is titled the “Zombie Manifesto” by Sarah Juliet Lauro and Karen Embry who ask a similar question to mine: “Why does the zombie terrify, and what explains the enduring currency of the zombie threat?” In the article, the authors observe:

The zombie has been one of the most prevalent monsters in films of the second half of the twentieth century, and as many have noted, it has experienced a further resurgence (or should we say, resurrection) in British and American film in the last five years. Zombies are found everywhere, from video games and comic books to the science textbook. The zombie has become a scientific concept by which we define cognitive processes and states of being, subverted animation, and dormant consciousness. In neuroscience, there are “zombie agents”; in computer science there are “zombie functions.” We even find “zombie dogs,” “zombie corporations,” and “zombie raves” in the news.[1] (p. 85-6)

The article is certainly one of the best on the subject but, after stating the obvious, I found the answers provided by “The Zombie Manifesto” to fall short (in spite of the fact that the article is certainly well thought-out and better researched than much of the other nonsense on the web).

According to Lauro and Embry, “The ubiquity of the metaphor suggests the zombie’s continued cultural currency, and we will investigate why this specter has captured the American imagination for over a century.”[2] In this sentence, the authors introduce the first component of their hypothesis – their explanation for zombie appeal – on the assumption that “the zombie’s continued cultural currency” persists because the zombie is a ubiquitous metaphor for something that “has captured the American imagination for over a century.” This approach to analyzing the popularity of the zombie agrees with basic Neoclassical economic theory in that it hinges on the belief that popular culture does in fact operate  in accord with supply-and-demand.

Simply put, Lauro and Embry are saying, first and foremost, that ‘The people want zombies so the entertainment industry gives them zombies.’ I disagree.

The detailed minutia of precisely how the zombie went from Haitian myth to its appearance on the silver screen and its iconic place in American popular culture is discussed by film historians elsewhere. I won’t bother rehashing it here. Instead, what I hope to address is the notion that the magnates of popular culture (producers, film distributors, etc.) create movies, television shows, magazines and books in response to the needs or desires of the people. I will also explore why these “one-percenters” in the media establishment have selected the zombie as their monster of choice.

Some might interpret this problem as a “chicken and egg” question – something like, ‘Which came first; the producer’s interest in the zombie or the consumer/audience interest in the zombie?’ But this question is not nearly as complex as the problem of the chicken and the egg. For the answer, we only need to look at recorded history. Clearly, the zombie, as popular boogeyman, was introduced into American culture as an innovation to its predecessor in Haitian mythology. To be more precise, the zombie did not arise spontaneously in the imagination of the American movie-goer. The American people didn’t petition studio producers to create zombie films; the producers did so of their own accord and, in doing so, implanted the zombie into the popular lexicon of monsters. So the first question should not be, ‘What does the zombie mean to the average pop-culture consumer?’ as Lauro and Embry’s work suggests. Instead, the question should be, ‘What is it about the zombie archetype that resonates with the barons of the popular culture industry and why do they want us to share their fear?’

“The Zombie Manifesto” authors (unconscious?) adoption of a Neoclassical perspective assumes that the zombie is something that the people of the United States are fascinated by and, for that reason, the popular culture industry is simply catering to the demand of the market. But for those acquainted with the internal workings of the entertainment business, supply and demand is very rarely (if ever) a key factor in the decision to introduce a new concept (or creature) into the vast machinery of popular culture. What’s more, widespread fads don’t organically last over a decade, as the zombie craze has, and once a fad exists, it is quickly controlled, commodified and carefully managed to ensure that it serves to maximize industry profits. The questions that Lauro and Embry (and the majority of other zombie commentators) fail to ask are; 1) Why have the multimedia giants of corporate America decided to launch a sustained campaign to keep the zombie alive in the cultural Zeitgeist? 2) What are the core beliefs and ideological concepts informing this sustained climate of (and market for) fear of zombies?

Ideology, in its traditional and technical usage, is understood as ‘false consciousness’. As cultural theorist, film-critic and philosopher, Slavoj Žižek, points out, ideology “is a social reality whose very existence implies the non-knowledge of its participants as to it essence – that is, the social effectivity, the very reproduction of which implies that the individuals ‘do not know what they are doing’”.[3] In this sense, the zombie genre couldn’t be a better point of inquiry into the machinations and interplay of pop-culture and ideology. Žižek goes on to say, “‘ideological’ is not the ‘false consciousness’ of a (social) being but this being itself in so far as it is supported by ‘false consciousness’.” If we accept Žižek’s definition, the zombie genre in general is perhaps the purest popular expression of ideology at work. One might go so far as to say that the zombie becomes a zombie because it has been ‘infected’ with ideology.

WHY ZOMBIE? PART TWO Now Available

[1] Sarah Juliet Lauro and Karen Embry, “The Zombie Manifesto”, Boundary, Spring 2008, pp. 85-6.

[2] Ibid, pp. 88.

[3] Slavoj Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (Verso: London, 1989), p. 16.