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Commentary
COMMENTARY: Zombie mania reveals deeper truths Ken Lowery, Oct 21, 2009
Ken Lowery
By Ken Lowery Staff Writer
The release and success of Zombieland seems, in hindsight, to be such an assured thing that it takes on the air of predestination. Zombies have so infiltrated popular culture over the last four decades that it’s now hard to turn your head in a movie theater or bookstore without seeing them shambling toward you from posters and book covers.
It’s easy to see why. Zombies are now the go-to cannon fodder villains in video games; beyond the gore, there’s little moral consideration to mowing down faceless hordes of monsters. For similar reasons they make ideal antagonists in action-oriented movies, and there is an undeniable voyeuristic thrill at seeing how filmmakers envision an apocalyptic world. DC Comics’ current crossover event, featuring the likes of Green Lantern, Superman and Batman, is about dead heroes and villains rising from the grave.
Even high culture is not immune: the recent Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Quirk Books), a novel that works a zombie apocalypse into Jane Austen’s classic love story, is a raging hit that will see a hardcover edition printed later this month.
And every now and then, zombies still pack a bit of the social relevance they did way back in 1968, when George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (NotLD) crawled onto drive-in screens. Perhaps their appeal is that, unlike aloof vampires or savage werewolves, zombies are egalitarian. As Mr. Romero said, zombies are “blue-collar monsters.” Anyone can be one.
But this modern incarnation, where most zombies are targets first and everything else second, is a pale imitation of Mr. Romero’s creations. NotLD, made on a non-existent budget with some friends and a single camera, shocked audiences in ways that more gothic horror films of the time could not. Night was not about castles in 19th-century England; it was about America, right now, with characters pulled right out of everyday life. It was also subversive in other ways: Mr. Romero boldly cast African-American actor Duane Jones as his strong, self-assured lead—in still racially tempestuous 1968.
But despite the morbid glee audiences get from the make-up and gore in zombie movies, Mr. Romero’s films (and those of his more literate descendants) weren’t really about the zombies themselves. The zombies were a crucible, a pressure-cooker of imminent death that saw his characters shedding civilized pretenses and becoming their true selves. His zombie movies are, in a way, life accelerated: We are all of us stalked by Death, and in the many ways we deny Death, we reveal what we’re made of.
Many of Mr. Romero’s characters give in to fear and prejudice, and are ultimately swallowed up by it (and then by zombies). But a few characters—hopeful, decent, resourceful—almost always live on, even as the world around them goes to Hell.
Some zombie movies are not as ultimately optimistic as Mr. Romero’s. The most notable knockoff is Dan O’Bannon’s 1985 The Return of the Living Dead, which combined a punk-rock distrust of authority with a comedy of errors that goes from minor screw-up to massive catastrophe. Return is a black comedy, but it’s hard to tell which feeling is meant to last longer, the laughs or the despair—the two are inextricably linked.
Shades of this dueling hope and nihilism exist in the zombie lore of today. Some movies (such as the 28 Days Later/28 Weeks Later franchise) are more explicit in their use of zombies as a way to explore human nature and the “monster within,” and are often quite dark. Others, like Zombieland, drop the pretense of social relevance and make with the blood, guts and quips—and occasionally reaffirm the value of family.
Unlike the vampiric bad boys of the Twilight universe, zombies will never be your boyfriend. But their use as a social crucible all but assures their perennial status as top monsters.
Ken Lowery
But this modern incarnation, where most zombies are targets first and everything else second, is a pale imitation of Mr. Romero’s creations. NotLD, made on a non-existent budget with some friends and a single camera, shocked audiences in ways that more gothic horror films of the time could not. Night was not about castles in 19th-century England; it was about America, right now, with characters pulled right out of everyday life. It was also subversive in other ways: Mr. Romero boldly cast African-American actor Duane Jones as his strong, self-assured lead—in still racially tempestuous 1968. 
