There is a reason – I think – why the zombie thing hasn’t played out after so long. There is a reason – I think – why zombies are more popular, and more persistent, now than they have ever been. There is a reason why they’ve staked out a tract of pop culture real estate for themselves and aren’t budging. That reason – I think – is this:
Zombies are only ever zombies.
Vampires, by contrast, spend a lot of time getting away with pretending to not be vampires. They’re charming, they’re beautiful, they’re powerful and they are – consequently – seductive.
Werewolves, no strangers to double lives, spend a lot of time throwing their weight around as people, typically. They’re bikers, or stevedores, or gang members. They’re built, they’re dangerous, they’re vital and they are – consequently – desirable.
But, at the horror-trope cocktail party, zombies are the awkward guy with bad skin standing by the dip and warming a plastic tumbler of Hawaiian punch, raising his eyebrows in hopeful greeting to whomever accidentally makes eye contact with him. There is no faking who he is.
Vampires, they’re the trust fund kids of the midnight world.
Werewolves are the jocks.
Zombies… man…. zombies are us. Zombies are schlubs. Zombies are the working poor. Zombies are the short end of the immortality deal. Zombies are the third world living in tin shacks so we can have Oprah and premium cable. They’re the guys who’ll never bed a supermodel, the folks who’ll never own a new car, the ones who work by the printer and no-one knows their name.
So why are zombie movies so much fun? Why can they be so damned satisfying?
Vampires are for people who haven’t accepted their lot. Those who, in a way, want to be abducted by aliens because that way they’ll be special and never have to get a job.
Werewolves are for the powerless who seek – or dream of – confidence through physical superiority. The "oh-boy-sleep-that’s-where-I’m-a-Viking" type.
But zombies… zombies are for people who know full well where they’re at in this life. Perfectly aware of their sole purpose as an anonymous load-bearing member for society’s pyramid scheme. As one of the drones from sector 7G. Under no illusion that they are in any way a privileged outlier.
They are us. They are society’s packing foam. And, for one glorious film, they get to be pissed off.
Sometimes there’s a sadness to them – a yearning for connection even as they devour the privileged living. A question in the eyes that seems to say "Why didn’t you come back for me?"
Other times… other times they’re running for you down a darkened tunnel at sixty kay-pee-aitch with nine hundred of their friends and now, finally, it’s your turn fucker.
Zombie movies are never really about the human protagonists. Not for me. It’s an exploration of a "what if…?", and the question and the answer is always embodied in that lost expression, that questioning groan.
But what if you take that sad sack hopeless case and give him a little of the love that has for so long been the domain of the pretty boys? Give him a little smarts, give him a little social nous, give him a little agency.
What do you get? You get what is, in my opinion, one of the best zombie films of all time.
You get Fight Club.
I’d like to thank Patrick O’Duffy, from whom I appropriated the ‘packing foam’ line.
This article now has a companion piece: ‘Zombies: The First Rule Of Fight Club Is, Well, Brains.’
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I’d never thought of favourite horror tropes in terms of socio-economics before. But it makes sense that the zombie is the down-and-out working class dude who will never rise above his station. Personally, I’m bored by zombie movies. They do nothing for me and I am very rarely entertained by them — all that shuffling and moaning. I get that every morning when I get out of bed. Why do I want to watch it for two hours? And I am seriously freaked out by cannibalism. The brute force of a werewolf is a turn off too. But I’ve always like the aesthetic and ambiguity of the vampire. They satisfy my inner eye. I’d like to know more about your reading of Fight Club as zombie film.
You know, that makes the zombie the ultimate unioist doesn’t it? After all, on their own they are just another part of the plodding masses. They may sometimes eat a brain, but usually they are just chain-saw fodder.
But get them all together in a mass and then they have real strength.
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ’0 which is not a hashcash value.
Hey Dmetri,
I think there might be a ‘bonus post’ on elaborating the Fight Club angle. I’m flat out at the moment but might be able to get something online before the weekend. I think it’ll go a long way to answering all that you raised.
Hey Chaos.
For some reason your reply got caught in a spam trap.
And, you know, I think that’s exactly it.
[...] (This is a companion piece to ‘Zombies: There’s a Reason You Like Them.’) [...]
To steal a quote from an old blog post I once stumbled across;
“…one of the central themes of the zombie ouevre is collectivism. A lone zombie is reasonably simple to handle: slow, stupid and uncoordinated. Every zombie movie has a pack scene, though – a mass of the undead working as one to devour the living, not just devour, but convert them, bring them into the collective.
Zombies also differ from other monsters because they’re us, not some creature with special powers, sex appeal or a really hairy back, but regular folk in regular clothes shuffling about and trying to do their thing. Hungry to do their thing, you might say.”
(http://bat-bean-beam.blogspot.com/2009/03/zombie-ideas.html, in the comments section)
I should add, for what it’s worth, I was actually googling zombies + socialism at the time that I stumbled across that blog. My internet history must confuse the authorities.
Hey Hugh.
That line about the pack scene got me thinking. There’s something about the whole zombie thing that works as a metaphor for the ‘inevitability of (insert thing here)’. Conformity, death, societal collapse… fads.
Vampire popularity comes in waves. About every ten to fifteen years it comes back into fashion. I’m not sure there’s ever been a time in the past, though, where zombies have been quite this well-liked though. And I think the reason for both those trends – zombie and vampire – have a common cause: hope. Vampires are popular with the naive and hopeful, whereas as zombies are popular when there isn’t much.
I remember the vampire thing really peaked in the early Nineties, then dropped off, then rose and troughed a little before exploding with the current Twilight thing amongst young women of a certain age. Vampires are a vehicle for the young and bulletproof, those kids with years to burn and plenty of time to worry about the future later. The slightly self-absorbed, those who need a fantasy about themselves.
Zombies are comforting to those overwhelmed by the reality of the world as it is. The world on the news, of pointless wars without end, financial collapse, killer bugs, extinctions. They’re not a monster that affirms the young belief in their own untouchableness; rather they’re a monster who – to me at least – seems to rise up as an antibody to human hubris. And comforting, in a bleak way, as the metaphor really seems to whisper “It’s okay. Before long all this crap you have to live with will be wiped away.” It’s cathartic. Their popularity right now, I think, speaks volumes about where we’re at.