A History of Zombiism, Part Three

Last week, I described how “zombie” was translated from a Voodoo term – referring to people who’ve been drugged and enslaved by someone called a bokor – into cannibalistic corpses that we’ve seen filling our movies and television shows. Richard Matheson wrote what could be considered the transitional book, but while his monsters were more vampiric, his post-apocalyptic scenario inspired George A. Romero, the Godfather of the Zombie Genre, to create his 1968 film, Night of the Living Dead. When fans altered the names of his monsters from “ghouls” to “zombies,” history was set and the zombies have become the standard totem in post-apocalyptic works ever since.

Now while that’s all good and fun, we can’t simply set aside the zombie flick as mere entertainment. On the contrary, the zombie genre has had a much deeper influence, I maintain, than we even realize.  After all, Romero’s first zombie film was eventually inducted into the Library of Congress’s national film registry, an honor that is reserved only for films deemed “culturally or historically significant.” So let us, therefore, begin with the film that started it all.

One thing to notice about Night of the Living Dead is its cast: a group of white people led by one black man, portrayed by actor Duane Jones. While Romero himself denied that race was a factor in the casting, the idea of having a black character leading a cast of whites resonated strongly in a decade of racial turmoil. After all, the movie was released only six months after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior. But if we take race a little deeper, we’ll see that relations are critiqued in the film, highlighted by the lead actor’s death at the hand of “rednecks.” I almost wonder if the writers for The Walking Dead had this in mind when they had Merle (a redneck) attack T-Dog (a black man), with the latter taking the more reasonable role.

Indeed, we can see that many zombie films portray social turmoil with a sort of “inner plot” while the zombie-infested post-apocalypse forms a kind of “outer plot.” By this, I mean that most zombie films tend to portray characters barricading themselves in some safe place, then working out their interpersonal issues on the inside of the walls, outside of which the real dangers prowl. Inside that safe place, the inner plot takes the form of personality and culture clashes deeply engrained with racial and gender discussions. Ultimately, the group will find a way to overcome their issues and escape or succumb to them and become overwhelmed by the outer plot of the zombies beyond the walls.

So the inner plot of a zombie film centers on interpersonal relations and how people can get past their prejudices and work together. Outside of this is the outer plot, which is usually more of a social critique, fostering differing views toward the government: either the government is responsible and, hence, not to be trusted; it is ineffective and, hence, not to be trusted; or it ultimately leads the triumph over the zombie horde and is to be trusted with our allegiance. In the overwhelming majority of zombie films, the first two options are taken, and even in the rare occurrences when the third option is taken, the government is often portrayed as an authoritarian dictatorship (as in 28 Days Later), sometimes even breeding a dystopia (like Woodbury in The Walking Dead). So it seems that, ultimately, the zombie films critique the government itself, encouraging our leaders not to disappear into an inhuman or ineffective system, or else the apocalypse will come and leave their people defenseless.

On a last note, there’s one thing I seem to notice about zombie films: an ever-feared thing called the “swarm.” The swarm, or horde, is an overwhelming herd of zombies that the protagonists cannot defeat. They are rare in films, and they usually signal the end with their approach. But as I watch them in zombie films, I find myself wondering if that very swarm is us. Do we lose ourselves in the crowd, with the ultimate result of destroying our fellow man? Do we find righteousness in anonymity? Personally, I think we should each examine ourselves to see what role we would play in such a film. I think it might be best if we could reconcile the inner plot and the outer plot and save as many souls as possible.

Until next time, friends…

Stay tuned for my next blog post, in which I’ll explore why we, as Christians, need no longer obey the strict commands of Leviticus!

A History of Zombiism, Part Two

Good day, good year and welcome to the year 2015! Can you believe it’s been over two years since everyone thought the world was going to end? I have to say, I’m glad those people were wrong, although I did enjoy the 2009 film it inspired. Now about a month ago, I began a series exploring the origins of the zombie myth. In part one, I laid out the Haitian Voodoo origins of the “zombie” term. Essentially, a zombie is a person who is poisoned into a near-death state by a bokor (Voodoo witch doctor) and then revived, then kept under the influence of cognitive-inhibiting drugs in order to be retained as a slave. Now the question becomes: how did we go from a poisoned-revived-drugged slave of a Voodoo bokor to the flesh- or brain-eating reanimated dead that fill our silver screens today (sometimes done well, sometimes done very poorly)?

On the surface, the “reanimating of the dead” is a clue as to the connection. After all, a bokor who is reviving a person would appear to be “raising the dead.” And furthermore, a victim kept drugged and enslaved certainly tends to possess the diminished mental prowess that we see in the zombies in film. But then there’s the big kicker: the cannibalism. Where did that part of the myth come from?

One of the earliest original precursors to today’s zombies appears in Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel, I Am Legend. Although the creatures in his novel are referred to as vampires and bear many similar characteristics to vampires (aversion to light and holy objects, as well as the protagonist’s choice to kill them with stakes through the heart), the behavior of Matheson’s vampires are closer to the rabid zombies that showed up in fiction later on. But the more far-reaching effect of I Am Legend was its influence upon the father of the zombie genre: George A. Romero.

Romero’s 1968 film, Night of the Living Dead, can truly be considered the film that transformed the zombie myth into what it is today. In this movie, the dead are brought back to life presumably as a result of a space probe exploding in the atmosphere, dispersing a strange type of radiation that it picked up from Venus (that came from the movie, so don’t get mad at me for the scientific issues there). These reanimated dead – referred to in the movie simply as ghouls – are cannibalistic in nature, appear in swarms and spread their infection through biting.

It took another 17 years before Dan O’Bannon’s 1985 film, Return of the Dead, switched up the mythos, with the zombies specifically interested in brains, as opposed to simply flesh. While the brain-eating function of zombies (as well as government experimentation being the origin of the zombiism) are staples of the zombie genre, those two points appear to be dying out in recent years, with many good and terrible zombie films following more in line with the Romero conception.

So George A. Romero – under the influence of Richard Matheson’s novel – seems to have bridged the gap between the Voodoo bokor zombies and the flesh-eating living dead in film and television today. But interestingly enough, in his original 1968 film, Romero never actually used the word “zombie”; that name was applied by the fans afterward, and it stuck. Romero has since come to be identified as the “Godfather of the Zombie Genre,” though the contributions of Matheson and O’Bannon should not be overlooked.

Until next time, friends…

Stay tuned for my next blog post, in which I’ll explore some of the deeper, cultural impacts of zombie films!

A History of Zombiism, Part One

When you hear the term “zombie,” what comes to your mind? Is it a walking corpse, shambling slowly in search of human brains? Is it a rabid person in a quest for violence or with a cannibalistic desire for flesh? In our culture, zombies have become incredibly popular, from the rapid psychopaths of Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later to the shambling walkers/biters/chompers (pretty much every word other than “zombie”) of AMC’s The Walking Dead. And on the fringes of society (but becoming startlingly more commonplace) are those who, in real life, are preparing for some sort of zombie apocalypse or dead uprising.

But one trend I’ve found in zombie films is the tendency to let go of explanations, to see how characters respond to a world infested with dangerous monsters whose origin is simply unknown. Personally, I think that this popular “unknown origin” is just laziness on the part of the writers. Earlier zombie movies did, for the most part, look for solutions to this conundrum, but the cult classic Dawn of the Dead established the first hint at ambiguity in an origin, and subsequent zombie films have taken that to an extreme by embracing the “unknown origin” myth.

So I find myself wondering: where did the zombie myth come from? The answer: Voodoo. That’s right; it wasn’t shadow corporations or hidden military projects or mysterious supernatural issues relating to Heaven and Hell, but, rather, the practice of Voodoo witch doctors. You see, the first historical record of any sort of “zombie” derived from a practice by Voodoo witch doctors known as bokors. A bokor, containing in himself a vast knowledge of natural poisons, would derive a particular concoction that, when ingested, would cause the victim’s heartbeat to slow down so much their body would mimic death. The doctor would slip this poison (often, but not always, derived from the poison of a puffer fish) into the victim’s food or water, then hold back and wait for it to take effect. The victim would “die,” a funeral would be held and they would be buried. They would remain in this state until they really did die from asphyxiation or starvation…except that the witch doctor had other plans.

Under cover of darkness, the bokor – sometimes with the aid of an assistant – would dig the “dead” person up, administer the antidote and revive the victim (unfortunately, studies suggest the success rate at this might be as low as ten percent). Thereafter, the witch doctor would keep the victim constantly drugged with any manner of barbiturates, hypnotics or amnesia-inducing drugs and retain them as a slave. These revived and drugged slaves, who often behaved with highly-diminished brain functions, came to be known as “zombies.”

That’s all I’ll say about them for right now, but we’ll see in part 2 how these became the zombies we know today.

Until next time, friends…

Stay tuned for my next blog post, in which we’ll see how these real-life zombies made their way into popular culture and the silver screen!