As an avid consumer of horror films and horror content in general, it was surprising if not embarrassing to learn of my ignorance in regards to the origins of a culture that I so enthusiastically participate in. I have always somehow known through osmosis that horror films serve allegorical purpose of exploring  social fears and apprehensions through an entertaining fictitious metaphor, however the racist misappropriation of Haitian culture that is at the core of zombie culture was something I had never come across.

What really stood out to me was the central idea of control that seems to be at the core of zombie culture. Through associating the black body with voodoo culture, the white body can demonise it and prescribe it a lesser, uncivilised body that requires control and should not be free in order to maintain safety or status quo. This idea really concretised in my mind through the ‘world upside down’ concept that plays out in Romero’s Night of the Dead, as Ben’s body is reduced to that of a Zombie by the white male body despite his role as protagonist and hero throughout most of the film in order to restore the world to it’s rightful condition.

The power structures in place are hardly surprising and work to uphold the hegemonic of white male supremacy that underpins problematic discourses that disenfranchise all groups of people that are not white and male. That Zombies have come now to represent the proverbial Other and not just the black body demonstrates how the position of power serves to homogenize those without it. We can see this through tracking the saturation of Zombie content alongside real life social fears and issues – such as the war on terrorism, immigration, the AIDS crisis and 9/11. What may turn the ‘world upside down’ is packaged into a neat little Zombie package for audiences to easily digest.