Last week in class we talked about a topic that I never would have thought of to discuss in any academic classroom setting: zombies. I’m not a zombie-movie or show lover myself, so I didn’t really realize why people were so fascinated with these fictional characters. I simply thought they made for bad-quality cinema and poor plotlines, and didn’t realize the thought process behind these movie and TV show producers. After reading up on zombies and their entrance into pop culture, it makes more sense to me. These creatures started off as fictional characters simply made for entertainment purposes. However, with time, the significance has grown tremendously, and is surprisingly more relatable to current events and reality than ever before.

It was never my first thought to consider zombies as a sort of metaphor for ourselves. They look nothing like us, act nothing like us, and don’t take part in any activities or live in environments similar to our world. We are scared of them not because of the harm they can cause, but simply because we can’t imagine looking and acting the way they do. For us, zombies are not “normal” and are in fact far from it. However, a recent article by BBC Culture makes a good point. “It can’t be a coincidence, then, that zombies are in vogue during a period when banks are failing, when climate change is playing havoc with weather patterns, and when both terrorist bombers and global corporations seem to be beyond the reach of any country’s jurisdiction. It can’t be a coincidence, either, that the fourth season of The Walking Dead got off to its hugely successful start just weeks after the United States federal government shut down” (Barber). Anxiety of what the future holds is something nearly all humans face, whether it’s directly or unconsciously. Especially now, we are all living in times of economic and world turmoil. Zombie apocalypses and all that comes with what the end of the world may look like in these movies and TV shows reassure us not in the traditional sense, but in that they give us some sort of idea of what the end of the world may actually be like. We are comfortable when we know what is coming, and we have no way of knowing what the future holds in times like these. Having some sort of vision or idea as to what may happen counters any fear of uncertainty or unknowing that we may have. So oddly enough, zombies are in some way suppressing our fears rather than creating them.

Link to BBC article: http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20131025-zombie-nation