I Should Invent Some Snappy Continuing Subject Lines For 2016... But This Is On Zombies
I've been reading various stories (and a couple of books) and watched a couple of films... (and apparently have mislaid the copy of 28 Days Later BRB left aaages ago) and come to a startling conclusion...
Zombies are really bad monsters.
Yes, one can argue that as vampires and werewolves and every other popular culture monster has been romanticised the hell out of (vampires and werewolves will save you from rapists) zombies were shoved into the gap to provide a monster-child of imagination that even a mother would have trouble loving (and especially French kissing)*
The zombie, post-Romero, is a walking corpse with at least some degree of rotting or visually unappealing damage, probably a bad smell, and no intelligence. They are animated corpses that either shamble with little or no purpose - when a tasty living human is not in reach - or speedier hunters with no fear of damaging themselves in their quest for tasty living flesh because they're operating at the most basic level of viral ambition (living to reproduce).
The majority of stories I've read so far in 'The Living Dead' collection, or even World War Z, find it incredibly difficult to make zombies the central monster of their tales. And that's maybe because the Romero zombie, or subsequent viral zombie reboots, are not easily slotted in to our current stereotype roles for villains. There was a place, once, for forces of nature in our fictitious lives, but whatever storm or flooding or fire we face we don't deal with in massive death tolls. Even epidemic disease only touches as a story from a hundred years ago.
Yup, some of the stories I've read so far in "The Living Dead" are okay stories, and might have been better if not shoved in with a bunch of other living dead stories with an implied promise that there would be entrail munching madness. But none of them have managed to take the zombie we think of as a zombie (brain-dead, hard to kill, and hungry for human flesh) and create a monster/horror story around it.
I had always thought that zombies must exist in fiction the way other monsters did... and that I just didn't read them. But if they do they're harder to find than I would have guessed.
[Plus there's maybe a whole side-bar to be had here about why the other monsters have grown ever weaker in our imaginations... as a society we're increasingly detached from death and attached to the ideal of personal immortality but that is a way bigger thought to be thought on]
*although that does not appear to be entirely true
Zombies are really bad monsters.
Yes, one can argue that as vampires and werewolves and every other popular culture monster has been romanticised the hell out of (vampires and werewolves will save you from rapists) zombies were shoved into the gap to provide a monster-child of imagination that even a mother would have trouble loving (and especially French kissing)*
The zombie, post-Romero, is a walking corpse with at least some degree of rotting or visually unappealing damage, probably a bad smell, and no intelligence. They are animated corpses that either shamble with little or no purpose - when a tasty living human is not in reach - or speedier hunters with no fear of damaging themselves in their quest for tasty living flesh because they're operating at the most basic level of viral ambition (living to reproduce).
The majority of stories I've read so far in 'The Living Dead' collection, or even World War Z, find it incredibly difficult to make zombies the central monster of their tales. And that's maybe because the Romero zombie, or subsequent viral zombie reboots, are not easily slotted in to our current stereotype roles for villains. There was a place, once, for forces of nature in our fictitious lives, but whatever storm or flooding or fire we face we don't deal with in massive death tolls. Even epidemic disease only touches as a story from a hundred years ago.
Yup, some of the stories I've read so far in "The Living Dead" are okay stories, and might have been better if not shoved in with a bunch of other living dead stories with an implied promise that there would be entrail munching madness. But none of them have managed to take the zombie we think of as a zombie (brain-dead, hard to kill, and hungry for human flesh) and create a monster/horror story around it.
I had always thought that zombies must exist in fiction the way other monsters did... and that I just didn't read them. But if they do they're harder to find than I would have guessed.
[Plus there's maybe a whole side-bar to be had here about why the other monsters have grown ever weaker in our imaginations... as a society we're increasingly detached from death and attached to the ideal of personal immortality but that is a way bigger thought to be thought on]
*although that does not appear to be entirely true