What's the origin of the "Zombie Apocalypse" concept in film/games/fiction/etc.?

Cafe Society
21

A variation of the “Zombie Apocalypse” genre can be seen in Firefly and Serenity (moreso in Serenity), although the Reavers don’t really quite fit the zombie mold.

Spoilers for Serenity, for those few unwashed who haven’t seen it yet:

[Spoiler]The Reavers are a large population of humans from the planet Miranda, a modern, relatively new colony world near the edge of known space which was secretly subjected to a large-scale government test of a substance known as Paxilon Hydrochlorate, intended to remove aggressive tendencies from the population, making them easier to deal with (and making conflicts like the rather bloody and involved Unification War a thing of the past).

The Alliance scientists find that the results are rather horrific. 99.9% of the population has their aggressive tendencies eliminated, along with, quite literally, their will to live. Everyone just sits or lays down where they are, and calmly stops eating, drinking, and eventually breathing. The rest of the population, around 30,000 colonists, became hyper-aggressive, killing anyone who hadn’t already died, and eventually turning to cannibalism and self-mutilation. In later years, the Reavers become the Boogieman for those who live out on the Rim, occassionally attacking ships and small colonies, raping, killing, and eating most (if you’re very very lucky, in that order) and converting the few that remain via torture.[/spoiler]

Oh, and I kinda want to see “I Am Legend”, I’ve seen Will Smith do serious, and he can pull it off (he just usually doesn’t try). I can’t see HOW they’d give it a happy ending, at best, it might have an ambiguous “The Hero, or what passes for one in this film, has escaped with the girl to live another day” ending without any kind of resolution for him.

22

I’m with you. I’d be very surprised if it’s any good. Wikipedia says it started as a Ridley Scott project back in the 90s, with Arnold Schwartzenegger as the projected lead. Now that might have been interesting.

True, although Romero freely admits that he got the idea from I Am Legend. And I Am Legend does feature a post-apocalyptic survivor facing off against a horde of the undead. So I would say that was the prototype, and NotLD is the template.

23

A better question is:

Why do we care?

What is it about Zombies that captures this particular generation’s attention?

Why the screen-time for walking, rotting bodies?

24

Because we’ve outgrown mummy movies.

25

I think a big part of it is a mix of political correctness and excessive cliche-ness, you really can’t go around killing the Indians, killing gangsters has been done to death (largely as a result of the efforts of Charlie Bronson, who has single-handedly killed most of the gangsters and drug dealers in the world already), and the political atmosphere doesn’t really lend itself lately to single-handedly killing swarms of Fundie Muslim Terrorists with high-explosives and automatic weapons anymore. That said, killing rich white terrorists is the realm of Jack Baur, and Chuck Norris deals with the redneck villains and Bill

So where do we get our excessive gratuitous violence? The Undead. I mean, it’s either that or Galaga: The Movie. Sure, a zombie apocalypse is a cliche, but it’s in a genre that thrives on cliches, at least for this generation of audience members.

26

Bevare!

27

“And it was all a dream.” ?

“And the zombies all lived happily ever after.” ?

“And the movie made lots and lots of money.” ?

28

That’s funny because me and a friend were shoooting the breeze one day and we had an idea for a movie about Zombies, but not the George Romero Zombies, No these zombies would be just like regular people, and the fact that people wouldnn’t stay dead was causing all sorts of problems with resources and there was also whatever -ism one could have against zombies (metabolism?). We actually saw it as a comedy.

29

In addition to what Raguleader said, I think there’s a few other major things in play. Zombies are stupid but usually strong and numerous, which means that a group of heroes can easily defeat them, if the heroes play smart. This sets a good level of action for a film, book, RPG, or whatever. The heroes, usually normal, everyday people, still do cool and exciting stuff. A lot of the Romero films have also focused on human interaction more than actual zombies. As long as the survivors play smart and get along, they’ll be alright. It’s when those social conventions break down that there’s an issue.

That, and in a zombie movie, unlike other action movies, social conventions have broken down. People are free to do whatever they can get away with - which, keeping in mind that the heroes are normal people, can be cool. You can watch a zombie movie and see yourself doing the same things, in a way.

I think it’s the combination of all of these - merciless violence, human interaction, everyday people outsmarting stronger foes, and the breakdown of social conventions in a “realistic”, modern world that make the zombie genre so unique. If you’re looking for those things, there’s nowhere else to really turn.

30

Some part of me wants to interpert the Zombies as a symbol for something else.

But I honestly can’t quite put my finger on what.

31

Because they work cheap and are non-union.

32

Not to play Psych 101, but I always interpreted it as the release form all responsibility, and (to a slightly lesser extent) the relinquishment of control.

How nice would it be to have all responsibility and accountability taken away for a while, your only goal to find and/or eat (brains)?

Alternately, they can be viewed as an easily (one-on-one) beat-up bully, thereby fulfilling all of our inner 4th-grade geeks.

-Cem

33

Nazi zombies riding dinosaurs! :slight_smile:

34

Does it have to be a symbol for one thing only? They could be used as a metaphor for what happens from uninhibited science, the mindless masses of the world that it seems uselss to go against, or in one case, the current war. Trying to pin down zombies in the zombie apocalypse genre as meaning one thing is like trying to pin down dragons of the fantasy genre as meaning one thing. You first need to define which zombies you’re talking about. Too many authors have used them to mean too many different things.

35

Zombie mutilation is cool because it satisfies our appetite for mayhem and destruction. Killing and mutilating humans = bad (for most people.) Killing and mutilating zombies = good. Good for them because you’re hopefully putting them to rest, and good for the humans who are trying to survive.

36

Look, I gotta go, can we continue this later? I’ll meet you at the Winchester.

37

I was Chanel surfing the other day and on one of the Spanish language channels there was a movie of Lucha Libre or Masked Wrestlers fighting zombies. It was called 'The Castel of ?" I wish I had seen the whole movie. It was really fun.

38

Agreed. Zombie hordes are an easy metaphor for many things. And either you beat them through cunning and cooperation, or they crush you in the end.

39

Well, “death” would be the obvious answer. The zombie horde is an in-your-face reminder of your own mortality, without any sort of reassurance of an afterlife or eternal reward. Ghosts, for example, are scary, but they’re also evidence for the existence of a soul, that after we die, some part of us goes on. Vampires, at least in the Stoker mold, are the same. If Dracula is damned, then that means there must be grace for at least some of us. And his reaction to a crucifix indicates that there’s some validity to the concept of a Christian afterlife. The more modern “vampire as protagonist” stories that jettison the religious component of the vampire myth are merely replacing it with a different sort of immortality. Sure, a vampire can kill you, but it can also bring you back with superhuman abilities, eternal youth, a trendy black wardrobe, and all sorts of other great side-benefits.

The zombie horde is different. There’s usually no supernatural background to it. The zombies are either the result of science gone awry, or are presented with no explanation at all. It brings us face-to-face with death without any comforting evidence that the universe is anything other than random and pitiless. It also presents death in a way few of us like to confront it. There’s always something faintly ridiculous about zombies. They aren’t sexy and cool, like a vampire, or mysterious and otherworldly like a ghost. The archetype of the zombie horde isn’t a charming European aristocrat or a beautiful spectral woman. It’s an overweight housewife with a pink teddy bear sweater and a gaping head wound. Like real death, being turned into a zombie robs you of your dignity, and turns you into something that is at once ridiculous and repulsive, like the pile of zombies trying to claw its way up the down escalator in Day of the Dead. This fusion is so effective that even movies that are supposed to be comedies, such as Shaun of the Dead, are still highly effective as zombie movies.

The other potent cross-fertilization in this genre is the plague aspect: death as contagion. It’s not enough that the zombies kill you, they turn you into one of them. And not through ritualistic seduction, like a vampire, but by random idiot chance. A superficial bite wound, often received during a moment of victory, and the sickness is in you. You’re already “one of them,” even though you’re not dead yet. And then there’s nothing you can do but wait until you turn on the rest of the survivors, or put a gun to your head and end it quickly.

Lastly, there’s the human commentary. The zombies aren’t evil. They’re a force of (un)nature, apocalyptically deadly, but wholly unmotivated by desire or intent. Essentially, a human-sized virus. But the destruction they entail creates a backdrop in which “normal” humans become monsters themselves. The naked confrontation with death inevitably brings out the basest reactions of the survivors. Faced with the total collapse of society, people quickly revert to the worst sorts of barbarism. Essentially, the zombie horde destroys you even if it never catches you, by revealing you to be an uncivilized animal who will violate any principle or ethic in order to survive. Although, like all monster movies, the zombie apocalypse film is ultimatly moralistic: the characters who most eagerly pursue their own survival over the common good of his fellow survivors, the more graphic his eventual demise at the hands of the zombies will be.

40

This reminds me of a scene from an episode nearish the end of Season 4 of Angel. Evil super powerful demon attacks the offices of Wolfram and Hart, and everyone he kills comes back to life as a zombie (but only this one time, everyone else he ever kills stays good and dead).

Anyhow, our heros are trying to escape from the offices, and just as they’re about to make their escape, one of them sees one of the recurring bad guy characters near the head of the zombie horde. He runs up to the guy, slices the zombie lawyer’s head with an axe (killing him for good), and then runs back to escape with his friends.

His explanation? “I hate seeing someone I know like that. Even someone I know I hate.” The fact that some of the zombie horde may very well be people you know, people you like or love, or even the asshole who took the last can of beats at the grocery store this morning, can have an affect on you by making them more individual and “real” and less “that indistinguishable mass of bad guys that we just hosed with the flamethrower”.