I was watching the Boston Zombie March" and there was an interesting part when the zombies all started chanting “Brains!”
Where did the concept that zombies want brains come from? Was there a long standing tradition of brain eating by zombies? Did zombies hold a rally to decide?
Zombie Maker: What do you want?
Zombies: BRAAAINNNS!!
Zombie Maker: When do you want them?
Zombies: BRAAAINNNS!!
Or, is it a more recent phenomenom, with the Zombies gradually working their way up from severed limbs.
It’s worth noting that in folk tradition, revenants (those who have come back from the dead) are not especially focused on brains. The popular American perception of the Haitian zombie is of a person whose body has been re-animated, but who possesses no soul / individual personality. Since the seat of one’s selfhood is always either the heart or the brain in Western culture, it makes sense that zombies would be after a new one if their goal is to become a fully functional person again. Conversely, if they just want to make more zombies, they’d go after the hearts / brains of the living and destroy what makes them them. In any case, I think your answer is in whatever 20th-century zombie movie first introduced the concept.
Originally, Zombies were simply The Walking Dead. They didn’t want to eat you or anything – they were just creepy. For further info, read Wade Davis’ The Serpent and the Rainbow and criticisms of the book. Zombies moved slowly and, aside from the severe ick factor of having a walking corpse near you, not harmful or threatening.
With George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead the zombies started getting more aggressive. They moved faster and for the first time attacked people, eating them and infecting them. The movie drew a lot of inspiration, I think, from a slightly earlier science fiction film, Invisible Invaders.
Romero kept it up with the two subsequent chapters of his opus, Dawn of the Dead (arguably his best) and Day of the Dead, with better FX from Tom Savini, and more thought put into the rationale and reactions.
As pinkfreud notes, the thing about eating brains comes from Return of the Living Dead, which is non-Romero. Its zoombies, unlike his, speak, are animated by chemical means rather than space radiatioon or whatever, and they can move pretty fast.
As you can see, zombie threats have been evolvingtowards something more threatening. It ain’t no fun if you can just outrun them, and they don’t want to kill you.
Dan O’Bannon (writer/director of The Return of the Living Dead) had his zombies eat only brains (instead of flesh like Romero zombies) because he thought it would make it easier to tone down the gore and secure the R rating the studio required.
If they were, they’d be satisfied by giving them diplomas. I figure those prestigious non-accredited universities that kindly send me e-mails might want to get a piece of this action.
Interestingly, while this guide clearly states that the prefered food of zombie’s is human flesh, I can find no specific mention of human brains. Unless this is some subcategory of zombie’s that the book fails to mention, I am led to believe that the whole “I want to eat your brains” phenomenon is completely concocted by Hollywood.
Keep in mind that Return of the Living Dead is an absurdist comedy, not really a horror movie. The weirdest thing about the movie is the studio’s insistence that the otherwise completely nude Linnea Quigley wear a flesh-colored patch over her mons pubis. Sick bastards.
