The Rise of the Zombie Phenomenon in Popular Culture

These days, zombies are everywhere. The zombie community continues to grow, luring more people into it. Now, zombies have their own sizeable sub-genre in the horror genre. Zombies are essentially the dead reanimated in popular culture. In recent years, there has been an explosion of the zombie culture in Hollywood that influences the zombie loving community in society. Not only that but now people claim to have knowledge of how zombies act and how they are going to survive to zombies are indeed true.

Zombies' culture is now a huge part of society and this can be due to people's fear, a desire to break social roles, and something as simple as fitting into the social norm. Originally, zombies are not the flesh-eating, undead that they are known as today; they came from a Haiti Voodoo culture. The word stem from that Haitian word, zombie, meaning the spirit of the dead (umich.edu).

The University of Michigan page on zombie explains that the Voodoo priests studied and applied black magic with the coup padre, “a powder that is issued orally, the primary ingredient of which is tetrodoxin, the deadly substance of the notoriously poisonous porcupine fish” to a person(umich.

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edu). This poison would cause the subject's heart to slow down to a near stop and their body temperature would also significantly decrease, resulting in the public thinking the subject is dead. The subject would then be buried only for the Voodoo priests, Bokors, to dig them back up, but this time, while they remain physically intact, their memory would be gone and they remain under the “Bokor's power until the Bokor dies” (umich.

edu). This is the origin of zombies, and from that, it transitioned to the zombies people know today through popular culture. Zombies in popular culture cannot be dismiss as a fad. There is a huge following and much successful franchise aim at this culture. An extremely popular franchise is The Walking Dead, a television series on AMC. According to James Hibberd of Entertainment Weekly, the Top Primetime Scripted Shows on GetGlue February 4-10 season three premier of the series attracts 10.9 million viewers for AMC(Hibberd).

This scripted cable show with a total of 220,878 numbers is the combination of all six games. activities whereas its closest competitor, Movie-wise, the franchise is also extremely Pretty Little Liars, only has 32,332 activities. successful. There are five movies so far in the tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com series. Domestically, all five movies gross a total of over 285 million dollars and over 897 million worldwide (boxofficemojo). Both The Walking Dead and Resident Evil are only two of the many successful zombie products. These two alone shows that there is a huge zombie following in popular culture. It simply cannot be dismiss as a fad. With such a huge rise on zombie in pop culture, there must be the question of why.

What is it about zombie that attracts people? One reason is fear. Prominently, there can be a fear of bio-engineering. With the advancement of technology and science, scientist can now do a variety of things to a human body such as giving it a robotic arm. With such control over science and technology, people fear it. Something could go wrong, causing zombies to become reality. A mishap can cause an outbreak of a disease, thus, creating zombies. Another fear is death. When people see zombie, they are confronted with their own mortality. When someone dies, images of that person stop at that age. Everything beyond that is false illusion. For humans, who fear death and outright denies death on a day to day basis, zombies brings back that fear, a painful reminder that death is real and one day, they too will cease to exist. By stimulating zombies' death, it provides them it a sense that they can overcome death.

Of course, zombies are not actually dead, they are the undead, but as zombies, they are not in control of themselves. They mold into a frame. This strikes people's fear of enslavement. People naturally fear losing control, and zombies are painful reminders of that very fear (umich.edu). Losing control can also applies to society and not just individuals. People fear war and terrorism because that means there's a chance the society they live in will no longer be in their own Zombie Movies Civil Rebellion War Economic Recession Foreign Military Development Disease Epidemic Graphic by Stephanie Fox. io9.com Iraq War control. It strikes as a Global Recession Rise of the AIDS epidemic sociological fear. Gina Prague Spring French May US anti-war protests DeMatteo of University of Height of US involvement in Vietnam War World War II Sputnik Launched California, Santa Cruz, Great Depression examines the zombie trend 0 20000000 b 8 --- 1910 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1989 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 and it's parallel to global unrest; amidst the Great Depression, one of the earliest recorded zombie film hits Hollywood in 1932, going by the name of While Zombies(DeMatteo).

The rise of this culture began again in 1943, when the United States involved itself with World War II, only for it to slowly fall and then spike again between 1964 and 1968, the time of the Civil Rights movement(DeMatteo). This trends continues following with the culture rising again during the 70s and 80s, a period of disruption in the Middle-East and the US involvement in the Vietnam war, which leads to now, huge zombie following in pop culture relating The graph shows the amount of zombies' movies output to social unrest with growing every five years. Zombie movies rise during times of social amount of disease scare, great unrest before falling once its ease over. recession, war, social unrest in the Stephanie Fox Middle-East, and the 2012 end of cache.gawkerassets.com the war scare (DeMatteo).

As the United States continue treading through a weak economy, getting involve in wars, and social problems continue to rise, it is only natural, going with DeMatteo's statement, that zombies culture exist as a huge cultural phenomenon today as a manifestation of fear. Furthermore, zombies provide people with a chance to escape their social roles. Everyday, people must restrain themselves from expressing their true emotions. They must contain their personal desire that might conflict with what is acceptable in society. Zombies allow people to break away from that. They allow people to express pent up feelings, especially aggressive ones in a legal but extreme way. Because they are "already dead we can be guilt free and gleefully watch them killed in every way possible" say Jeff Greenberg, a researcher on the Terror Management Theory.

People have inner desire of wanting to harm another person but society restricts that. With zombies, people can express that inner desire to kill them. Also, by killing the zombies, they also escape another social role, the role of civilians compare to that of a military personal. There's something very appealing in self-reliance and zombies manifest that appeal. People will have to kill zombies on their own to survive and cannot rely on other forces such as the military or scientist to discover a cure. It is all very self centers. With breaking social roles, there is also fitting into social roles. The zombies culture is such a huge part of life now, because of this, people want to feel as if they belong.

If they don't know about zombie, have not plan for a zombie apocalypse, or just knowing anything zombie related, then they are outcast. Zombie is now a huge pop culture so in order to fit in with the social norm, people tends to educate themselves on it and falling into the franchise, whether they like it or simply pretending to in order to fit in. A University of California, Riverside student name Ilyssa said that "it's ridiculous but we will talk about it" simply because it helps create social norms. No one wants to be the odd one out so they conform to this growing culture. It's an innate desire to fit in, and with so many people drawn to it, it is only normal for others to be pull in as well. There are other reasons as to why zombie culture is huge right now. It can be said that people can relate to zombies because of everything that is happen in society right now, they feel stress out, not having enough time to be themselves, not having enough sleep, and all they want to do is walk around aimlessly.

This is true, but this reason also falls into DeMatteo's argument that zombies trends rises in time with social unrest. Another argument is because people are drawn to aggression, they want that adrenaline rush of harming and killing people. Again, this falls into people's desire to break away from their social roles. Playing fighting games help them escape from their role in the virtual world, and zombies are the same thing. It creates an outlet for people to express themselves. Another argument is that people looks hot or sexy when they are fighting for their life. How true this reasoning is depends on a person perception of what is sexy. Zombies' phenomenon is a huge part of popular culture right now and cannot be dismiss. People are naturally drawn to this supernatural being following other supernatural culture such as vampires and werewolves. The zombie culture exists just as the vampire or werewolves' culture exists, but it exists to a greater extent. There are trends in this pop culture, with the influx of zombies' merchandise, games, and movies. It's hard to truly understand the rise of this new culture but it can relates back to people's fear, desire to break away from their social roles, but also desire to fit into social norms. The only question remain is for how much longer will society be fascinated with this sub-genre of horror?