Zombies in Western Culture: A reflection/review

 A twenty first century crisis

 One of the most popular genres  in movies in recent times in the West is that of the zombie. The zombie  phenomenon represents a type of horror movie that has captured the imagination, particularly of 21st century audiences. In 2001, a performance art event took place in Sacramento, California and was repeated in several other US cities. In late 2011 in New Mexico over 9000 people dressed up in zombie gear and goolish make-up to parade grotesquely through the town. Since then there have been many zombie walks throughout the world. 

Cultural malaise

The zombie zeitgeist has now become a pervasive metaphor that has seeped its way into post-modern popular culture. The zombie would seem to have become a symbol of a cultural malaise portraying human degradation and loss of meaning in a post-Christian world. It represents the decay of moral and ontological meaning that has managed to survive after the World Wars and the threat of a nuclear holocaust. This trope has replaced the alien invasion movie genre that was popular in the 1950's when there was a sense of hope for the future after defeating the Nazi and Nipon empires. At this time America had overcome the sacrifices of the war years and was poised to enter a new era upon the back of its industrial might. However, this vision of the future began to fade with the US entrenchment [in foreign wars of questionable morality] and the sacrifice of young people to a war machine that seemed to be motivated by profit. This was the time of mass protests and the beginning of the civil rights movement. As the population entered the new millennium, the vision of the age of Aquarius, and the disintegration of the dreams of psychedelia faded and poverty reared its ugly head in the richest country of the world as the US seemingly pursued policies detrimental to its own people. There is little wonder why the zombie has become so popular. 

Zombie Walk in Stockholm 2017

The living dead

The image of the zombie is haunting and pervasive. They are usually referred to as the walking dead because of their typified hollow staring looks and decaying bodies. They are not alive but not altogether dead either, they are the living dead. They congregate together without connecting or communicating with each other. Their only preoccupation is to eat the brains of living human beings, because of their mindlessness they crave the thing that they do not have. They envy human life but have a consuming need to destroy it. Once a living person is taken by the 'walking dead' their fate is to become as one with this aimless and eternal cabal. There is no escape since their numbers keep increasing exponentially while the depleting numbers of the living are what sustains wanderings. The new norm  becomes a nihilistic world of meaninglessness and decay with body, not only separated from mind, but also from God. 

To some degree it is what befalls a civilisation that is consumed by materialistic capitalism with no regard to the environment. The post-apocalyptic movies of the late 20th century portrayed a degraded world affected by a nuclear holocaust. Later, this was replaced by pandemic genres that demonstrated nature's punishment for the extinction of plant and animal life. In response the Zombie movie is an extension of the pandemic genre depicting mankind's self-loathing and inescapable guilt. Thus the zombie trope shows a world of anxiety and lack of hope. This is truely a post-modern existence with no purpose, no meaning, and no grand narrative. It is a fallen reality with no hope of reconciliation and restoration. This is encapsulated in the recent series called "The Walking Dead" where we see the human survivors struggle to hold back the tide of the living dead. There is never any resolution, the narrative has no end, the series  cycles though reiterations of searching for safe havens only to find human betrayal. What is presented is a downward cycle of decay and hopeless degradation.

Victor Frankl hope

There is obviously a direct relationship between hope and economic agency.  "... it seems apt to say that the anticipation of agency being usurped, of losing one's place in the world in the order of things, is fundamentally what drives the anxiety, depression and suicide associated with economic instability, an effect that is amplified if one's agency in the political arena is also threatened." This quote is quite pertinent, the politicisation of society in contemporary Western culture has replaced religion and has, itself been deified in the form of predatory cancel culture. This is the new emerging, but unsustainable religion that is nihilistic, tribal and unforgiving, one that ostracises others offering no pathway for atonement.

Click on image to go to video discussion

It is no wonder that there is an associated pandemic of youth suicide, particularly with white males. Vervaeke et. al. posit ..."the rate of suicide among whites is almost four times greater than that of blacks, and three times greater than hispanics. ... People have in part, lost confidence in the institutions that are supposed to nurture both individual and collective economic prosperity." Disappointingly this book does not offer hope but does give a brief mention of Victor Frankl's book Man's search for Meaning(1946) as a seminal work that explores the possibility of finding meaning even in the Nazi concentration camps. There is meaning to be found - but sadly not in this book. One starting place will be in a future book review in this series of Frankl's book. Another starting point will be Roger Scruton's book, Beauty, which is the antithesis of zombification.

The Book:

Vervaeke, J., Mastropietro, C., & Miscevic, F. (2017) Zombies in Western culture: A twenty-first century crisis. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers.

 

Links:

Cognitive science and the sacred: Johnathan Pageau and John Vervaeke: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PGglfl5j_I&t=1s

Cognitive science and the sacred: Johnathan Pageau interview with John Vervaeke: YouTube