Sunday, November 22, 2009

Are Zombies America's Godzilla?


Zombies have been enjoying a heyday of late, but why are Americans so obsessed with the walking dead? One theory is that Westerners love zombies for the same reason Japan loves giant monsters: they represent technology gone awry.

James Turner, an editor for O'Reilly Media, claims that zombies share a kinship with Godzilla. His theory is that, just as Godzilla was inspired by the dropping of the atomic bomb, Western filmmakers (Romero aside) latched onto zombies in the wake of Three Mile Island, the recognition of AIDS, the Ebola outbreak, and similar medical and technological disasters. He goes on to posit that the increasing popularity of zombie movies involving a biological outbreak suggests a Western ambivalence toward biotechnology.

It's an interesting thought, though perhaps a bit reductive. Certainly zombies have been used to comment on biotechnology, but they've also been used to comment on a number of social issues, including consumerism, corporate greed, and the objectification of women. And what causes the zombie outbreak is often less important than what comes afterward. Still, Turner makes an interesting case that biotechnology-based zombies could evolve to more acutely reflect our biological and technological fears:
"Blackberry-spawned abominations, anyone? Dawn of the Single-Payer Healthcare Undead? What about, They Came From H1N1?"
He's far more convincing when he talks about the important differences between giant monsters and zombies, namely that it's the military and scientists who fight Godzilla, where zombies fall to resourceful and self-reliant survivors.

Americans must like the idea that, as out of control as our hubristic science might become, a good machete and a 12 gauge in the hands of a competent man or woman can always save the day. The 2003 bestselling title, The Zombie Survival Guide, offers the same message of self-reliance. (I'm not sure what lesson we can take from the success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.)

Here's the actual Article:
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A Brief History Of Zombies

The atomic bombs that dropped on Japan in 1945 inspired movie director Ishiro Honda to give the world the big, bad, grey monster, born of irresponsible nuclear weapons tests that we know to this day as Godzilla. Godzilla was, quite literally, the personification of humanity's science and technology gone bad. The message was simple: With atomic weapons, we had unleashed a monster that was beyond our ability to control.

In the West, Godzilla's cautionary tale (and tail) never really took hold. To Americans, Godzilla was just a guy in a rubber suit stepping on model houses. But that's not to say that the West hasn't had its own cinematic symbol of science run amuck. Instead of giant irradiated monsters, our preferred poison has been flesh-eating zombies.

Until George Romero's landmark 1968 film, Night of the Living Dead, zombies in movies usually were created from voodoo or magic (or aliens, as featured in Ed Wood's groundbreakingly awful Plan 9 From Outer Space.) Romero gave us brain-munching corpses produced from a space probe blowing up in the atmosphere. Once again, the monsters were created by our out-of-control technology.

Night of the Living Dead didn't spawn an immediate clutch of imitators, possibly because it came in the midst of America's race to the moon and most people were hopeful about advances in science. But when Romero returned with Dawn of the Dead in 1978, that optimism had already begun to fade. By 1984's C.H.U.D., disasters such as Three Mile Island had primed the movie-going public for the idea of a horde of killer zombies created by nuclear waste.

Along with nuclear waste and mysterious space-borne radiation, pandemic plagues have also spawned zombies. This zombie type has become the dominant movie form over the last few decades, no doubt a reaction to AIDS, Ebola, cloning, genetically modified foods and the remainder of the brave new world of biotechnology.

It seems you can't throw a half-eaten cerebrum these days without hitting a posse of zombies brought to life by some kind of biological mishap (28 Days Later, Resident Evil, Planet Terror, Quarantine). Like Godzilla, zombies keep up with the times, always ready to mirror whatever aspect of science and technology people feel most uncertain about at the moment.

But there's one major difference between Godzilla and the attack of the zombies: Godzilla fought scientists and the military (and maybe the occasional band of adorable children), but zombie battles usually are a person-to-ex-person struggle. While Godzilla swatted at planes and crushed tanks underfoot, zombies are done in by weapons such as shotguns, hand grenades and the ever-handy chainsaw.

Americans must like the idea that, as out of control as our hubristic science might become, a good machete and a 12 gauge in the hands of a competent man or woman can always save the day. The 2003 bestselling title, The Zombie Survival Guide, offers the same message of self-reliance. (I'm not sure what lesson we can take from the success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.)

To be sure, it's easy to read more into the popularity of zombies than might actually be there. Film-goers have always loved a good scare, and a shambling collection of neuron-challenged corpses make a pretty terrifying story. And if my zombie-obsessed 14-year-old son is a representative sample, blowing the undead away with heavy weaponry has a solid adolescent demographic appeal. But there's no question, at least in my mind, that zombies (and Godzilla) are an allegorical representation of our fear that science and the technologies it spawn will lead to our destruction.

Who knows what the future may hold for zombie evolution? But it's a pretty good bet that whatever we're uncomfortable with at the moment stands a good chance of turning into the next zombie-generator. Blackberry-spawned abominations, anyone? Dawn of the Single-Payer Healthcare Undead? What about, They Came From H1N1?

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