Zombies

The origin of the concept of zombiism stems from Hatian voodoo culture. The word zombie--in Hatian it is "zombi"--means "spirit of the dead." Voodoo folklore contends that Bokors, voodoo priests that were concerned with the study and application of black magic, posessed the ability to resurrect the deceased through the administration of coup padre--coup padre is a powder that is issued orally, the primary ingredient of which is tetrodoxin, the deadly substance of the notoriously poisonous fou-fou, or "porcupine fish." According to lengend, "a zombi(e) is someone who has annoyed his or her family and community to the degree that they can no longer stand to live with this person. They respond by hiring a Bokor. . .to turn them into a zombi(e)." (Keegan www.flmnh.ufl.edu)

Once they had been issued the coup padre, the subjects being prepared for their descent into zombidom would appear to die insofar as their heart rate would slow to a near stop, their breathing patterns would be greatly subdued, and their body temperature would significantly decrease. The public, thinking that the person was dead, would bury him/ her as if they were a corpse. They would then be exhumed, still alive, by the Bokor and, although their physicality remained intact, their memory would be erased and they would be transformed into mindless drones. "Though still living, they remain under the Bokor's power until the Bokor dies." (Keegan, www.flmnh.ufl.edu)

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In 20th century American culture, the idea of zombies has traditionally been examined almost exclusively through the medium of film. The prototype for early zombie movies was White Zombie (1932), which took its subject matter directly from the zombie myths of Hatian folklore. White Zombie, one of the celibrated horror films of the "Universal era" (which also included important versions of Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolfman and The Mummy) starred Bela Lugosi as a rich Hatian businessman who had taken it upon himself to win the hand of a lady by turning her husband into a zombie. He had hoped that by doing this he would be able to rid her of her connection to him and thus clear the way for their unmitigated romance.

Other zombie movies of the 30s and 40s followed suit insofar as they generally portrayed zombies as they existed in Hatian folklore: as beings whose brains had been zapped by some "master" who was then able to control their actions. Many of these pictures, such as The Voodoo Man (1944) and I Walked With a Zombie (1943) maintained that zombies were directly rooted, geographically and thematically, in Hatian myth. Other films, such as Revolt of the Zombies (1936) and Zombies on Broadway (1945) kept the theme but altered the geographic location. Also, while some of these films reinforced the idea that zombies were, in fact, the reanimated dead, some films portrayed zombies as being the products of a sort of malevolent hypnosis. In such films, the monsters were not "dead" at all, but merely humans who were reduced to a trance-like state and who were, again, controlled by a "master."

During the "Hammer Films era" of the 1950s and 1960s, zombies began to a adopt a more sinister air. Films such as I Eat Your Skin (1961) and The Plague of the Zombies (1965) offered zombies that were forced to maintain their posthumous existence by actually consuming human flesh. This version of the zombie was generally still "controlled" by a "master," but was awakened from its deathly state by some sort of supernatural or otherwise extraordinary force (satanic incantation, etc.). Here we see the invention of the "zombie-as-cannibal" type that was to characterize the genre for years to come. Virtually any given zombie from one of these movies was little more than "an utter cretin, a vampire with a lobotomy." (Twitchell, 265).

Upon its release in 1968, George Romero's Night of the Living Dead reinvented not only the idea of "zombies" but also the entire horror genre. It defined a whole new type of monster and irrevocably transformed the way in which people were scared by movies and, by extention, monsters.

In the late 1960s, America had been subjected to the horror of the Vietnam War. With the brutal onslaught of gruesome imagery generated by the media surrounding the war, America no longer needed "monsters" to scare them. The "horror" generated by mankind itself was frightening enough. Night of the Living Dead capitalized on this by resorting to the same nihilistic attitude toward death and destruction that was generated by the war. Its monsters, or zombies, were not merely brainwashed servants or vampire-like parasites but something else altogether: "Romero's living dead are..a rough combination of zombie, werewolf and vampire. They exist in a nether world between life and death like zombies, they devour like werewolves and they communicate their "disease" by biting like vampires." (Paul, 263). The zombies in Night.. are weaklings, frail corpses whose only strength is in numbers. They posess no supernatural abilities other than the fact that they are reanimated (Night.. is also unique in that it provides a scientific explanation for the return of the corpses--"radiation from a crashed spacecraft"). The zombies in Night.. exhibit physical weaknesses that are parallel to those of humans because they are merely humans, or at least the animated shells of humans. Night.. acknowledges that the enemy is us and us only, not some "other" or tyrannical force from beyond. It is, in essence, complete apocalypse that, unlike the "atomic mutant" movies of the previous decade, was rooted solely in humanity.

Night of the Living Dead also succeeded in shattering taboos of family and personal relations that had, until that time, been unexplored by American culture. Upon transformation into zombies, the characters in the film exhibit no moral responsibility at all, thus allowing them to take part in such ghastly activity as incest, cannibalism and parricide. Indeed, the film shows (zombie) brother devouring sister and (zombie) daughter devouring mother and father. This is nothing to say of the fact that all of the film's characters, including the obviously heroic protagonist, die in the end, thus reinforcing the film's depiction of humans as flawed and vulnerable.

Zombie films after Night of the Living Dead basically followed in its footsteps. Indeed, many films, such as Romero's own sequels Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985), as well as Zombie (1979) and Return of the Living Dead (1985) etc., were essentially carbon copies of Romero's masterpiece, complete with overflowing cemetaries and strolling corpses hungry for human flesh. Many of these, such as Evil Dead 2 (1988) and Return of the Living Dead 2 (1988), shared Night..'s challenge of societal taboos. In fact, by this time, such activity had become the cinematic norm and no longer seemed shocking. Truly, to see a zombie attack his mother or sink his teeth

into his sister had become common, even cliche, material for horror films. Indeed, by the time that Michael Jackson's celebrated "Thriller" (see image to the left) video arrived in 1984, zombies of the Romero variety had become safe for the whole family, even though, ironically, it was exactly that family that those zombies sought to destroy.

As is the case with the rest of the monsters listed on this site, there are certain symbolic implications tied up in the idea of zombies. In American culture, specifically within the medium of film, the zombie represents severeal different "fears."

Zombies of the Haitian Voodoo variety represent a loss of cognition/ consciousness and also a loss of free will. What is it except these things, after all, that separates us from animals? By "controlling" another person and eliminating that person's ability to make choices, let alone engage in conscious thought, the "controller" has reduced that person to the level of an animal and has robbed him of his humanity. A distinct parallel might be drawn here between cultures that have promoted the use of slavery (such as our own) and zombie films. To fear the possibility of zombies is to fear enslavement.

Considering that zombies of the reanimated variety are nothing more than moving corpses, they come to embody the human fear of our own dead tissue. As humans we go to great lengths to obscure the remains of our dead, especially our loved ones. If someone we know dies, our mental image of that person stops at the grave.When we build a mental image of that person, it is not the rotting corpse or skeletal remains that we see--even though that is the person's current physical status--but the memory of that person's conscious life. It is no mistake that we bury our corpses "six feet under" so as to eradicate the ugliness of decomposition.
Therefore, to confront a zombie is to be reminded of our own mortality. It, as is proven in Night of the Living Dead and its ilk, is especially terrifying to encounter, let alone be attacked by, the physical image of one's deceased beloved. Because our mortality is something that we try to decorate with tidy rituals and outright denial, zombies serve as a painfully striking reminder that we will all eventually return to the same stinking earthly essence from which we were born.