Toadtrip

A Short History of Zombies – The Zombie Apocalypse

October 27th, 2008 by The Toadmaster

Image credit: TCM Hitchhiker from Flickr

This is Part II of a a two part series on the history of zombies. Part I dealt with the origin in Haitian culture and creation of zombies. Part II is all about zombies in popular culture.

George Romero’s 1968 film, Night of the Living Dead, was the first portrayal of modern zombies in film (prior to this zombies were portrayed in line with their status in Haitian folklore) and was made in black and white with a limited budget, i.e. a classic indie film. He did his job so well that he established in the popular psyche the concept of zombies as mindless monsters with a craving for human flesh. Hordes of zombies.

Night of the Living Dead revolutionized the horror film genre. Its seemingly innocent rural and suburban American settings destabilized the viewer’s expectations of horror as something confined to exotic and unfamiliar locales. Romero eschewed rubber masks and outlandish costumes in favour of blood, guts, and gore, ushering in the splatter and slasher sub-genres. On top of the close-to-home scenery and visceral imagery, Night of the Living Dead realistically depicted the psychological horror of cannibalism, death and murder with enough gruesomeness to get the basic concepts across to the watchers but not so much that it prevented people from identifying with the main characters.

The characters of Night of the Living Dead are what made the film compelling and a classic of the horror genre. Their actions in the face of a slow-moving zombie apocalypse provide an interesting insight into how people deal with inevitability and hopelessness, when the biggest things to fear are your own mistakes, which will be relentlessly capitalized upon by the zombie horde.

Since Romero’s seminal film was made, many have built upon his foundation to produce films such as The Shining, The Omen, The Blair Witch Project, and The Exorcist. Romero’s masterpiece of horror and subsequent films have built the modern concept of zombiism and, over time, displaced the original voodoo practices with apocalypses, mindless hordes, survival (and associated weaponry!), and dread. One could almost correlate the change in our perception of zombies with the change in our perception of society and planet Earth…