History of Zombies in Myth and Popular Culture
Braaaaaaiiiiiiinnnnns
The call of the zombie. Zombies... the walking dead, the living dead, the un-dead. But where do zombies come from? How did our concept of zombies develop? Read on to find out.
The origin of the modern zombie is a mix of various legends. The most commonly cited origin of zombie mythology is from Hatian folklore. In Haitian legend zombies are the reanimated deceased. The dead are raised through magic, in most zombie stories making use of this zombie origin story this is voodoo (Vodou) magic, though zombies are not part of formal Vodou religious practice. In Haitian folklore zombies are often raised by sorcerers, not priests, and stories feature the priest figting the sorcerer that has raised the zombies. This magical origin was popular in many of the original zombie works and was popularized by books written that claimed to describe Vodou practices. Other zombie origins include radiation, viruses, and fungi.
-Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's monster
The novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley features Frankenstein’s monster, a living being created from the dead by the scientist Victor Frankenstein, and while not a zombie himself the monster can be seen as a prototype of the scientific zombie origin story. A key difference being the Frankenstein monster is made from several bodies while most zombies are one person re-animated. Shelly's monster story and other European novels most likely had their inspiration in European stories of vengeful spirits of the dead. In addition to Shelley, H.P. Lovecraft also wrote works dealing with the re-animated dead (Herbert West–Reanimator). While the aforementioned works, and the many works that influenced them, never use the term zombie they were influential in the development of the modern zombie depiction.
The modern zombie may be mostly attributed to works such as I Am Legend, a 1954 novel that was adapted into film in 1964, 1971, and 2007 under varying titles; this novel and first film adaptation were inspiration for the George A. Romero film Night of the Living Dead in 1968. Night of the Living Dead may be credited as THE zombie movie many people think of first when someone says ‘zombie’, in fact the term zombie was used to describe the creatures in this film although it was not used in the film proper.
A scene from Plants vs Zombies-
Zombie works are popular, now more than ever, with adaptations of books and comics like The Walking Dead, World War Z. People are so enamored of zombies that zombie walks (shuffles?) where people dress as zombies and parade through town occur in some cities on a somewhat regular basis. The genre has become so popular that there are now parody films such as Shawn of the Dead, parody novels such as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, cute games like Plants vs Zombies, and ‘teen supernatural romance’ genre films like Warm Bodies. Zombies are no longer limited to film and literature. Many popular zombie games tend toward the survival horror genre and include the Resident Evil series, and the Last of Us.
Interesting zombie origins can be seen in the film 28 Days Later, zombie-ism is caused by a zoonotic pathogen; zoonotic means a disease agent that can be transmitted from animals to humans. The Last of Us presents a variant of the Cordyceps fungus, a real world ant “brain controlling” fungus which in the game has adapted to infect humans. And of course the resident evil series presents the plague of zombies as a man-made virus.
An uninfected ant-
Stories involving zombies have been used as social critiques. Of consumerism and conformity in Night of the Living Dead, unpreparedness for global catastrophe in World War Z, a mistrust of the government and corporate practices in Resident Evil, and so on. Zombie stories are used as a way to examine human nature, how we adapt to loss, fear, and overwhelming odds stacked against us. The zombie has become so entrenched in modern mythos and folklore that some people seriously prepare for the eventuality of a zombie apocalypse, though most use the coming zombie apocalypse as a hypothetical thought experiment. Who would be on YOUR team during a zombie apocalypse? This preparedness for the rise of zombies has extended to the United States CDC, which uses a hypothetical zombie outbreak as a fictitious and fun scenario to teach disease outbreak prevention, investigation, and containment. Let’s only hope when the real zombie outbreak happens we can stand up to the challenge.
