I have written previously that most zombie movies since 1968 are war movies at heart, so it’s probably not such a leap to say that today they are specifically about the so called War on Terror. After all, the fears inherent in the War on Terror are simply character motivations in a zombie film: Hunt or be hunted. Pre-emptive strike. Either you’re with us or you’re with the zombies.
A culture’s collective fears cultivate contemporary scary movies, so it is only right that a “culture of fear” would do the same. Alongside Japanese ghosts and torture exploitation, the zombie, in the George Romero mold, has been a common subject for 21st Century American horror films. Like the idea of an angry ghost coming back with a grudge or a leaky concrete cell designed for multilation, the zombie melds both sides of the cultural coin: our fear is of a culture of fear. Get the zombie before he gets you first — because he sure as hell will.
Probably the scariest thing about zombies is that they are we and we are they. (Eating brains is up there, too.) American zombie movies often take the torture-revenge approach to narrative: they attack us, we grow stronger from our wounds, and then we attack back. Who wins isn’t always clear. Offense and defense, at first clearly defined between the dead and the living, blur by the end of the movie. This not only makes us our own worst enemies, it fertilizes a whole pasture of zombie metaphors on humanity. And keeps George Romero working.
As an antagonist, both the zombie and the terrorist come with a badge clearly labeled “Bad Guy” — in numbers. An army of zombies presents a clear and present enemy, but a single zombie runs the risk of our sympathy if we let it. (That risk is usually the zombie’s gain, of course.) Karen Cooper in Night of the Living Dead, Bub in Day of the Dead, Ed in Shaun of the Dead, among others, receive sympathy from living people. It may not always transcend the zombie’s “Bad Guy” badge, but for contemporary concerns, that brief sympathy can be the difference between the innocent and the extremist.
It’s interesting to note that everything I’ve said about zombies until now refers specifically to the American concept of a zombie. The Haitian zombi, more an individually applied curse than a random epidemic or pandemic, is the origin of the concept, but the zombi differs from the zombie to the point that comparison barely applies. The American zombie, and its connections to contemporary fears and paranoia in the War on Terror, is purely an American creation: We created our enemy. Chew on that, historians and cultural theorists.
But really, do they have to be the living dead to help exorcise our fears? A fierce and faceless enemy is just that, no matter how it’s shaped. Why not living snakes? On a plane? Does the connection there even need to be explained?
