Here’s an interesting view on things from the Wake the Dead podcast, about how we as a society tend to relish stories and characters that are supernatural when times are rough and go awry. Face it, Twilight is a smash-hit, whether in the bookstore or at the movie theater. HBO’s True Blood is one of the most talked about shows on premium cable (I finally discovered the show when the first season came out on DVD) and has a huge cult following.
Some think the paranormal surge began shortly after Sept. 11, 2001. Danny Boyle’s zombie film 28 Days Later appeared in 2002. Dawn of the Dead arose in 2004, and George Romero’s epic Land of the Dead in 2005. World War Z, a zombie apocalypse novel by Max Brooks, has sold more than 200,000 copies since it appeared in 2006.
Now, Mr. Timpane has a point there. . . to an extent. He does mention the Romero films again as well as Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Bela Lugosi’s version, and Nosferatu (which came out in 1922), but doesn’t mention Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein which is a zombie movie in its own way. Of course on the comic book side of things we have Marvel Zombies, Blackest Night and the newly announced, Necrosha. I think because the comic code allows it, we can get away with a lot more now. Remember, in the 70′s there couldn’t be vampires and werewovles and such in Spider-Man titles. Both Man-Wolf and Morbius were created through scientific means, not supernatural. Those Marvel guys were crafty, huh?
Now, we also have Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which is going into its 16th printing since debuting in April. I haven’t read it, but I hear pretty good things. I don’t think we as a culture are now just opening up our horizons to more supernatural material, I think we’ve always had an interest in the macabre, it’s just that now it is getting a lot of media attention. So, I impose a question to you ‘Rama readers: do you think the vampire/zombie trend will burn and die out soon or will it just grow larger as time goes by?
August 3rd, 2009 at 3:04 pm
I don’t think the vampire/zombie trend will burn out anytime soon for a lot of reasons. Simply because you can equate so many metaphors from both of these types of “monsters” a lot of which are relevant so much in popular culture today. With things like Swine Flu, accepting and/or fearing another group, the US economy (which in essence devoured itself and is seeking to take us all down with it), and essentially being a society of a hive mind (connected at all times to one another, i know this is a stretch but it is twisted in a way). All of this basically boils down to our mortality and these days there are so many things that are threatening (or think is threatening us) we are going to be exploring these themes for a while unfortunately. I personally like zombie/vampire things (not all mind you) but I hope
August 3rd, 2009 at 3:19 pm
I don’t think it ever went away, and I don’t think it will. It may move back to the fringes for a bit, but it’ll be there.
August 3rd, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Any time I read or hear one of these “when we are in X situation, we turn to Y entertaiment,” I always ask myself two questions: How are we defining the situation, and who’s “we?” These are some awfully broad terms we’re throwing around here. You could almost say (and I’m guessing someone has) that the surge in super-hero movies was a response to Bush’s election, but X-Men was well into production, and Spider-Man in pre-production, at the time of the election.
I think it’s more logical to say that the zombie craze is as cyclical as anything else: one or two properties catch the imagination of the US, then more and more keep piling on until people get sick of it, and then it dies off until someone passionate about the concept dusts it off and the cycle begins again. The only difference this time is that most of the zombie material has really been exceptional. All it takes is one or two flops to turn the boom into a bust.
August 4th, 2009 at 8:00 am
Stories with aliens haven’t gone away since declining in popularity after the 90′s. Aliens were usurped by post-apocalyptic stories around the turn of the millenium, which naturally lead to zombie stories with similar themes.
Maybe we’ll see more killer plague and climate change movies?