Apocalyptic Appeal: Zombies

I’m not sure if George Romero imagined that zombies would become cultural icons when he filmed Night of the Living Dead.   In an interview he gave during the documentary Zombimania, he said, “I didn’t want to re-invent the zombie; I liked the old zombie!”  In Night of the Living Dead, the film always referred to them as flesh-eaters, ghouls, or simply as they or them.  With the 21^st century well under way, the fictitious scenario on the “zombie apocalypse” has given risen to graphic novels, books, and scores of movies (both good and bad).  Why has this concept persisted for so long?

John Wayne’s westerns, Errol Flynn’s swashbuckling adventures, Renaissance Fairs,   That 70’s Show, Leave it to Beaver.  Suspension of belief notwithstanding, these genres, events, and television programs allow for avenues of escapism into the past. Compared to mundane reality, this escapism offers reprieve from the pressures of the daily grind.  It’s a funny quirk of human nature; we believe that the past represents a simpler, easy-going, period. 

Nor is escaping into the past a new notion.  The Greeks (from the “classical”-era) often placed their heroes of yore well into the past. Classical Greece was (more or less) a bastion of stability in the ancient world, yet their myths and legends always took place in their past, usually during the formative years of city-states, warlords and (in their imaginations) malevolent deities. So, the hell does this have to with zombies? 

In our fetishistic desire for a simpler time, the preternatural disaster of the “zombie apocalypse” brings us back to an ultimate simplicity: survival.  No bills, no traffic.  No boss, no time-clocks.  Taxes, 401k’s, photo enforcement zones, business meetings; they all become meaningless. In this shambling and moaning doomsday scenario, only one thing becomes relevant: you, not dying. 

What do you think?  Is that really the appeal?  The fantasy of, “live or die”?  If that’s our fantasy, what does that say about us?