THEY’RE COMING TO GET YOU, AMERICA:
THE POPULARITY OF ZOMBIE FILMS AND NATIONAL FEAR DURING THE COLD WAR AND THE WAR ON TERROR
Abstract. Zombies are particularly suited to the ideological nature of the Cold War and the War on Terror, as American perceptions of the differing ideologies involved are of unreasonable monsters – just like zombies. Zombies in American cinema embody public anxieties and evolve to reflect the cause of national paranoia and collective fear. The Cold War and the United States after the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001 coincided with the two greatest spikes in zombie popularity. This paper compares and contrasts the historical context that sets the backdrop for the attraction of the undead to American audiences during these periods. The nature of the zombie as representative of a fear of irresistible masses has political, economic, and cultural connotations. The multi-faceted foreign threats that the zombie represents makes it ideal for exemplifying periods of collective paranoia towards an invading external threat manifested as an unexpected internal threat.
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Whether as glassy-eyed thralls, flesh-eating corpses, or enraged plague-carriers, zombies are monsters that hold up a morbid mirror to Americans’ paralyzing fears and to nationwide anxieties. Zombies are mindless monsters that ravage humanity and occupy an ambiguous existence somewhere between life and death. The exact characteristics of zombies in film have evolved over time to reflect the fears and public anxieties of Americans. As one review of a zombie film concluded, “Every generation gets the zombie it deserves.”[1] It is the zombie’s capacity to adapt and hold up a different mirror for each era that makes zombies ideal for studying the evolution of the fears that they represent. Zombies have the unique ability among monsters to embody a fear of the irresistible masses: any group of people that somehow threatens a person’s way of life, usually politically and socially, such as single party government control that opposes one’s own party or the threat of foreign political ideology that opposes American ideals. Zombie popularity in the cinema has peaked twice in the United States and coincided with the two periods of highest American paranoia during the Cold War and after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Zombies uniquely represent American fears of the irresistible, corrupting masses, and their popularity spikes, during the Cold War years and the post-9/11 United States, reflect the extreme levels of collective paranoia felt by Americans during these periods.
Zombies in the United States during the Cold War and the post-9/11 world represent fears of the irresistible masses, specifically those of a foreign threat manifested on American soil. This embodiment of fears is in the American heartland, in its suburbs, major cities, and malls and is not deterred by borders. Survivors in zombie films never expect an outbreak, but when the zombies hit, the unlucky survivors find themselves surrounded. The danger always strikes unexpectedly, and therein lies the initial terror. Once the unexpected thunders onto American soil, it engulfs the populace, who is not prepared for the unexpected. When the strike comes, it is not an invasion from without but from within the homeland. Zombies are not just about paranoia in regards to the enemy that lives outside American borders, but about fear that the threat will actually manifest at home. The fear of threats appearing in Americans’ backyards leads to the instinctual dread of not feeling safe in one’s own home. The Red Scare of the 1940s and 1950s targeted the American interior, terrifying citizens that communist infiltrators were hiding in their very own cities, suburbs, and small towns and that nuclear annihilation was an ever-present possibility. Similarly, the terrorist attacks in 2001 hit American icons when they destroyed the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers and struck the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The latter target was the core of United States military defense and its vulnerability signaled that the very heart of American defense was at the mercy of terrorists.
Identifying Zombies
Zombies have infiltrated and evolved through various media from survival guides to comic books to video games, but the medium to reach the most Americans has been film. The guidelines for deciding what qualifies as a zombie film are not clear-cut and are hotly debated by fans and critics alike. Roger Ebert, the well-respected film critic, once asked, “Is there an agreed definition of what is a zombie and how they get that way? Not that I know of. I think zombies are defined by behavior and can be ‘explained’ by many handy shortcuts.”[2] The problem that fans and critics have in defining zombie standards comes from the fact that zombies evolve to represent the audience’s fears. Just like a nation’s collective fears change, so do filmmakers adapt their monsters to reflect what terrifies an audience. The zombie, in particular, has evolved to reflect the root of American paranoia. A zombie that clearly appealed to Americans in the midst of the Red Scare would not be a monster to which Americans in the twenty-first century could still relate. Once the cause of the paranoia has passed, the zombies it inspired fall out of favor as no longer relatable to contemporary audiences as seen in the lull in zombie movies during the 1980s and 1990s – between the two zombie popularity spikes. Resurgence occurs when a new zombie emerges to reflect the new causes of national dread.
In spite of the evolving nature of zombies and the changing eras they match, a study of zombies cannot deny three necessary qualities for zombies to maintain their role as embodiments of paranoid fear. To consider creatures zombies, they must be mindless, must be part of a horde, and must have an unnatural state of existence. Other monsters and movie villains can have these qualities, but only zombies require all three to validate their unique representation of paranoid fear.[3]
Because it dictates their reason for existence, mindlessness is the most important trait of zombies and it is the first mandate that disqualifies creatures similar to zombies. Monsters such as ghosts, ghouls, and revenants have a reason for their violent actions, usually revenge against those who wronged them in the past. Zombies are purposeless vessels of potential destruction, tools of whatever caused their zombification, whether it is a voodoo master commanding them or the biological programming of the virus that has infected them. An immense part of why zombies terrify people is the idea of a creature whose sole purpose for existence is to kill people for no goal or apparent provocation. Zombies act without rationale and humans cannot reason with them,[4] frustrating in the modern, logical world that demands enemies be sensible and persuadable if one can only find out what they want. Zombies want to kill; there is no compromise and no mercy. As zombies’ motives cannot be rationally understood, their unpredictability creates fear in humans who encounter them. Since their reason for existence is to destroy, zombies cannot deviate from that goal. Thus, mindlessness translates into another terrifying aspect of zombies: they will never stop trying to kill. Another aspect of the mindless zombie requirement is that they are necessarily blank slates. A zombie has had its entire life wiped from its mind with only base instincts and minimal memories of its human existence remaining. The overall effect of mindlessness is that it wipes away any traces of humanity, making it difficult for audiences to relate to the zombies and completely branding them as “the enemy” without hope for salvation.
Mindlessness is chilling, but one mindless zombie is a weak threat without a horde of zombies to accompany it; zombies are not terrifying when they go solo. A zombie usually has the same limitations of movement and power as a human but without the intelligence to use its body effectively, as a single ax murderer or other horror villain can. One zombie can be easily defeated in almost every zombie film created. A handful of zombies are scarier, but humans in a zombie film are usually in a group, too. This is why most zombie films have humans outnumbered a hundred to one, not ten to one. The potential increase of the horde adds to the threat. The generally infectious nature of the zombie allows them to expand the mob with every successful human attack. Max Brooks, author of World War Z and The Zombie Survival Guide, summarizes the problem of zombie combat, asserting that every time they successfully attack an enemy they gain another soldier, but if a human kills a zombie he/she has only one less enemy.[5] Humans managing to survive in zombie films despair of the countless enemies and the emerging certainty that they can never overcome the masses.
Zombie hordes are not always reanimated corpses, but they still share an unnatural state of being that gives them an “Other” quality. The unnatural state is the physical manifestation of the mindlessness trait, a tangible barrier that clearly displays one’s state as human or zombie, Us or Them. For example, hypnotized voodoo zombies have eerily vacant eyes and an ethereal gaze that distinguishes them from the humans. The stereotypical reanimated corpses are the obvious “others”: gruesome, decaying bodies with wounds that no living person could survive. Zombies that are infected but still living are always covered in signs of their disease, such as pustules, lesions, and ominously colored eyes. Scholars studying humanity’s relationship with one’s body agree that visible signs of disease, or anything considered unnatural by the standards of the norm, provoke an instinctual revulsion.[6] The disgust adds to an American audience’s inability to relate to zombies, pushing them further into the incomprehensible category of unpredictable and suspicious “Other” who do not look and act as expected.
Taken together, zombies are thus a tireless, unreasonable horde with seemingly infinite replacements whose only reason for existence is to transmit their infection to others. Replace the word “infection” with “ideology” and this definition describes the basic fear of Americans towards Cold War-era communists and twenty-first century terrorists. Americans perceive first that communists in the Cold War and then terrorists during the War on Terror fulfill the criteria of apparent mindlessness, horde behavior and a seemingly unnatural state, translated on other humans as a state of mind so different from the typical American mindset that it can be understood about as well as an unnatural mind. While humans cannot fight a war of attrition against a zombie horde, Americans feared the same about the enemy from both eras, as a self-propagating mass. The average United States citizen perceives his/her enemies as mindless because Americans believe they cannot reason with the enemies, since the adversaries are so fanatical and seemingly brainwashed. Terrorists are supposedly the mindless armies of unceasing monsters that only want Americans dead or with forcefully converted ideology. They appear to have no other purpose other than to destroy those who disagree with them. Typical American perceptions similarly portrayed communists in the 1960s and 1970s in their efforts to unceasingly put as much territory into Soviet hands as possible.
Other elements that distinguish zombies and zombie films are constantly evolving, and the elements that differentiate one era’s zombies from another are the crucial discussion points for comparing the fears of the Cold War era and the War on Terror. The specific physical characteristics of zombies in film depict the level of lethality with which Americans view their enemy and how much damage the enemy can inflict. Within physical characteristics are issues including whether or not zombies have superhuman levels of strength, agility, durability, and speed, if they maintain average human limitations, or if they are truly decaying corpses with subhuman abilities. Zombie behavior and what they appear to represent is another element that declares whether or not the issues considered of greatest contention with the enemy are of a more political or social nature.
Besides traits of the zombies themselves, zombie films have a host of elements involving the enemy that deal indirectly with Americans’ perceptions of threats as wells as how much faith they have in their own side’s ability to be victorious. The initial cause of a zombie outbreak demonstrates the level of trust in various institutions at the time. Zombies are so out of control in their mindlessness that they exist outside of a human moral standard,[7] and since zombies are not the true culprits of the destruction they cause, films direct survivors and audiences towards the originator of a zombie outbreak as the true villain of the film.
Zombie films categorize most outbreak causes within four types: voodoo, space-based, nuclear radiation, and disease. Voodoo lays the blame for zombies at the feet of whoever the zombie master is, usually a nefarious foreigner. Space-based outbreaks can be caused by alien invaders or volatile space debris and are mostly seen in the mid-1950s to the late 1960s as the United States and the Soviet Union were in the midst of a space race. People could not be certain what scientists would find when they tried to reach for the stars, and there were some suspicions that something mysterious and threatening might lie in wait. Another race, the arms race, heightened concerns over nuclear threats and zombie outbreaks from radiation became more common. The last category, disease and infection, shares a distrust of scientific advancement. Naturally occurring threats that have been tampered with and then cause zombie outbreaks are usually associated with scientific experimentation and the paranoid thought that someone is “playing God.” On the opposite side of the event, the depiction of a cure for the zombies or a domestication attempt can represent the view of Americans towards a resolution with the enemy. However, cures are rare in zombie films and frequently a lack of a cure reinforces the impossibility of compromising with and getting through to one’s enemy and the inability to control the threat.
The role of humans in zombie films demonstrates the predicted behavior of different levels of society to deal with the zombie threat. The normal humans, otherwise known as the Survivors, are the core depiction of the typical American group, almost always representing a cross section of society and as such depicting the way Americans view their community’s ability to cope with a threat and the accompanying internal conflicts. A hero-type character may or may not exist in a zombie film, but it is not a genre that lends itself well to heroes. Zombie outbreaks, by their nature, are chaotic survival scenarios where there is little time for nobility. Because zombies are hordes of virtually indestructible force, extreme heroics just appear futile, like throwing a cup of water on a wildfire. This does not mean survivors are not capable of small acts of heroism, but there is no single person that is clearly the Hero. Zombie films generally represent a gritty, realistic view of American society where there is unlikely to be a Rambo figure in a typical small town, but the belief still presents that everyone is capable of small acts of heroism, by saving someone temporarily or staying behind to fight off the horde as Survivors flee.
Generally, zombie films agree that Survivors cannot ultimately save themselves and need outside assistance from a higher source. The actions of the military and law enforcement in zombie films represent the level of trust in and competency of the American government to handle threats. The government’s role can be as a Savior, swooping in at the end of the movie to destroy the zombies. Such actions are rare in zombie films, but they demonstrate complete faith in the government’s motives and abilities. The most common government role is to simply be ineffective on the sidelines of the story, indication of a general lack of faith in the government. Sometimes the government can be the cause of the outbreak, suggesting not only distrust, but also extreme suspicion in the government’s possible complicit relationship with the threat. The government’s role can also involve a ruthless method for containing the zombie threat that it appears nearly as dangerous as the initial threat. Such behavior usually manifests as a military operation intent on not missing a single zombie or covering up the outbreak, even if it means allowing human casualties. The government handles the threat effectively in these scenarios, but represents American doubt about the need to be brutal to the enemy or careless with American lives and rights.
The conclusion to a zombie film often represents how Americans believe the conflict they are presently in will be resolved.[8] The ending of the film demonstrates the American outlook on the future and the ability to overcome the cause of the anxiety represented by the zombies. The horror genre is not known for cheerful endings; horror films are meant to allow humans to explore worst possible scenarios from the safety of cinema seats. For that reason, an extremely optimistic ending to a zombie film is rare, but does happen and demonstrates an overwhelming belief in victory, as in Shaun of the Dead and the complete submission of zombies. [9] On the other end of the scale is the extremely pessimistic annihilation scenario. In such a film, by the time the credits role, there are no original Survivors, and there are strong indications that everything is in decline with no hope for a turnaround; it is a zombie world now. Most zombie movies end up somewhere between these two extremes with tenuous optimism or tenuous pessimism. Optimistically, multiple Survivors make it to the end of the film, and there are signs that help is not far off, indicating an American belief in eventual victory after traveling a rocky road to get there. Pessimistically, the Survivors are still out there, but they are left in such a crisis that there is little hope left when the credits roll. An ambiguously pessimistic ending is possibly even more depressing than total annihilation because the world still might not collapse, but whatever world is left may not be worth living in.
Haitian Voodoo and Pre-Cold War Zombie Cinema
Before American audiences experienced their fears of Cold War enemies through zombie films, earlier examples of the undead in the cinema set the standard for audience perceptions. The first step in zombie evolution began in the 1930s. Before the concept of zombies ever came to American soil, zombies were part of an ancient tradition of Voodoo practices in Haiti with its roots in Africa. With vastly different characteristics from the modern zombie, the original concept of zombies came from Voodoo folklore in Haiti. Thus, the monster most suited to and used for reflecting American’s fears constructed within the Americas.[10]
In turn-of-the-century Haiti, Voodoo culture was already well-established and integral to local religion, which included the mythology of zombies. A “zombi” is a spirit of the dead, and making a zombie involves capturing a spirit and containing it in its corpse for the zombie master’s use.[11] Americans first encountered voodoo practices during the United States’ occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934.[12] Newspapers during that period reported the original intention of keeping Haiti stable and stopping what they saw as German attempts at controlling the island. One directly stated the United States was trying to “improve economic situation and to block German designs and aggressions.”[13] The press influenced Americans to associate Haitian relations with foreign intervention, a theme repeatedly found in the infancy of zombie cinema.
The transfer of knowledge from Haitian culture to American shores came from sources that did not have the lifelong experience with voodoo to be experts. William Seabrook, freelance writer and self-styled adventurer, published The Magic Island in 1929, the first American book on zombies.[14] Seabrook gave American readers their first taste of zombies, describing them as having “the eyes of a dead man, not blind, but staring, unfocused, unseeing,”[15] and strictly associated them with black magic practices.[16] Victor and Edward Halperin, brothers in the film industry, brought this image of zombies in Haiti to the big screen in 1932.[17] The brothers based their film on the Broadway play Zombies that opened in February of the same year. A newspaper article reviewing the original play is quite possibly the first recorded self-identification with zombies and their embodiment of American social anxieties. The New York Times journalist described the zombies trudging across the stage at their mindless work and wrote, “If zombies are those who work without knowing why and who see without understanding, one begins to look around one’s fellow-countrymen with a new apprehension. Perhaps those native drums are sounding the national anthem.”[18] Clearly, he is referring to workers during the Great Depression’s unemployed masses.
The White Zombie, the Halperin brothers’ film, is the earliest true zombie film and introduces American audiences to the three zombie mandates and the elements defined by a zombie’s era. Voodoo zombies are depicted as appropriately mindless, staring off into space, and unable to make a move without their master’s will. Early zombies like these are simply puppets. Contrary to modern, independent zombies, the fear is not that the puppet-zombies are coming to get a person of their own volition so much as it is about the evil puppet-master getting somebody with the zombies. With modern zombies, the only solution is destruction, but the Hollywood voodoo zombie allows for rehabilitation. Zombiism does not destroy the mind in films like The White Zombie or the 1936 film, Revolt of the Zombies,[19] but rather the zombie master’s will suppresses it. As soon as the master is dead, or he lifts the control, the former zombies’ memories and full personality are restored.
Zombies in the 1930s and 1940s are the first to demonstrate how each era develops the zombie that best reflects the era’s public anxieties. Voodoo zombies cannot operate without a voodoo master, and that master’s character is the most telling element. The zombie master is usually a slick foreigner, as first seen in The White Zombie’s villain played by Bela Lugosi. Lugosi was fresh off his unparalleled success in 1931’s Dracula, and audiences in 1932 could not have failed to relate the same charming, yet ultimately evil, foreigner status to his zombie master role.[20] Jamie Russell, author of Book of the Dead: The Complete History of Zombie Cinema, claims that the lack of an American literary heritage for zombies should have made them less relatable to 1930s audiences, citing the popularity of Dracula and Frankenstein with their famous literary inspirations.[21] The success of The White Zombie defies Russell’s expectations and supports the idea that zombies are naturally appeal to people as accurate reflections of public anxieties, such as foreign intervention in United States interests.[22] The zombie films of the 1930s and 1940s established zombies as relevant to American culture, but the zombie would not hit its first spike in popularity until a couple decades later when the Cold War era unleashed paranoid public fears that fed the zombie concept.
Zombie Popularity First Spikes in the Cold War
Interest in zombie films waned during the 1940s and early 1950s but reappeared, as Professor Shawn McIntosh put it, “in the atomic age that created a completely new set of circumstances to be truly frightened about.” He theorizes that zombies were better able to adapt to the new threats than the more traditional monsters with whom the zombie shared the 1930s: “Compared to the real risk of nuclear annihilation (or to some the equally frightening thought of Communist domination), Frankenstein’s monster being chased by torch-bearing villagers and Dracula’s Transylvanian accent amid Gothic castles seemed almost quaint.”[23] The new, adapted zombie of the 1950s was not an exact replica of the earlier film zombie and had evolved to suit the rising anxiety about space exploration, nuclear advances, and the Cold War’s prominent American antagonist, the Soviet Union and communism.
The Cold War era spanned roughly four decades, so to better illustrate the evolution of the zombie within this historical period, the period between the early 1950s and the late 1980s is broken into three clarifying stages. The first stage is the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, including the majority of the Space Race, advances in nuclear technology, McCarthyism, and the Korean War. The second period begins when the United States was at the height of its involvement in the Vietnam War at the end of the 1960s and coincides with the iconic release of George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead in 1968.[24] This period includes the entire Vietnam War, including anti-war protests, and the entirety of the 1970s economic crisis and the Me Generation, ending in the very early 1980s. The final Cold War period covers the slow decline of Soviet power and communist influence, and includes the United States’ invasion of Grenada, the more open policies of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. It ends in 1989 with the formation of non-communist governments in Eastern Europe and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
This segmentation of the Cold War is not a traditional one but it is the best reflection of when zombie films caught up to contemporary events. For example, Great Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill gave his famous “an iron curtain has descended on Europe” speech in 1946, about the same time as the Soviet Union’s leader Josef Stalin’s speech on the incompatibility of communism and capitalism. Both noted Cold War tensions, but Hollywood and zombie cinema did not catch up to the Cold War’s important events until the release of Creature with the Atom Brain and Invasion of the Body Snatchers in 1955 and 1956, respectively.[25] The peak of the Cold War in American consciousness is arguable, but 1968 introduced the transformative Romero zombie film at the same time as the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War and illustrative parallels. Likewise, the Cold War and the Soviet Union officially end in 1991, but American paranoia about communist influence was already all but gone, as reflected in zombie films.
A budding suspicion of possible alien threats, visions of a nuclear apocalypse, domestic paranoia from the effects of McCarthyism, and the first military conflict in the Cold War, the Korean War, characterized the first sub-era of the Cold War. After the 1930s simple voodoo zombie in films, the transition to high-tech alien control might seem a large leap in causation motives, but the voodoo and space zombies are more similar than their technological differences appear. The root of the zombie control is an indirect puppet master, and the black magic practitioner was merely replaced by space invaders. The new space-age threats subsume the fears of foreign imperialism and the concerns that accompany them, where the new foreign threat is from much farther away than across the Atlantic. Americans, and all humanity, are just beginning to reach out to the stars and bring their mysteries back to Earth. With such progress, people began to fear just what exactly could be coming back to Earth. Paranoia about alien intrusion is exemplified in the first of the adapted Cold War zombies in the films Invisible Invaders (1959), Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), and the seminal Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).[26]
Invasion of the Body Snatchers typifies the fear of space-based threats.[27] Filmmaker Walter Mirisch wrote that people insisted that this film was an allegory for McCarthyism, but he maintains that neither he nor any of those involved in creating Invasion of the Body Snatchers intended such connections.[28] Regardless of what the creative team behind the film meant, the audience perceived the dual threat of communist infiltration and McCarthyism. The zombie outbreak begins subtly with protagonist Dr. Miles Bennell failing to notice anything amiss when his patients complain about serious ailments, only to cancel their appointments shortly afterwards and claim to be healed. Citizens of his small town describe suspicions of their relatives and neighbors. One woman declares about her uncle, “It’s Uncle Ira, but it’s not Uncle Ira!” A local psychiatrist describes the pattern as “epidemic mass hysteria,” but the townspeople are certain that their friends and neighbors have changed right before their eyes. At the time, fear that anyone in one’s hometown could be a secret communist was common and audiences would have been able to relate to the townspeople in the film and to their concerns. The zombie characteristics in this film embody the American fear of what communism would do to the American way of life, turning them into emotionless clones of each other, utterly lacking individuality. The ending of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is actually vaguely optimistic with the threat being far from eliminated, but depicting the FBI mobilizing against it. As such, it describes a period in history that is in the midst of a paranoia-inducing Red Scare, but one in which there is hope that the country will not succumb.
The other iconic zombie film of the early Cold War period is 1964’s The Last Man on Earth, a film that embraces American fears of invasion from a foreign threat and further appeals to national fears of a world consumed by a mindless horde.[29] The Last Man on Earth’s zombie outbreak is the result of an airborne disease that originated in Europe. Dr. Morgan, a scientist and the last human, remembers the destruction of society through flashbacks and spends the entirety of the film developing a cure. When he finally has the opportunity to offer a cure to the zombies, they reject him, representing Americans’ beliefs in the futility of dealing with their communist foe. Democracy and capitalism were the “cure” for the tyranny of communism, but the Soviet Union refused the cure. In 1964, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 would have been fresh in the minds of American audiences, and an apocalypse resulting in the founding of a foreign world order seemed to be a real possibility. One of the zombies, not yet completely mindless, tries to explain “the beginning of any society is never gentle or charming,” paralleling Americans’ view of communism as willing to spread itself by force if necessary. The ending of the film is decidedly pessimistic with humanity obliterated upon the death of the protagonist at the hands of the zombies. Notably, the ending of the film clearly shows that society will continue, but in some unfathomable manner, just as Americans feared that a communist invasion of the United States would leave them in a world they could not comprehend.
The Vietnam War, which began the second sub-era of the Cold War, changed an American society already fully in the grips of the Cold War collective fears, and zombies evolved right along with the changing American fears. Filmmaker George Romero, without question the godfather of the modern zombie genre, released his revolutionary film Night of the Living Dead in 1968 during the peak of the Vietnam War.[30] The Tet Offensive, a psychological victory for the People’s Army of Vietnam when they launched a heavily televised attack on the American-backed Republic of Vietnam, and the massacre of many civilians in the village of My Lai by United States troops wreaked havoc on the American psyche. The media broadcast similarly horrific images throughout the war Night of the Living Dead was the next evolution of zombies and took the horrific images as the new embodiment of American’s fears. In the opening scene of Night of the Living Dead, a brother taunts his terrified sister in a graveyard, hissing, “They’re coming to get you, Barbra!” Romero’s zombies became the classic zombie example. They were the shuffling dead with the sole goal of feed on the living and converting others to their state of being – coming to get Barbra and all Americans.
The government’s ineffectual role, the dynamic of the human survivors, and the ending of Night of the Living Dead demonstrate a continued level of paranoia and distrust towards the government’s handling of the continuing communist threat. Early in the film, the government tries to organize the Civil Defense stations as safe houses for citizens. The plan falls and is the first indication of government ineptitude, reflecting a lack of American faith in government actions regarding the foreign threat of communism in Vietnam. Without a government safe house, the small band of survivors of the initial outbreak finds shelter in a small farmhouse besieged by dozens of the undead. They huddle around a television that describes the zombies as “a series of mass assassinations,” possibly perceived by audiences as communist assassination attempts on the American way of life. The group dynamic of the survivors is especially paranoid with hysterics rampant and a great deal of in-fighting. Night of the Living Dead is the first film to depict a group of average citizens barricading themselves against the zombie threat, rather than running from it, suggesting an American familiarity with the communist threat so engrained that they expect it cannot be outrun and can only be endured. By the end of the film, local authorities form mobs to eradicate the zombies but wind up also accidentally killing the last of the original human survivors. The message is that the government marshals to face the foreign threat to American soil, but that its actions are brutal and haphazard, a reaction American audiences might have found especially familiar after the atrocities at My Lai.
The 1970s provided the peak in Cold War zombie popularity as the inheritors of the Night of the Living Dead legacy appeared and continued to evolve with the blossoming Me Generation. The remake of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers and George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, both in 1978, embody this decade’s Me Generation loss of identity fears and the diminished faith in government endeavors after the fall of the Republic of Vietnam just three years earlier. Zombie films began to show a trend of displaying a new type of paranoia. Young adults in the 1970s grew up in a Cold War world with their parents’ generation –the initially paranoid American– in control of the country and the younger generation became paranoid about the intentions of those initially paranoid. In Dawn of the Dead and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the government is not just ineffectual as in Night of the Living Dead, but a threat as equally worthy of paranoid suspicion as the original foreign threat. Dawn of the Dead’s survivors actively hide from the authorities, seeing the latter’s intervention as detrimental to survival rather than vital for rescue. Invasion of the Body Snatchers goes a step further and shows the consumption of the last humans into the zombie horde whose base of operations is in the nation’s center of government, Washington, D.C. The 1970s zombie film definitely declares that, when there is a threat, Americans have to fend for themselves and can neither trust nor rely upon the government for security.
The final era of the Cold War is a period of declining Soviet power and diminished zombie film popularity. The rise of Mikhail Gorbachev as leader of the Soviet Union and his policy of glasnost, a policy of openness within the country, took away a great deal of the paranoia-inspiring mystery of the Cold War. In the early 1980s, the Soviet Union, and communism’s hold on Eastern Europe, began to falter and the Soviet Union officially broke up and ended the Cold War in 1991.[31] The zombie film’s popularity devolved into a series of spoofs, such as Night of the Comet (1984) and The Return of the Living Dead (1985), with George Romero’s Day of the Dead being the last serious, but poorly received, zombie film. Day of the Dead sees Romero attempting to humanize the zombie and portray him as a misunderstood animal, but it is not successful as Americans do not want to sympathize with such a monster. Spoofs like The Return of the Living Dead make fun of all the established paranoid themes of the Cold War era zombies. The communist threat was clearly fading and the country no longer needed zombies.
The Resurgence of Zombie Popularity in the Age of Terrorism
The late 1980s and the 1990s experienced a drought of successful zombie films, but when the twenty-first century arrived, American theaters were suddenly flooded with freshly ravenous zombies. Especially during the 1990s, American horror turned to the more personalized threat presented in slasher films with a lunatic stalking his victims individually.[32] The pre-millennium outlook was one of peace and prosperity, according to the documentary “Love, Lust & the Undead” from 2011, and at such a time, “people didn’t want to explore their apocalyptic sensibilities.”[33] Zombies manifest when the collective shares fear and anxieties. When the collective does not feel threatened, such as during the 1990s, other horror monsters replace the zombie.[34] The millennium’s new real world monsters introduced themselves on September 11, 2001, when a group of ideological terrorists destroyed the Twin Towers in New York City, hit the Pentagon, and crashed a plane into the Pennsylvanian countryside. The attack killed almost 3,000 civilians along with the United States’ peace of mind. Thus, the rebirth of national fears stormed into the American collective consciousness with a force that left the country shell-shocked.
The foreign threat brought to American soil in the new millennium did not want to convert the population as in the Cold War, but only destroy, so the zombie allegory evolved once again. As another period of collective fear, the paranoia-inducing enemy of the new millennium was an external threat that unexpectedly manifested itself within the American homeland. The 9/11 Commission Report admitted the nation’s unpreparedness, concluding, “America’s homeland defenders faced outward.”[35] The turn-of-the-millennium zombie is an explosive force with technologically enhanced destructive capabilities. The new American fear is that it only takes one person to cause catastrophic damage, which is especially seen in the Survivors of films like 28 Weeks Later (2007), and Resident Evil (2002) where one human’s actions cause a massive zombie outbreak. An army siege did not topple the Twin Towers on September 11, but rather fewer than two dozen men did. Due to the blatant, sudden aggression of the new threat, the enemy’s methods and declared motives were not ambiguous. The time for a subtle, shambling zombie was over; American audiences needed a monster just as swift and brutal as the new terrorist threat. Joseph Natoli, a professor at Michigan State University in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures, describes the post-9/11 American view towards the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, stating, “This was evil and you don’t scrutinize evil; you eradicate it.”[36] Professor Natoli’s summation of the view on terrorism perfectly summarizes the modern view of zombies. After George Romero’s Day of the Dead’s failure to elicit interest in zombies’ personal feelings, no successful film would attempt the same. The post-9/11 zombie film does not attempt to make zombies a sympathetic figure and only adapts to Natoli’s statement: zombies are evil and you don’t scrutinize evil; you eradicate it.
Even though the War on Terror is ongoing, the first decade of the millennium can be broken into distinct stages of public opinion. The first sub-era begins with the attacks of September 11 and extends until the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003. This period includes the widely publicized anthrax attacks that occurred just weeks after the Twin Towers fell and that incited a wave of bioterrorism fears These fears would greatly influence future zombie films. The beginning of the War in Afghanistan in October 2001 was the first military battle in the blossoming War on Terror. Fervent patriotism characterized the first period of the post-9/11 collective mindset, but it was coupled with a rabid fear about more terrorist attacks from a source that seemed omnipotent and omnipresent. The zombie film highlights of the first sub-era are Resident Evil (2002) and 28 Days Later (2003).
The beginning of the Iraq War in 2003 heralded the second sub-era of the new millennium and continued until 2009 with the inauguration of President Barack Obama. The second era is when zombies in films hit their first post-9/11 peak and firmly embraced the new millennium’s zombie characteristics as exemplified in a remake of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (2004), Shaun of the Dead (2004), 28 Weeks Later (2007), and I Am Legend (2007). The United States was in the midst of two wars during this period, captured and executed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, and experienced a dramatic partisan reversal in Congress. Frequent updates of United States’ casualties in the wars and the controversial nature of American military actions pervaded news reports and created a national consciousness of uncertainty and instability that felt it was constantly on the brink of disaster. The inauguration of Obama began the period of the commonplace zombie, which is the third present-day era. The commonplace zombie, typified by Zombieland in 2009, presents the zombie as threatening the nation for so long that the survivors have adapted to living with imminent doom.
Right after the terrorist attacks on September 11, Americans were far from adapted to living under the sword of Damocles that was the terrorist threat, and zombie films of the first sub-era reflected the initial plunge into a national mindset intimidated by terrorism.[37] The first zombie film of the new millennium was Resident Evil, based on a popular videogame and arriving in theaters only six months after the attack on the World Trade Center.[38] Critics credit it with the resurgence of the zombie genre with its retro zombies.[39] Resident Evil zombies are nearly identical to the Romero-inspired zombies of the 1970s, with their slow, shambling gait, a habit of being shot in the head by survivors, and a bite-based method of infection. The similarity allowed the resurgent zombie films to reconnect with popular culture before later movies radically transformed the zombie.
The opening sequence of Resident Evil plays out like a slideshow presentation of new millennium fears and paranoia while the ending follows with a clear picture of where those fears are going to lead. The opening text blatantly explains that Umbrella Corporation, the creator of the disease that causes zombiism, controls healthcare, medical equipment, and most computer technology with their “products in 9 out of 10 households.” The text goes on to explain that they get funding from selling military technology, genetic experimentation, and viral weaponry. No other post-9/11 zombie movie more bluntly and swiftly explains what terrifies Americans. After the text disappears, the audience witnesses a building full of innocent workers murdered and transformed when the zombie virus is released through the vents. Unlike Cold War zombie films, the trend in the new millennium is to show innocent victims of zombiism early on to validate the survivors’ killing of zombies as more than just an act of survival. It is an act of righteous vengeance. As media expert Stephen Harper explains, “The response to these outrageous acts of terror against civilian targets is simple. [The survivors] must avenge the slaughter of the innocents, replicating the bellicose response of the U.S. administration in the wake of 9/11.” In doing so, “Resident Evil taps into an audience taste for narratives of ‘just war’ and military vengeance.”[40] The theme of the early new millennium is that evil is clearly distinguished, and it is the American duty to destroy it, as represented by the new zombies and the vengeful humans who justly slaughter them. After the zombies of Resident Evil seem to be under control, the film’s protagonist, Alice, is captured by the Corporation and knocked unconscious. She awakens to find herself in a large city that is devoid of people, with mass wreckage littering the streets and clearly apocalyptic headlines regarding the undead blaring from newspaper stands. Resident Evil neatly ends with the inevitable conclusion of those fears – an unrecognizable United States destroyed overnight by the mindless, rampaging “others.”
The other notable film of the first millennial sub-era is 28 Days Later, which introduces American audiences to the “Rage” that characterizes the evolved, post-9/11 zombie. One film critic summarizes the importance of this film to Americans during the War on Terror by concluding, “28 Days Later tackled political subjects full force less than a year after the 9/11 attacks, and its surprising popularity indicated an early public interest in working through some of their problems.”[41] The 28 Days Later zombie is an infected, but still living, being with ominous red eyes, endless aggression, and greater speed than any zombie before it. The speed of the modern zombie, initiated by this film, caused controversy among zombie purists that were still reeling from the idea of zombies that were not dead. However, the speed evolution is one of the most compelling pieces of evidence for zombies changing to reflect the cause of American fears. The Cold War’s zombie relentlessly shuffled, with the message that zombies may be slow, but they would get their prey eventually, like the fabled tortoise and the hare. The terrorism zombie did not just refuse to trudge through their attacks, but insisted on running full speed after humans. The new message was that zombies were not going to get humanity eventually; they were going to get it now. The change echoed the sense of impending doom that cloaked Americans’ fears of imminent terrorist attacks in the immediate post-9/11 years.
Imagery of September 11 and the street fighting prominent in the Iraq War preoccupied the second sub-era of the new millennium’s zombie films with chaotic urban apocalypses.[42] The opening scenes of Dawn of the Dead depict pandemonium, with people running through the streets in panic, emergency vehicles hitting civilians, and countless innocents massacred by the risen dead. The filmmakers even use stock footage of actual contemporary riots, protests, and battles to demonstrate the chaos caused by the zombie outbreak.[43] 28 Weeks Later opens with a farmhouse filled with paranoid survivors. It is attacked by infected zombies who scatter frantic humans. All but one civilian appears to die. Later, zombies surge through the streets of London, with soldiers gunning down civilians and infected alike.
I Am Legend does not open with chaos, but relates through flashbacks the protagonist’s memories of the initial outbreak with the most poignant recollection of September 11. The outbreak happens, appropriately, in New York City. The protagonist, Col. Robert Neville, drives his wife and child to a safe zone. Along the way, the family witnesses vast crowds flooding New York’s streets, fleeing from the terror of being in the city with the infected. The masses push and shove to escape the unseen horror they know is awaiting them. Throughout the film, Neville lives in a depopulated New York City and wanders through the desolate streets of the city. I Am Legend depicts one of the United States’ most recognizable cities as a shell, a haunted ruin. Such scenes undoubtedly stimulate memories of the September 11 and Iraq War news coverage.
In the beginning of the third sub-era and 2009, the United States had just elected a president who promised “change,” and Americans were impatient while dealing with both war and terrorism. Many of the new president’s supporters demanded immediate reduction of troop involvement overseas, but instead he announced a troop surge for the War in Afghanistan, creating the common sensation that nothing had really changed. By 2010, American combat operations in Iraq had ceased while the war in Afghanistan continued, keeping Americans in a state of war for nearly a decade. In spite of the death of iconic terrorist leaders, including Osama bin Laden in 2011, many Americans felt as if they were stuck in a state of heightened alert with no respite on the horizon.
Into the atmosphere of tense tedium came the highest grossing zombie film ever, Zombieland.[44] This film approaches the undead with a lack of intensity that is rare for a zombie movie. Critics proclaimed Zombieland more of a road movie, or buddy comedy, than a zombie film, with the zombie menace more a side plot.[45] The film never gives the cause of the outbreak and the resolution is surprisingly neutral, neither optimistically envisioning the end of the zombies nor having the survivors appear disheartened by their hopeless circumstances. In fact, the humans seem to hardly care about the zombies at all, except as predictable, everyday dangers. By the time Zombieland came out, The Homeland Security Advisory System, the color-coded system of announcing the current level of threat to the United States, had switched between levels more than a dozen times in the past decade . Most of those switches only earned a quick note on the scrolling bar at the bottom of news broadcasts.[46] The message from the film and advisory system is clear: as of 2009, the United States has become so used to the ever-present threat of terrorism that it is commonplace, just as the survivors relegate the zombies in Zombieland to roadside troubles on par with a carjacker or a random act of violence, rather than a world of undead monstrosities. Zombies, like terrorists, are still a threat and can still strike at any time – as the paranoid protagonist’s fear of bathroom stalls illustrates – but humans can deal with them and zombies are not particularly problematic anymore. The war may continue overseas, but threats directly on American soil have diminished, leaving Americans and zombie survivors in similar heightened alert limbos.
By ten years after September 11, 2001, the United States had grown accustomed to the threat of terrorism and living with the wars it inspired. The nation experienced national tragedy, shared fears, weathered political controversies, and maintained a unified outlook as to the nature of the decade’s new threat, even if the methods of dealing with the enemy varied in their support. The 9/11 Commission Report summed up the national call to arms that characterized the post-9/11 era: “We call on the American people to remember how we all felt on 9/11, to remember not only the unspeakable horror but how we came together as a nation—one nation. Unity of purpose and unity of effort are the way we will defeat this enemy and make America safer for our children and grandchildren.”[47] Zombie films would not have been successful in this period without the collective paranoia present, because zombies are monsters that thrive only when outside forces threaten the whole community.
Zombie Parallels and Variances During Periods of National Fear
Zombies characteristics are tailored to the era they are reflecting, but Cold War zombies and post-9/11 zombies shared significant elements by virtue of their eras’ equally fearful and paranoid audiences and similarly momentous historical events. Both periods began with the identification of an ideological enemy of the United States. For the Cold War, this was communism, generally embodied by the Soviet Union and its allies. On March 5, 1946, Great Britain’s Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, spoke on behalf of the Western world when he declared an iron curtain had fallen across Europe. Coupled with the Soviet Union leader’s earlier statement about the incompatibility of communism and capitalism, the major world powers drew an ideological line in the sand. For the War on Terror, Islamic terrorism is the enemy and the events of September 11, 2001, declared the ideological parameters of the war. On the evening of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, United States President George W. Bush proclaimed, “America was targeted for attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world. And no one will keep that light from shining.”[48] On October 7, 2001, Osama bin Laden, leader of the extremist al-Qaeda organization, claimed responsibility for the attacks, and declared, “These events have divided the whole world into two sides. The side of believers and the side of infidels, may God keep you away from them. Every Muslim has to rush to make his religion victorious.”[49] Once again, both sides in the conflict saw an ideological divide.
While sharing similar ideological declarations, both periods of national fear also experienced similar key events, such as two major wars and anti-war sentiments. The Cold War had the Korean War followed by the Vietnam War, and the War on Terror had the Iraq War with the ongoing war in Afghanistan. Americans historically associate the Iraq War and the Vietnam War with anti-war protests. Specifically, the protests were about debatable entry motives, notably the minority belief that oil and the desire for revenge drove the Iraq War with the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq a false cause. In addition, controversial military actions spurred protests, especially regarding the actions of United States troops towards civilians during the Vietnam War and the contentious draft. Most Americans originally perceived the Korean and Vietnam Wars as necessary to prevent the spread of communism in conjunction with the Domino Theory. It was a political concept concerning the idea that when countries fall to communism they will cause the fall of neighboring countries until the whole world has fallen like dominoes. Many Americans believed in the United States government’s declared necessity of the war in Afghanistan and the Iraq War to prevent nations sympathetic to the cause of the 9/11 attackers from continuing to support terrorists. The anti-war movements sparked by these wars are representative of Americans who have become opposed to the initially fearful. Either those too young to experience the initial national terror spark these second waves of opposition, or the second wave does not perceive the same threat level as the majority and becomes critical of the majority’s fear-inspired actions.
Some of the attributes of zombies during the Cold War and the War on Terror clarify the historical parallels, emphasize the cultural differences, and give greater context to American paranoia through direct contrast and comparison. Throughout both periods, the human survivors are the embodiment of the United States in zombie films. The new apocalyptic zombie created in the Cold War demanded cooperation and survival meant more than prejudices and stereotypes. Night of the Living Dead even had a black protagonist who slapped a hysterical white woman, led a group of all-white survivors, and was the only original survivor to live through the night – in the same year the civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
Women gain a starring role in zombie films of the twenty-first century, further illuminating evolving gender roles. Unlike in the Cold War where death at the hands of zombies was an equal opportunity demise, modern female leads have an almost 100 percent survival rate. Male protagonists are likely to sacrifice themselves for the group, as seen in the Dawn of the Dead remake, I Am Legend, 28 Days Later, and 28 Weeks Later. Conversely, none of the famous Cold War zombie movies has sacrificial leading men. This change suggests a return to the gallant wartime ideal of men going off to war, while the women must survive for the continuation of the species, apocalyptic approach. The only demographic that zombie films do not fully explore is class.[50] On one level, zombie apocalypses are a great equalizer because human flesh tastes good to zombies whether the human lives in a mansion or under a bridge. On another hand, survivors embody the average American’s behavior and fears, so survivors are kept exclusively middle or working class as the most likely demographic of the typical American audience and possibly representative of the country’s true strength.
During the Cold War, survivors barricaded themselves in a safe location and were perfectly content to stay indefinitely, or until zombies overran it. The suggestion is that the average Cold War Americans were willing to buckle down and defend the homeland at all costs. Post-9/11 survivors are incessantly mobile by comparison. In the Dawn of the Dead remake, the survivors build a nonsensically modified vehicle to escape from the mall where they took refuge; apparently, the survivors simply cannot stand to be contained in one place for more than a few days. This is especially noteworthy by contrast to the original Dawn of the Dead that depicts the survivors barricaded in the mall for months and who have no plans to leave until a biker gang drives them out. The difference is most likely due to the twenty-first century’s motivations for fighting the national enemy: righteous vengeance for innocent lives lost, and the belief that another attack is imminent, leaving Americans no choice but to act before the enemy can. Modern American wars demonstrate the strategy that the best defense is a good offense,[51] reflected by the survivors in zombie films.
Cold War and post-9/11 zombie survivors may have had different plans after finding a safe house, but the nature of the safe house is the same for both eras. Every major zombie film has survivors seeking a safe house, and Zombieland’s survivors even cross the entire country on a vague safe house tip that they all know is unlikely to be true. The zombie survivors’ relationship with their safe house is telling, because it always shows survivors placing paramount importance on finding shelter. They even venture into less safe areas if they hear a broadcast claiming there is a safe location elsewhere, as seen in 28 Days Later and Night of the Living Dead. Usually zombies have already overrun a promised safe house, provoking further anxiety that no place is ever truly safe. In the Cold War’s Last Man on Earth and the modern remake, I Am Legend, the protagonists are alone and have their pick of the fanciest houses around but choose to remain in their original homes, guarding them at all costs with booby traps and armaments. The climax of both films is the home being overrun, reflecting the basic human fear that the homeland is in constant peril of being overrun by the enemy. It is not a coincidence that the only major zombie film to have all original survivors survive to the end credits, Zombieland, is also the zombie film that shows survivors willing to be constantly on the move and able to adapt to new environments. The safe houses in zombie films are both haven and trap, almost becoming a liability, suggesting the fear that being too comfortable and overconfident exposes Americans to further attacks.
Common to all zombie films, the mindless horde is the physical attacker, but the proper enemies of humanity are the creators of the zombies, even if unintentionally created. In the Cold War and post-9/11 world, this reflects the belief that threatening actions do not make the individual followers of communism and terroristic extremism inherently evil. Zombies are the tools of physical destruction, but their originators wield the tools and are the true enemy. The wielders of the human tools of destruction are not leaders, like Josef Stalin or Osama bin Laden. The commanders of the tools, the roots of Americans’ paranoia, are ideologies, not people. American minds anthropomorphize the ideologies of communism and extremist terrorism as an evil overlord, or puppet master, controlling the ground troops of the ideology. Zombie films are the perfect representation of this concept since the zombie ground troops are causing harm, but the true threat is the entity that created them. If zombies are killed but the cause of the outbreak is not eradicated, then the zombie threat can rise again, just as ideologies can spawn infinite new recruits. As the survivors discover, eradicating the origin of zombies is almost impossible because ideologies cannot be killed by an external source. If ideologies are hard to kill and the reflecting zombie originators similarly resilient, that leaves the question of why zombie films fade out of popularity.
Ideologies do not die easily and neither do zombies, but the terror inspired by both can fade with time and changes instigated within the threat’s organization. Paranoia occurs when a lack of knowledge and understanding about a threat makes its mysterious nature suspicious. Policies that diminish the mystery of an enemy’s inner workings also diminish the perceived threat. In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the Soviet Union, introduced a policy of openness, which took away a great deal of the paranoia-inspiring mystery of the Cold War and hastened the Soviet Union’s decline. Also in 1985, George Romero’s Day of the Dead provided the last gasp of serious zombie films of the era. Like the opening of threats to the United States, Romero introduced American audiences to the detailed inner workings of zombies with a scientist character who intimately studies their anatomy, behavior, and social cognition. It is not a coincidence that it was also Romero’s first zombie failure at the box office. Zombies are far less terrifying when one knows why they act the way they do, and survivors have the knowledge to obliterate them.
Besides policy changes, time is the best friend of those who wish to see an ideology fade and paranoid perceptions of them become a memory. By 1985, it had been more than a decade since the United States withdrew from Vietnam and the youth of the nation were less likely to remember when a communist attack seemed likely. Communist fears became a mentality for youth to mock. Thus, zombie films introduced American audiences to the film industry’s tools of mockery, the spoof. Between 1984 and the mid-1990s, American theaters hosted more successful zombie movie spoofs than any other time in the genre’s history.[52] Notable examples of zombie spoofs are Night of the Comet (1984), Re-Animator (1985), The Return of the Living Dead (1985), I Was a Teenage Zombie (1987) and Redneck Zombies (1987), Return of the Living Dead Part II (1988), Bride of Re-Animator (1991), Dead Alive (1992), and My Boyfriend’s Back (1993).
Given the parallels already explored between the Cold War and the War on Terror, the future should also experience parallels in decline and echo the fading interest in zombie films. Unlike the Cold War, it would be extraordinarily odd and difficult for anti-American terrorist organizations to declare a policy of openness. Terrorist organizations do not have a Mikhail Gorbachev who can make such a policy because they are non-state actors and none of their leader are truly irreplaceable, as seen by the deaths of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein doing little to diminish terrorist activities.[53] In addition, revealing the inner workings of terrorist organizations would not stop the extremist Islamic belief that infidels deserve annihilation. The conversion-based zombie of the Cold War reflected an ideological threat that wanted to spread the communist ideology but not necessarily destroy non-believers. The current War on Terror’s zombie is destruction-based, reflecting the lower priority of terrorist organizations towards conversion of enemies.
Without another terrorist attack or American war to revive the collective paranoia, time should ease the fear of terrorist extremists. As the saying goes, “time heals all wounds.” There are American youths entering middle school in 2011 who were born a decade after the fall of the Twin Towers and the Pentagon attack and receive all the social paranoia secondhand, having never personally experienced the unifying fear of a national attack. Should the trend continue, and without a new or rejuvenated threat, zombies could expect to fall out of favor by 2020 when the youth cannot empathize with the collective fear the mindless horde appeals to.
At the heart of American paranoia during the Cold War and after the turn of the millennium is the fundamental misunderstanding of the nation’s enemies The average American citizen simply does not have the access and resources to completely understand an enemy so foundationally different. The greatest reason that the mysterious zombie ideally suits these fearful periods in American history is the fundamental lack of understanding. Filmmakers and fans create backstories for zombie outbreaks and suit certain characteristics to their mental image of the undead, which necessarily targets public fears if it is to be well-received by American audiences. As often as people attempt to explain all of the facets of zombies, the creatures remain largely a mystery. Essential questions about their behavior, as about communists, go unanswered, such as why do zombies eat only living flesh? If they are undead, why do they need sustenance? How can radiation, bioterrorism, or viruses so unnaturally alter basic human physiology to make the zombie possible?
Generally, films do not answer such questions because the answers are not necessary for the plot and audiences do not demand their resolution. The answer to why audiences accept fundamental holes in zombie explanations is that audiences want to be scared and zombies terrify because they are mysterious. The zombie film to offer the most detailed and scientific explanation of zombie physiology and nature is George Romero’s Day of the Dead and that film was one of the biggest box office disappointments from the legendary zombie director. Lift the veil on the mystery of zombies and that declares an openness to the enemy as damaging to the enemy’s threatening image as Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of a more open Soviet Union in 1985 that led to its eventual dissolution. The 9/11 Commission Report’s purpose seems to be to explain how unprepared the United States was for the suicidal warriors it faced on September 11. However, that fateful day was not the nation’s first encounter with Al-Qaeda terrorists.[54] The miscalculation of the threat they posed suggests the mystery that surrounded the United States new top enemy, a lack of understanding that still pervades the country.
Zombie films have a long and complex relationship with American history stretching from the golden age of Hollywood to the action-packed theaters of the twenty-first century. Zombie films have proven their worth as context for historical and cultural evolutions in the United States. More than just the undead in zombie films reflect American perceptions. They also reflect the levels of faith and trust that average American citizens have in their government, the world, and each other. Despite the unique ability of zombies to represent cultural changes in American history, scholars have yet to fully explore the undead and what they can teach about national fears. In 28 Days Later, a scientist exhorts others to remember that “in order to cure you must first understand.”[55] Zombie films rarely find a cure for the mindless hordes, and zombies remain persistently misunderstood by and mysterious to survivors in their films, just as average Americans feared the communists whom they could not understand during the Cold War and the shadowy, mysterious nature of the twenty-first century Islamic extremists.
Both periods of collective fear and paranoia in the United States shared an eerie parallel relationship with the zombie films of their eras that were perfectly adapted to the specific fears of the time. During the twilight of an American disaster, the foreign enemy brings the fight to American soil. They are coming to get you, America. Only through knowledge and understanding can the United States lift the veil on mysterious threats and survive through the night. Of course, the dawn might just bring a new threat, so Americans had better be able to adapt as well as their national enemy, the ever-evolving zombie.
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References
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Endnotes
[1] Maitland McDonagh, “28 Days Later Review,” TVGuide.com , http://movies.tvguide.com/28-days-later/review/136435 (accessed November 9, 2011).
[2] Robert Ebert, “The Crazies,” Movie Reviews, Essays and the Movie Answer Man from Film Critic Roger Ebert, http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100224/REVIEWS/100229989 (accessed November 8, 2011).
[3] Cultural use of the term “zombie” has come to mean any political or economic institution that has seemingly mindless followers and voracious conversion attempts, as in zombies in political parties and zombie banks. For examples of “zombie” used in a cultural context outside of film, see Patricia Molloy, “Zombie Democracy,” in The Geopolitics of American Insecurity Terror, Power and Foreign Policy (London: Routledge, 2009), 197-211; Robert Thornton, “Marginal Utilities, Time, and Zombies: Comment on Jane Guyer’s ‘Prophecy and the near Future: Thoughts on Macroeconomic, Evangelical, and Punctuated Time,’” American Ethnologist 34 (2007): 437-439, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4496823 (accessed November 4, 2011); Ricardo J. Caballero, Takeo Hoshi, and Anil Kashyap, “Zombie Lending and Depressed Restructuring in Japan,” American Economic Review 98 (2008): 1943-1977, http://www.jstor.org/stable/29730158 (accessed November 4, 2011); M. P. Lynch, “Zombies and the Case of the Phenomenal Pickpocket,” Synthese 149 (2006): 37-58, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20118723 (accessed November 4, 2011); Robert Pekkanen, Benjamin Byblade, and Ellis Krauss, “Electoral Incentives in Mixed-Member Systems: Party, Posts, and Zombie Politicians in Japan,” American Political Science Review 100 (2006): 183-193, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27644343 (accessed November 4, 2011).
[4] The final scene of I Am Legend provides an excellent example of not being able to reason with zombies. In the midst of a zombie attack on his base, the protagonist has found a cure for zombiism. The protagonist, a doctor named Robert Neville sheltering behind bulletproof glass, yells through the doorway at rampaging zombies, “I can save you!” He repeats it more and more desperately and tries to mime the actions to them while they slam into the glass repeatedly to break it. Neville’s pleas are to no avail. The creatures are unable to understand that he is just trying to help; nor do they seem capable of caring that they are monstrosities.
[5] Max Brooks, World War Z (New York: Crown, 2006).
[6] Shawn McIntosh and Marc Leverette, Zombie Culture: Autopsies of the Living Dead (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008).
[7] Richard Greene and K. Silem Mohammed, eds., Zombies, Vampires, and Philosophy: New Life for the Undead (Chicago: Open Court, 2010).
[8] The most insightful endings are the alternate endings, sometimes included on DVDs. Filmmakers change alternate endings because they tested the endings with an audience before the release and u found the conclusions were unsatisfactory. They demonstrate how filmmakers must tailor their endings to meet the audience’s expectations and are thus the most accurate representation of American optimism or pessimism toward the crisis. I Am Legend and 28 Days Later are the two best examples of dramatically different alternate endings switched due to audience opinion.
[9] Shaun of the Dead, DVD, directed by Edgar Wright (Washington DC: Universal Studios, 2007).
[10] Many scholars agree that the zombie is the only monster uniquely created in the Americas, unlike ghosts, vampires, and werewolves that have roots in other cultures. For sources on this view, see Kyle William Bishop, American Zombie Gothic: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Walking Dead in Popular Culture (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2010).
[11] For more information on zombie folklore, see Hans Ackermann and Jeanine Gauthier, “The Ways and Nature of the Zombi,” Journal of American Folklore 104 (1991): 466-494, http://www.jstor.org/stable/541551 (accessed October 9, 2011) ; George Eaton Simpson, “Traditional Tales from Northern Haiti,” The Journal of American Folklore 56 (1943): 255-256, http://www.jstor.org/stable/535560 (accessed October 9, 2011).
[12] For a detailed account of the United States occupation, see Magdaline W. Shannon, Jean Price-Mars, the Haitian Elite and the American Occupation, 1915-1935 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), Mimi Sheller, Democracy after Slavery: Black Publics and Peasant Radicalism in Haiti and Jamaica (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000); Mary A. Renda, “Paternalism: Metaphors of Fatherhood,” in Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 89-130; Hans Schmidt, The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1971); Brenda Gayle Plummer, Haiti and the United States: The Psychological Moment (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992).
[13] The Watchman and Southron (Sumter), “American Policy in Haiti,” May 10, 1922, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/ (accessed November 8, 2011) and other papers report the same. See Hartford Republican, “Lansing Lauds Haitian Policy,” May 12, 1922, www.chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/ (accessed November 8, 2011).
[14] William Seabrook, The Magic Island (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1929).
[15] Seabrook, The Magic Island, quoted in Bishop, American Zombie Gothic, 49.
[16] Later studies give the now commonly accepted scientific explanation of neurotoxins that give the appearance of death and cause brain damage that leads to docility in humans. For the most famous study, see Wade Davis, Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988).
[17] J. Brooks Atkinson, “Raising the Dead,” New York Times, February 11, 1932, www.proquest.com (accessed September 13, 2011).
[18] Ibid.
[19] White Zombie, DVD, directed by Victor Halperin (Hollywood: Alpha Video, 2002); Revolt of the Zombies, DVD, directed by Victor Halperin (Hollywood: Alpha Video, 2003).
[20] Gregory W. Mank, Karloff and Lugosi: The Story of a Haunting Collaboration, with a Complete Filmography of Their Films Together (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1990) 36.
[21] Jamie Russell, Book of the Dead: The Complete History of Zombie Cinema (Godalming, UK: Fab Press, 2006) 7.
[22] “Island Science of Thrilling Voodoo Tale,” Washington Post, July 31, 1932, www.proquest.com (accessed September 8, 2011).
[23] Shawn McIntosh and Marc Leverette, eds., Zombie Culture: Autopsies of the Living Dead (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008), 7.
[24] Night of the Living Dead, DVD, directed by George A. Romero (New York: Weinstein Company, 2008).
[25] Icons of Horror Collection: Sam Katzman (The Giant Claw, Creature with the Atom Brain, Zombies of Mora Tau, The Werewolf), DVD, directed by Edward L. Cahn (Culver City, CA: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2007); Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Collector’s Edition), DVD, directed by Philip Kaufman (Pittsburgh: MGM, 2007).
[26] In 1994, Invasion of the Body Snatchers was selected for inclusion into the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry for preservation of major American cultural icons. See “National Film Preservation Board; 1994-2002 Films Selected for Inclusion in the National Film Registry,” Federal Register, http://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2003/03/13/03-5958/national-film-preservation-board-1994-2002-films-selected-for-inclusion-in-the-national-film (accessed November 10, 2011).
[27] Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a controversial zombie film, with many zombie film guides listing their zombies as quasi-zombies and “pod people.” One might argue that they are not zombies, because the aliens switched the bodies and the mindless form is not the original human with a mind wiped clean. However, undead zombies might as well have switched bodies for they have no identity within their undead shell. Zombies evolve in film and the Invasion of the Body Snatcher’s zombie is a stepping-stone between the enthralled Voodoo zombie and later undead incarnations in terms of a body transformation.
[28] Walter Mirisch, I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008).
[29] The zombies in Last Man on Earth are also debatably zombies and labeled as vampires in the film. Even though they have vampire weaknesses and can talk, this study considers them zombies. Real vampires are rarely so inelegant and solitary. Plus, the zombie characteristics far outweigh the vampire ones. The beings attack in a horde, shamble around, attack mindlessly and without real strategy, and lose their old selves.
[30] In 1999, the Library of Congress added Night of the Living Dead to the National Film Registry for cultural preservation.
[31] For a full scholarly analysis of exactly when the Cold War ended, see John Mueller, “When Did the Cold War End?” Speech, 2002 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Columbus, OH, July 26, 2002.
[32] Steffen Hantke, American Horror Film the Genre at the Turn of the Millennium (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010) 145.
[33] “Love Lust & the Undead,” Love Lust, Sundance Channel (Bethpage, New York: June 28, 2011).
[34] Zombies are generally apocalyptic creatures, and when the country is at peace, there are no fears of an apocalypse. Creatures like vampires appear to feed on more personalized fears. For more information on monsters that are popular when zombies are not, see “Love Lust & the Undead.”
[35] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, “The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States Executive Summary,” C-Span, www.c-span.org/pdf/911finalreportexecsum.pdf (accessed November 5, 2011).
[36] Joseph P. Natoli, This Is a Picture and Not the World: Movies and a Post-9/11 America (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007), 18.
[37] United States President John F. Kennedy described the world living under the threat of nuclear destruction during the Cold War, and the parallel between the two eras living under a potentially apocalyptic threat is all too accurate. For Kennedy’s complete speech, see John F. Kennedy, “Address Before the General Assembly of the United Nations, September 25, 1961,” Speech, General Assembly of the United Nations from United Nations Headquarters, New York City, September 25, 1961.
[38] The title of Resident Evil was Resident Evil: Ground Zero when the movie was considered a prequel to the video games. The title was changed due to the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. See Paul W. S. Anderson, “Resident Evil Commentary,” Resident Evil, DVD, directed by Paul W.S. Anderson (Culver City, CA: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2004).
[39] As Resident Evil was an adaptation of a popular video game franchise, it is tempting to claim that the film was popular due to a guaranteed audience of video gamers and not because the zombie genre was experiencing an upswing due to its cultural relevance. However, video game adaptations of popular franchises are notorious for being awful movies. See Daniel D. Snyder, “Why the Video-Game Movie Craze Hasn’t Happened Yet,” The Atlantic, http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/07/why-the-video-game-movie-craze-hasnt-happened-yet/242759/ (accessed November 1, 2011). Furthermore, video game aficionados do not want their favorite franchises mutilated by conversion to the big screen, which discredits arguments that Resident Evil was successful only because it was a film adaptation. See Aaron Hobbs, “Movies Based on Video Games – Who Needs ’em?” IGN.com, http://ps3.ign.com/articles/117/1171092p1.html (accessed November 1, 2011).
[40] Stephen Harper, “”I could kiss you, you bitch”: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2: Apocalypse,” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media 49 (2007), http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc49.2007/HarperResEvil/text.html (accessed October 29, 2011).
[41] Gabriel Powers, “Terror and Terrorism: Remembering 9/11’s Effect on Genre Filmmaking,” DVDActive, http://www.dvdactive.com/editorial/articles/terror-and-terrorism-remembering-911s-effect-on-genre-filmmaking.html (accessed October 30, 2011).
[42] For more on the importance of geography during zombie outbreaks, see Douglas Rushkoff, “Peer Review,” Discover 28 (2007): 72-73 ; Jeff May, “Zombie Geographies and the Undead City,” Social & Cultural Geography 11 (2010), 285-298.
[43] 28 Days Later had a similar montage that was commented on by Fred Botting, “A-ffect-less: Zombie-Horror-Shock,” English Language Notes 48 (2010): 177-190, http://ezproxy.umw.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.umw.edu:2048/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=53846378&site=ehost-live (accessed September 30, 2011).
[44] “Zombie Movies at the Box Office – Box Office Mojo,” Box Office Mojo, http://www.boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?id=zombie.htm (accessed November 8, 2011).
[45] Claudia Puig, “‘Zombieland’: It’s Bloody, Good Fun,” USA Today (McLean), October 1, 2009, http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/reviews/2009-10-01-zombieland_N.htm (accessed November 3, 2011); Roger Ebert, “Zombieland,” Chicago Sun Times, September 30, 2009, http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090930/REVIEWS/909309991 (accessed November 3, 2011).
[46] “DHS Chronology of Changes to the Homeland Security Advisory System,” Department of Homeland Security, http://www.dhs.gov/xabout/history/editorial_0844.shtm (accessed November 10, 2011).
[47] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, “The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States Executive Summary,” C-Span, www.c-span.org/pdf/911finalreportexecsum.pdf (accessed November 5, 2011).
[48] George W. Bush, “The Rhetoric of 9/11: President George W. Bush – Address to the Nation on 9-11-01,” American Rhetoric: The Power of Oratory in the United States, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/gwbush911addresstothenation.htm (accessed November 4, 2011).
[49] Osama bin Laden, “Osama bin Laden Speeches Broadcast on Al-Jazeera TV in October, November, and December 2001,” September 11 News.com, http://september11news.com/OsamaSpeeches.htm (accessed November 14, 2011).
[50] The only exception is George Romero’s Land of the Dead that portrays a working class protagonist who releases a contained zombie horde on an upper-class neighborhood that refused him entrance. The film was a box office failure domestically.
[51] “The National Security Strategy 2002,” The White House, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/nsc/nss/2002 (accessed November 11, 2011).
[52] During the 1940s, zombie spoof films were produced in greater number than serious zombie treatments. Most notable was Zombies on Broadway; however, it was less of a social commentary and more of an attempt to recreate the popular Abbot and Costello spoof of The Mummy.
[53] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, “The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States Executive Summary,” C-Span, www.c-span.org/pdf/911finalreportexecsum.pdf (accessed November 5, 2011).
[54] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks.
[55] 28 Days Later, DVD, directed by Danny Boyle (Tucson: 20th Century Fox, 2005).