Saturday, October 13, 2012

Zombies and the Human Condition

I read that today is World Zombie Day and that The Walking Dead, a television series about survival after a zombie apocalypse, returns tomorrow.

There is something about zombies that repulses, yet fascinates some people.  What is it?  Movies about zombies may seem macabre, mythological, and even silly.  The idea of zombies unnerves people.  There's something that feels real about them.  Why?  When we know they don't exist, as presented in movies.  Is it that zombies represent the worse aspect the human condition, mass, mindlessness and bloody violence?

World history reveals mass genocides and wars, in which people have, in disturbing historical episodes, behaved like zombies, possessed with destructive energy (evil) and mindless violence.  There was even a song (Fela Kuti's Zombie) about zombies.  What draws some people into behaviors which they normally would not dream of doing, like killing and destroying other people?  Maybe that's why zombie movies have the potential to disturb and frighten.  They remind us of what horrors could be possible sometimes in the human condition.  
By Angeline Bandon-Bibum

Angeline Bandon-Bibum

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