Yup, I've added a poll about zombies. That means that now it's time to go over and take it. Quick-- what's the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word "zombie"? Don't think about it too much! Just head on over there.
Now, how many of you went right to "suave, sinister, and sexy"? Not too many, right? Nope, you probably went for "the undead, with lots of rotting flesh falling off, making that weird "ahhh" noise and trying to get in the house. Let's be honest-- the first thing y'all probably thought of was this:
But WHY?? Why exactly have we let portrayals like this dictate what zombies should be? Not to trash George Romeros' vision, I suppose, but it's many light-years away from what zombies really were. Hollywood has been downright reverential in its treatment of vampires compared to the ridiculous way that zombies have been twisted around. In the posts to come, we're going to learn much more about the true historical nature of zombies, and those who made them.
Okay, it's painful-truth time: people can get together and bite each other on the neck and wear plastic fangs and write Twilight fanfic and all, but vampires aren't real (sorry-- there's no Easter bunny either.) But zombies were real. Not only were they studied, they were photographed. Their rich, fascinating, and lost cultural history needs to be rediscovered and explored. Anyway, much more about that later... and my vampire-overexposure rant is also coming up... you don't want to miss that. ;)Happy Halloween!
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As Romero himself was saying on the radio the other day (he was a guest on NPR's "Wait, Wait, Dont' Tell Me"), he never used the term zombie. His scripts talk about the "living dead" -- zombie was a term slapped onto them by the reviewers that stuck.
ReplyDeleteAnd incidentally, I prefer the 1990 remake of NOTLD... the one in which Barbara becomes the heroine instead of just being a useless victim.
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