It’s summer of 1991. The Berlin Wall has been down for a year and a half. The Soviet Union is a few short months from officially dissolving. The Cold war is over. Terminator 2 takes the box office in a walk– it’s message that “there’s no fate but what you make” signals that even the apocalyptic destruction of the human species can be avoided.
Flash forward a decade. A mere 18 months after the World Trade Center came down, we have a 3rd Terminator installment. Despite the best efforts of the protagonists, the robots let loose nuclear war. Message: Armageddon will happen, like it or not. A few days earlier had seen the release of the excellent Zombie flick 28 Days Later.
In between these movies had come a slew of Vampire shows, films and books. Notably, of course, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This poorly thought out article seems to think that the difference between Zombies and Vampires is a simple Red/Blue phenomenon. It’s a bit deeper than that…
As demonstrated by the picture heading this article, monsters are scary because they replace us at the head of the food chain. Sentient Killer Robots (SKRs), Zombies, Vampires, Werewolves, etc; all scare us because they remind us that we are bestial and our place on top of the animal kingdom is precarious. Different kinds of monsters scare us in different ways, dependent on the way in which they kill us.
Certain monsters prey on us (Vampires, Werewolves), some seek to replace us (Sentient Killer Robots, Zombies). These are, of course, very broad categories, and each type of monster is unique in what it would do. SKRs would replace us wholly, creating an entire new society on top the bones of humanity. Zombies, on the other severed hand, are more akin to a virus. They would wipe us off the face of the Earth and then either die themselves or continue a mindless existence. Either way, they represent a negation of humanity.
This is almost the opposite of Vampires. Vampires represent an excess of humanity. Lust unquenchable. Hunger that cannot be contained or controlled, but only temporarily sated by the ingestion of blood… the essence of humanity.
Thus it is no accident that Vampires and sex are inextricably linked. We see Vampires crop up when society is sexually repressed, times of social conservatism when talking about such subjects is taboo. Or, for teenaged girls, when sex is always taboo.
Zombies are the end of the world. Full stop. When society feels that it has come to an existential crisis– such as points of the Cold War or the post 9/11 mindspace– here comes the Zombie hoard. Our only hope is that the SKRs will slay them all before turning on us.
We have noticed of late a tampering down of Zombie movies and end-of-the-world literature. This would seem to indicate that America is getting past her fear that at any moment she might be destroyed. This would be why the Republican party has suffered devastating losses in the last pair of elections. Hope, it seems, turns the country Blue. And also fends off the zombie hoards….
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