How Zombies Make the World a Better Place

The zombie as a cultural icon has been in existance for hundreds of years, but modern western culture has given it new life in the movies, and while zombie movies are often regelated to modest categorization as substance-less slasher b-films, I believe the zombie as a device is one of the most important and useful creative tools in our contemporary artistic tool box.

Zombies can help us explore, and ultimately solve a wide range of issues, ranging from the personal and social to the cultural and political. They do this by functioning as a plot device, a symbol of pre-understood meaning (one forged through uniquely contemporary American pop culture), with which an artist can explore that wide-range of issues with un-rivalved intensity and elightening novelty.

• Race (the original Night of the Living Dead)
• Sexism (also the original 'Night)
• Militarism (Day of the dead)
• Consumerism (Dawn of the dead)
• Friendship (all of them, could you kill your newly-undead friend?)
• Romantic Relationships (Return of the Living Dead)
• Religion and Soul vs Body (again, nearly every zombie movie tackles this one)
• Drugs and Crime (Street Zombies)
• Mother Issues (Dead Alive, the Peter Jackson Zombie movie)
• Disaster Preparedness ie FEMA (the new Dawn of the Dead and the zombie survival guide)
• Irresponsible Science (Resident Evil)
• Oligarchy (Land of the Dead)
• Politics and Authoritarianism (World War Z)
• Urban Social Alienation (Shaun of the Dead)
• Violence as Catharsis (All of them)

The list could go on and on, and as you can probably see, it includes some of the most important issues of our time, issues which demand popular culture's attention and zombies present a perfectly modern and accessible (not to mention entertaining) way to explore these issues. These kinds of things are art's most important duty in a society and zombies allow artists to address these issues in a way no other theme can.

And perhaps one of the most subtle traits of a great zombie plot is that the classical allusions, for instance, very often main character(s) ultimate downfall is his own fault, a character flaw. The zombies didn't do him in, Macbeth did it to himself. The O.G. rising from the dead story of course is jesus, who got up 3 days after he died and was more more articulate than his modern day counterparts.

The reasons zombies are such a useful literary device is because while it is a far-fetched idea, the rules across the entire genre are well-established and accepted. Its easy to not only identify with the victims but also with the zombies, (they're very realistic monsters, no shape-shifting, flying or anything too unbelieveable) and they play into our deep-seated fears.

Much like Aesop and his fables, the fantastical nature of the zombie genre allows even the most radical political and social statements to be made with virtually no risk to the artist, simply showing a certain person or character as a zombie makes a clear point that can be brushed off easily if need be. Actions can be taken against undead version of real life personas and the audience will rarely ever root for the zombie (with the notable exception of Romero's later films, including 'bub' from Day of the Dead).

And nothing could proove my point better than the recent rise (no pun intended) of zombie protests and marches. Even the undead are becoming socially responsible.