The political undead

What’s the hottest thing in horror right now? Yes, even hotter than the poop we discussed the other day. C’mon, you know this.

Yes, it’s the zombie. There’s plethora of zombie movies that have been released recently or will be coming soon. Some were good, most were bad. There’s also been a glut of zombie books over the past few years. And video games. Why do you think that is? Could the popularity of the zombie be symbolic of something else going on in our culture? I think it is.

Look at the rise of the vampire in the 1980s. What’s the nickname for that decade? The “Me Decade.” (Yes, okay, Big Hair, too, but wasn’t that really just another way of drawing attention to yourself?) The ’80s are remembered as a decade of greed. Who is more greedy than a vampire? They go about preying on others, feeding on the very thing that keeps us alive.

The vampire carried over very well into the ’90s. Why not? Personal fulfillment at any cost was still the way to live your life, as evidenced by corporate mergers that led to downsizing, and a president getting it on in the Oval Office with his intern. All that, particularly the political scene, set the stage for this decade of the zombie.

In the 1970s George A. Romero used the zombies of Dawn of the Dead to symbolize our mindless consumerism. Today, though, I think the zombie is a reflection of our political agendas. The Clinton Administration, followed by the Bush Administration, I think, has polarized Americans to the point where we blindly shamble along our party lines, unwilling to consider the value of anything that comes at us from the other side. Spin from our own party is the warm flesh that keeps us moving, while anything coming from the other side is immediately attacked.

Are the purveyors of current zombie fiction and movies thinking of this? Probably not. Especially in Hollywood, where any minor success simply spawns diluted imitations. I think Romero might have been thinking about it with his recent Land of the Dead film, with Dennis Hopper’s Kaufmann character representing the conservative Republicans unwilling to acknowledge the changing times other than to profit from them. But I’m not sure who represented the other side — the street people or the zombies. Perhaps the zombies were an emerging third party.

What do you think? Am I way off base? Why do you think zombies are so popular right now?