Posted on 10/30/2014 5:30:37 AM PDT by Colofornian
I have recently had the pleasure of playing Telltale Games' interactive masterpiece The Walking Dead (I'm not done yet, so refrain from spoiling it for me).
And one thing that continues to astonish me about pieces of media such as this is how much our culture is fixated on the idea of a flesh-eating animated corpse. From World War Z to Zombieland to Warm Bodies, our society obviously finds something intensely fascinating about zombies, to the point where it is perhaps the most identifiable facet of today's mass media. But why? Why do zombies, of all things, capture our imagination so? We obviously don't idealize them, but rather find in them something unnerving and disturbing. And I think I have figured out exactly what it is.
[SNIP}
Given the fact that vampires and zombies represent two fears which have dominated the western psyche, I ask you: which is worse? Would you rather be a vampire, cursed to only walk at night, but still blessed with intelligence and emotion? Or instead a zombie, lacking all thinking or feeling other than an instinctive desire to eat? I'd choose to be a vampire, for it seems to me that eternal life is much better than slow decay, whatever the cost.
(Excerpt) Read more at journalsofamormonmystic.com ...
(Uh...Yeah...that's the two choices I'd make sure I'd blog on, Mr. MormonMystic....do ya want to be a vampire...or rather a zombie...And, of course...in keeping with the Twilight series written by a fellow Mormon...you chose Vampire!)
All: See: Mormon Vampires in the Garden of Eden [The OTHER WORLD series] for Mormon theological/cultural parallels in The Twilight series.
I’m not fascinated by zombie stories... but I’m going to read this later.
It occurred to me the show is a great metaphor for our country. On one side you have perfect uniformity of outcomes and no responsibility. On the other you have individual responsibility and immediate consequence for failure.
Studying zombies helps us better understand Obama’s supporters.
What I like about Zombie’s and Vampire’s is you are free to kill them, and as far as imagery they are most closely related to life blood sucking, totally confused, corrupt, and only a sliver of brain matter democrats.
Our monster’s are a metaphor for the society’s current anxiety. As anxieties change, the monsters change.
Worry about those around you pulling you apart and devouring you is an apt metaphor for our current state of government.
EGGGGzactly.
"Zombies" is a metaphor for something else.
“Why do zombies, of all things, capture our imagination so?”
Quite simply because the zombie is the perfect metaphor for modern Man; it does nothing, makes mo contribution to society, doesn’y think, follows the herd, and takes a bite out of whatever you’ve got, leaving you ill and diminished.
But, hey, it’s all for the Marxist collective.
In short, it’s Twenty-first century society writ large.
Walking Dead is a great show. However, I do not watch it because of the zombies. The main draw of the show is the survival aspect of the survivors. The zombies are just a vehicle.
I try to explain my enthusiasm for the show by telling everyone it’s not primarily about the undead, but, rather, it’s a show about how human beings might be expected to act in an apocolyptic, end-of-world stuation.
All I get are glassy-eyed stares.
Namely......?
(You haven't noticed any skin starting to peel off on any of them recently, have you?)
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