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Blog of the living dead.
Oct. 20th, 2009 10:06 amThere's a theory which says that the monsters in our stories are simply anthropomorphisations of those parts of ourselves and our environment which we fear, and the purpose in telling those stories is a way to control ourselves and our environment and to face our fears in a safe way.
The witch scares of the middle ages (and which still go on in some part of the world) were a way of finding a human agency to be responsible for accidents and disasters in an uncontrollable world. The Martian Invasion films of the 1950's and 1960's were a way of representating fears of Reds Under the Bed.
In the 1980's and 1990's, vampires (of the traditional, Bram Stoker sort (not the friendly modern sparkly sort)) were the monster of pop culture choice. However, in the last decade zombies have become the ascendant supernatural threat. Perhaps this represents a comtemporary social fear that we're all becoming mindless drones in a society in which individuality counts for nothing, or something.
Anyway, it's amazing how pervasive ideas contained within entertainment media can be. Studies showed that people were more than three times as likely to believe in the likelihood of catastrophic climate change after watching Eco-Thriller The Day After Tomorrow, and that was quite astonishing cobblers.
In the same light, it never ceases to surprise me how many of my friends have zombie-apocalypse survival plans. You know, just in case.
So; question for the day. Do you have a zombie survival plan, just in case? If, on the morrow, the dead start rising from their graves and feasting on the flesh of the living, what will you do?
The witch scares of the middle ages (and which still go on in some part of the world) were a way of finding a human agency to be responsible for accidents and disasters in an uncontrollable world. The Martian Invasion films of the 1950's and 1960's were a way of representating fears of Reds Under the Bed.
In the 1980's and 1990's, vampires (of the traditional, Bram Stoker sort (not the friendly modern sparkly sort)) were the monster of pop culture choice. However, in the last decade zombies have become the ascendant supernatural threat. Perhaps this represents a comtemporary social fear that we're all becoming mindless drones in a society in which individuality counts for nothing, or something.
Anyway, it's amazing how pervasive ideas contained within entertainment media can be. Studies showed that people were more than three times as likely to believe in the likelihood of catastrophic climate change after watching Eco-Thriller The Day After Tomorrow, and that was quite astonishing cobblers.
In the same light, it never ceases to surprise me how many of my friends have zombie-apocalypse survival plans. You know, just in case.
So; question for the day. Do you have a zombie survival plan, just in case? If, on the morrow, the dead start rising from their graves and feasting on the flesh of the living, what will you do?
