When will the Zombies Die?

[JoanDrake]

Since this covers several media and is a subgenre of horror I guess it would go here. If not, I would thank any moderator who wishes to move it.

With the exception of Lollipop Chainsaw, (and there I could probably just as well have bought a good Hentai game with the money) I am sooo tired of Zombies. I always found them a bit of a shallow and boring concept from the beginning. Okay, OK, they're consumers and consumption is consuming us, I get it, now could you just knock it off.

The thing that gets me is now we have WWZ, and, since it was successful, will probably soon see WWZII, (I wonder, will it be set 20 years later and based on the Zombie Versailles Treaty? Will we get a Zombie Weimar Republic, maybe a Zombie Cabaret? Oh god, no, there's already a Zombie Musical funding on Kickstarter, though that could signal the beginning of the end.)

I mean, I'm sorry, but any real horror or humor in this subgenre left with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Vampires, at least, had a sort of literary history. This is a one joke horror (please excuse that) and it's long past its prime.

 

[Bick]

I wouldn't hold your breath - they seem to be here to stay. I enjoyed Shaun of the Dead. Haven't seen much else to be honest, and I must be living in a cave because I had no idea WWZ had zombies in it. I don't suppose I'd have gone to see it anyway. Two thoughts:

...they're consumers and consumption is consuming us, I get it...

I think you may be crediting Hollywood with more capacity for clever metaphor than is the reality! I wonder if the studios just feel zombie movies are fun and make money.

Also, I'd have thought there are a fair few literary references for zombies: Gilgamesh, Bible, Frankenstein, Poe, Lovecraft and so on, come to mind. I don't know if Haitian culture comprises much literature on zombies, but there's certainly a spoken history there going back centuries.

 

[j d worthington]

Well, Romero's zombie films, for instance, go far beyond the simplistic "consumer" aspect (though that was certainly an ironic commentary included in Dawn of the Dead). Indeed, he uses his zombies as metaphors for a considerable number of social and political issues, including though not limited to: the ratcheting up of militarism; the increasing disparity between the classes in American society; our obsession with simplistic violence and gore for their own sake; our increasing lack of respect for the outcasts of society; and even our denial of our own humanity. So I'd say there's plenty of material to keep producing works using this versatile metaphor for a long time to come.

Granted, most of all the media seem more concerned with how gross they can be, but that's the fault of lack of imagination or artistic integrity on the part of the writers/filmmakers/etc., rather than a fault in the original material itself. (It is also the reason why I generally give zombie films or books a pass, but some I am very supportive of.) Even as far back as William Seabrook's The Magic Island, the chapter "Dead Men Working in the Cane Fields" brought out the horrors of what was happening to those who were politically powerless in a type of slavery which took it into very complex emotional dimensions.

Zombies aren't for everyone, but if you're a person open to quality work using this trope, there are still legitimate things which remain to be said....

 

[JoanDrake]

Maybe, I dunno....

My understanding was that the original intent of Romero's first film was as I said, and Dawn just hammered it into our skulls. There was also the fact that Romero wanted to make a horror movie that was TRULY horrible, an absolutely Grand example of Grand Guignol. He did succeed mightily in both, no argument there.

I must add Magic Island to my reading list, along with The Serpent and the Rainbow. OK, zombies do have some historicity (is that a word?). In fact, I've just come up with an actual application of the trope, (in the slaves who were worked to death on the sugar plantations in Martinique. Has anyone done this?) Applying the theme to all the things you said, however, except very peripherally, seems a bit of a stretch to me. (Then again, all SFF is that).

I'm just tired of Zombies, zombie adventures, historys, conspiracys, wars and even a romance. It seems Vampires are running out of steam, and I just can't wait for the other undead to shamble off to the remainder tables in their turn.

 

[j d worthington]

Well, Romero has commented that he intended, for example, Land of the Dead to be a critique of the mentality of the Bush administration, and when he was talking with Dennis Hopper about the character he was to play, Hopper said that he thought he should play him as Rumsfeld, and as that was precisely what George had in mind himself, he was delighted....

Others of the series have also had such intentionally part of their text (and subtext), so I'm not really going out on a limb there....

As for the whole thing with vampires... again, I think the trope itself has worth, and could still be a perfect choice for various themes; after all, "vampirism" is a pretty broad term, ranging from the classic undead blood- (or, depending on the folkloric roots, breath-, hence, following early views of the relationship between breath and spirit, soul-) sucking figure -- which, incidentally, is only one of many variations even among early views of vampires -- all the way to Moorcock's vampiric Elric or the psychic vampires of Dan Simmons' fine Carrion Comfort, to the very literary "Pages From a Young Girl's Journal" by Robert Aickman, or the bizarre manifestation of E. F. Benson's "Caterpillars". (Or, for that matter, the vampiric entity of Lovecraft's "The Shunned House".) It all depends on the creativity and originality of the writer(s) involved. Sadly, too many are lazy and prefer to go with the most stereotypical and hackneyed version out there.....

 

[J Riff]

Just as soon as I can get this flamethrower operational.

 

[Bick]

I do sympathise with you regards it getting rather 'old' though, Joan. Personally, I'm more sick of the whole vampire thing. j.d. gives some fine examples of the possible breadth of use of the vampiric trope, but the current reality is a much narrower and boring image we've seen a thousand times. If we're going to go through fads of films and books following a particular type of undead, my vote goes for a change... to ghost stories. Bring back ghosts, I say!

 

[j d worthington]

Just in case I wasn't clear... I, too, am more than sick of the glut of zombie and vampire material on the market; it is just that I am sick of it because it is so damned predictable (in most cases). However, this isn't anything new. Anyone who has actually read much of the original pulp magazines (not the anthologies culled from them, which were, by their nature, selective, but the magazines themselves), or the Gothics novels of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (just to pick two examples) could tell you just how common such a problem is. This is the curse of popular literature: the general reading audience wants more of the same because it's familiar, and the majority of writers who jump on the bandwagon simply have no imagination or desire to broaden the horizons of a particular type of tale (both to "ensure" their audience -- which of course eventually tires of the same old thing and abandons it with extreme contempt -- and because it's too darned much work to be original in an already established field).

So... we end up with the same tired old "by-the-numbers" stories over and over again. But... when good material in that area comes along, I'd like to see it get a fair shot, as I think genuine creativity and good writing deserve attention in a world which all too often gives its support to, well, frankly... dreck.....

 

[J Riff]

We keep killing Count Dreckula, but he won't stay dead.

 

[AndrewT]

We keep killing Count Dreckula, but he won't stay dead.

Yeah, I though zombies were already dead

 

[Verse]

I am of sick to death of the Zombie - Argh! Panic -Everyone's dead Jim - treatment too. They took a fantastic documentary style commentary on a post-zombie apocalypse world and turned it into Brad Pitt running from Zombies.

However, the BBC 2 drama, In The Flesh (In the Flesh (TV Series 2013) was quite good, not that it didn't have it's flaws. A different take on the Zombie Apocalypse where the undead are actually cured (Partially Dead Syndrome -PDS) and returned to the community.

The story focuses on Kieren, a PDS sufferer returning to his small home town. It has some wonderful WTF! moments:

1) His sister was in the Zombie Defence League, so she's not keen to have him in the house.
2) He suffers flashbacks and guilt from his time hunting and killing as a mindless zombie.
3) His parents hide him away so no one knows he's back.
4) The make-up PDS Sufferers have to wear so they look normal... and the way they look without it.

It was a very refreshing take on the genre.

 

[Randy M.]

We keep killing Count Dreckula, but he won't stay dead.

Off topic, I suppose, but there was a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode with Dracula in it which at the end commented on Dracula's incessant and frequently annoying returns. As I remember, Dracula is staked and puffs to dust. A moment later, the dust starts to reform. Buffy: I'm standing right here.The dust settles another moment, then again starts to reform. Buffy: Still here. Dust settles.

I agree with J. D., though, that while the mass of zombie or vampire fiction is like the photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of a ... there are still some very good stories to be had from the trope. I found Joe Hill's NOS4A2 a very satisfying read, and his Charlie Manx is far from a typical vampire.

Right now I'm reading Joe Lansdale's Deadman's Road, a collection featuring stories about Reverend Jebidiah Mercer, each story playing with a different trope. While Lansdale's vampire, werewolves and zombies aren't all that original, the setting, the characters and Lansdale's voice and humor make the stories entertaining. But then I'd expect that from the writer who gave us "Bubba Ho-Tep," probably the most original, funny and touching mummy story I've had the pleasure to read.


Randy M.

 

[BetaWolf]

Make way for my reptilian aliens and their hybrid children! And cyborgs! Let's not forget the cyborgs. And half-human/half-reptilian cyborg librarians.

 

[Toby Frost]

I agree with JD: part of the problem is not the zombies but that the same story is being told over and over again, even down to the man waking up who missed the start of the apocalypse (which originates with Day of the Triffids, I think). Survivors, hordes, bickering, stockade, small arms, irate redneck, evil military type etc. There's so much more that could be done. It doesn't help that, to quote Tom Lehrer, zombies became the fashionable form of idiocy among the middle classes for a while, following cupcakes and Bollywood as the pop culture thing you could reference without your friends thinking that you were a pleb. Also, the look of zombies is very easy to achieve, and it's probably pretty simple to make a cheap film about them. In short, they're overexposed, and it's made worse by the fact that they only ever crop up in one story.

 

[Null_Zone]

I hope zombies stay, at least in the self published Kindle field.

They offer such a fascinating insight into the minds of aspiring writers.

A world were woman don't get guns because they should be protected and you're failing in your duty as a man otherwise.
A world where no one outside of the US has guns but given how quickly the US always collapses it seems a moot point.
A world were the alibity to form attachement to other human beings as it's time wasted from adding another skill set to your day job as pilot/marksman/engineer/farmer/trauma surgeon.

But that could just be me.

Besides if they go away Brian Keene and Joe McKinney might not write as much.

 

[Darkchild130]

I think zombies can be used as a way of telling some really good human stories when used as a setting rather than the primary plot point.

But most writers choose the "aaaarrrgghh, zombies are everywhere!" Method, cue much smooshing of heads and hidden bites on wrists.

 

[DaCosta]

As with any story, it's not so much about the zombies/vampires/fae/werewolves etc as the people. If you can keep the people fresh and the story true, who cares what the 'background' is.
I agree with the previous poster; the BBC drama In The Flesh challenged the cliche and won. There's scope in zombies yet...

 

[svalbard]

I have just downloaded a zombie story set in Roman Gaul. It is in the style of Crichton's Eater's of the Dead . It is called Le Bella Lemure and hopefully it will be an interesting take on the zombie genre.

 

[j d worthington]

I have just downloaded a zombie story set in Roman Gaul. It is in the style of Crichton's Eater's of the Dead . It is called Le Bella Lemure and hopefully it will be an interesting take on the zombie genre.

With that title, it should at least have some promise..... Can't help but have reservations, though......

 

[alchemate]

I hope zombies stay, at least in the self published Kindle field.

They offer such a fascinating insight into the minds of aspiring writers.

I agree, but I am tired of the oversaturation of zombie movies. It takes some real original thinkers to rejuvenate any subgenre. Original thinkers create a spark, and then holloywood burns it out. And then original thinkers come back from the dead and rejuvenate the damn thing all over again.