Zombies - What's their motivation?

HareBrain said:
I think that's the "problem" -- it's very effective, and frightening at a fundamental level, which is why creators still think it can carry an entire story (and for many readers and viewers, they're right).
Click to expand...

Zombies For the most part are for the most part, are the epitome of the one dimensional character . For the most part ,they exhibit no character development whatsoever . They're consumed with one overall purpose , human flesh and how to acquire it by any means possible. After a while this becomes very tedious stuff. ;)
 
M. Robert Gibson said:
Talking of which, are there any books about Zombies? Or do they only exist on film? I can't think of any off the top of me head, and I can't be bothered doing a search :p
Click to expand...
The Walking Dead has a series of novels that spin-off the comics. I read four or five of them. The first one is awesome; the others, not so much...

Dave said:
Zombie Princesses!

Do you think I can copyright that idea?
Click to expand...

There is an anime (original, not an adaptation of manga or anything) about zombie idol girls. It's called Zombie Land Saga. I just watched the first episode and didn't grab me though...

 
Last edited:
When I first came across zombies they were poor souls under the influence of voodoo doctors, some were reanimated corpses, others drug induced minions. If memory serves me correctly they weren't flesh eaters but mindless slaves with no control over their own actions. Then over the years they've evolved into the flesh eating monsters with no voodoo doctor involvement.
 
I remember seeing a report on Newsnight concerning Zombies in Haiti. Apparently, a man thought dead and buried had come wandering into the village but was like a zombie, he even had a scar on his cheek from a coffin nail. It seems people were drugged so they appeared dead, they were then buried only to be dug up later on revived and then sold on as slave labour. The zombie effect was caused by lack of oxygen in the coffin causing brain damage leaving the victim capable of only the simplest of tasks. This was shortly before the publication of Wade Davis' book Serpent and the Rainbow.
 
I agree with @HareBrain that the whole zombie card became a lazy one to play several years ago. I think 28 Days / Weeks was probably the apex, both in quality and plausibility (a virus that drives people wild but cannot sustain the infected indefinitely without sustenance - i.e. they all die eventually). World War Z wasn't bad though. The Walking Dead started off as quite engaging but, much like the Alien franchise, the moment they relegate the monster to background noise behind an otherwise regular drama / thriller, it quickly looses its appeal.

What's interesting, I suppose, is how the allegory for the zombie can change from show to show. As previous comments, it can be a metaphor for the cold war as well as consumerism. Personally, I've always seen it as a bit of an allegory for aging or, specifically, our detachment from the youth of the day. Here are these soulless, risk-averse entities wandering about the place, causing mindless destruction, looking unrecognisable to 'normal' people. You can't negotiate with them, and they're just as likely to do themselves harm as harm you. More often than note, you can 'think' your way to safety as they lack the tactical intelligence to plan ahead or negotiate certain obstacles. This doesn't explain the relentless effort zombies put in, however - there's ZERO correlation there!!

I always felt that it was quite telling how teenagers and young people were more drawn to the genre than any other age group and that, on the most part, the older you got, the more you grew out of it, which I don't imagine can be said for Sci-Fi or Fantasy (at least, not as much).

So, yeah; zombies = teenagers. That's my take on it, at least probably the last 10 years worth of titles.
 
M. Robert Gibson said:
Talking of which, are there any books about Zombies
Click to expand...
Author Peter Meredith has a long series about them, including the mega awesome The Queen Enslaved.

Why is it so special you may ask?
Because I'm a character in it!

Yes folks, Danny G McGuinness is in this epic yarn after an email correspondence with the writer....fair enough I quickly get slaughtered but I'm in there.
 
I think zombies combine a serious fear of inevitable, creeping death with the entertainment of gross and excessive deaths. Every zombie film seems to have a "celebrity" zombie who dies in a ridiculously gory fashion. There's also the fact that, among a certain set of the British public at least, they got weirdly fashionable a few years ago. The problem is that they're extremely limited in what they can do, and it now feels like a rather lazy way of writing about an apocalypse.
 
A Zombie is a person who loses everything that made them who they are. They go from becoming a thinker to becoming an unthinking consumer. This causes them to go on shopping sprees in which the buy things that don't really need and makes them run up and exhaust all of their credit cards . The most serious of these Zombie outbreaks usually occur around the Holiday season.:)
 
Last edited:
Vladd67 said:
I remember seeing a report on Newsnight concerning Zombies in Haiti. Apparently, a man thought dead and buried had come wandering into the village but was like a zombie, he even had a scar on his cheek from a coffin nail. It seems people were drugged so they appeared dead, they were then buried only to be dug up later on revived and then sold on as slave labour. The zombie effect was caused by lack of oxygen in the coffin causing brain damage leaving the victim capable of only the simplest of tasks. This was shortly before the publication of Wade Davis' book Serpent and the Rainbow.
Click to expand...

I also remember the Wes Craven movie . Very much an underrated movie. :)
 
I've just watched The Return Of The Living Dead. In it there is a scene with half a zombie strapped to a table. It gets asked the question "Why do you eat people?" to which the answer is
"Not people. Brains... ...The pain of being dead ... I can feel myself rotting"
"Eating brains. How does that make you feel?"
"It makes the pain go away"

So there we have the answer. Zombies' motivation is to ease the pain of their suffering. Almost feel sorry for them now :sick:

Found the scene on yew toob
 
The behaviour of modern-style Ravening Zombie Horde zombies makes no sense if you consider the zombies themselves to be doing it deliberately to meet their own needs. It's a bit more logical if you consider it to be driven by an outside agency that doesn't have the zombies' best interest at heart.

The two classics: an infectious disease that is trying to spread itself; and a curse that is trying to achieve maximum destruction of human life. In the case of the disease I suspect that after burning through a large part of the population, selection pressures would force it to evolve into a less virulent strain that only /occasionally/ zombifies people. And the curse doesn't care if the zombies eventually run out of food, so long as they do the job they were raised for. (Some writers can't even be bothered to invoke these causes, mind you.)

I have an issue with the motivation of "monsters" in general, and particularly the ones that are animal-like rather than humanoid. So often, the film-makers don't seem to know whether the poor beast is hunting or showing territorial aggression. Those two activities have VERY different associated behaviours in most real animals. If you hear a lion roar it is /not/ hunting, it is announcing its presence to other potentially hostile lions. But your average Deformed Rubber Mega Beast just blunders around roaring and eating people for no apparent reason.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Thread starter Similar threads Forum Replies Date
B Books that would be improved If Zombies Were Added . Book Discussion 84
mtech25 Is there any enemy as good as Zombies? SFF Lounge 23
B (Found) Japanese Killer Zombies Book Search 8
Megan Ya novel set in the usa a group of people are living in a compound surrounded by flood lights to ward of the zombies/vampires Book Search 13
Cathbad Comedy, Disney and Zombies - What's happened to the horror genre!? General Film Discussion 7

Similar threads


Back
Top