Dead Man Still Walking: A Critical Investigation Into the Rise and Fall...and Rise of Zombie Cinema by Kyle Bishop is an amazing looking paper on Zombie films and culture today however I have only been able to access one section so far. Dead man walking; Explaining the Zombie Renaissance (Dead Man Still Walking: A Critical Investigation Into the Rise and Fall...and Rise of Zombie Cinema p17-25) this section talks about the links between natural disasters, terrorist attacks and Zombies in a post 9/11 world.
The chapter begins with some context about films in general replicating their times "atomic weapons at the end of World War II ushered in paranoia narratives" for example and Communist threat inspired alien invasion stories" in the 50's. This sets up the key idea that it is the terrorist attack on September 11 2001 in the USA that is the cause of zombie films re emergence. Bishop supposes "genre conventions of zombie cinema fit post 9/11 consciousness well" representing the "inescapable realities of unnatural death" and "a modern apocalypse in which societies infrastructure breaks down" this rings true and makes a lot of sense. Bishop backs his argument up by comparing tv news with zombie films, a stark but often true parallel.
The chapter takes a turn for the historical, briefly summarising Romero's zombie films and how they represent their times and their concurrent box office success and failure. He attributes the low production of zombie films in the 09's to "too much complacency and stability for zombie movies to fit the national mood." He does however also address the move of the zombie story to video games such as Resident Evil and Doom where they were "incubated" until the film world was ready to see the narrative again.
28 Days Later (2002 Danny Boyle) is the film Bishop and many others credit with the reignition of the zombie craze in the UK whilst at the same time in the US Hollywood was creating the film spin off of the resident evil franchise. Both earned massive amounts at the BO and cemented the return of the zombie genre. The amount of Zombie media that is produced now is insane, the list goes on and on through all types of media and Bishop attributes it all to terrorism and natural disasters. Bishop notes that the conventions of zombie films haven't changed but are "more relevant to a modern contemporary audience."
The fear of zombies is theorised about a lot and many different ideas are definitely at play Bishop lists a few of the reasons he thinks people fear zombies: "they are corpses of the known dead", "technically dead rather than the romantic undead", "they cannot be reasoned with" "zombie directly manifests the visual horrors of death" and "every viewer could both fear and relate to the zombie... everyone will die and rot." I like a lot of these theories, there are more for sure but these are definitely some of the reasons we as an audience are so scared and interested in Zombies.
Another interesting theory Bishop poses as a contributor to the popularity of Zombie films is the survivalist fantasies audiences can play out whilst watching post apocalyptic films. True there are many real life Survivalists that take the feeling to the extreme but even more true is that there is a little part of all of us that thinks "thats how I would do it" or "I wouldn't go in there alone, unarmed." Bishop mentions capitalism as falling when zombies arise however there are more focused studies on this I will discuss later. Interestingly he also draws parallel's between zombieism and Euthanasia, in Land of the Dead specifically where infected people can be killed before or after they are turned, like the terminally ill. The last point Bishop makes before starting his main argument is that it is not the zombies that pose the major threats, for example in Dawn of the Dead 78 the bikers destroy the equilibrium. Likewise in 28 days later it is the soldiers that pose the real threat and fear of rape and bodily harm that are "real world potentialities, they are all the more terrifying"
Bishop's main theory displayed in the article is that he believes terrorism and natural disasters are the reason for the Zombie renaissance. His first piece of evidence is that when people see natural disasters or terrorism one of the most common statements is "its like something out of a movie". Another piece of evidence to support his theory is that 28 Days Later takes inspiration from "footage from the "killing fields" of Cambodia during the reign of Pol Pot and the lost family board on an "actual street scene following a devastating earthquake in China." Bishop ends this section with an excerpt from an interview in which a traumatised victim of 9/11 who was more prepared for the horror because of zombie films. He also states the worrying and stark truth that "today (zombie movies) are all the more shocking because of their familiarity.
Overall Bishop shows himself to be a true scholar in zombie theory and study and shows that there are a large number of reasons for the zombie renaissance Whilst bringing up some interesting themes and motifs within Zombie films he shows that Terrorism and Natural disasters are similar to the horrors of zombie films we see on screen and that fact isn't so far from fiction.... at least visually.
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