American Zombie Gothic: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Walking Dead in Popular Culture

American Zombie Gothic: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Walking Dead in Popular Culture

Kyle William Bishop

Language: English

Pages: 247

ISBN: 0786448067

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


Zombie stories are peculiarly American, as the creature was born in the New World and functions as a reminder of the atrocities of colonialism and slavery. The voodoo-based zombie films of the 1930s and '40s reveal deep-seated racist attitudes and imperialist paranoia, but the contagious, cannibalistic zombie horde invasion narrative established by George A. Romero has even greater singularity. This book provides a cultural and critical analysis of the cinematic zombie tradition, starting with its origins in Haitian folklore and tracking the development of the subgenre into the twenty-first century. Closely examining such influential works as Victor Halperin's White Zombie, Jacques Tourneur's I Walked with a Zombie, Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2, Dan O'Bannon's The Return of the Living Dead, Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later, and, of course, Romero's entire "Dead" series, it establishes the place of zombies in the Gothic tradition.

Apocalypse of the Dead (Dead World, Book 2)

Stronghold (Tomes of the Dead)

Unity (Six Feet from Hell, Book 5)

The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead

The Undead World of Oz: L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Complete with Zombies and Monsters

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

all of the ordinary human failings.”37 In most zombie films, therefore, the human protagonists eventually establish unequal hierarchies and begin to argue, fight, and even turn against one another; cabin fever can make those inside the strongholds more dangerous than the zombies on the outside.38 In addition, the journey from survivor to vigilante is a short one; with the total collapse of all governmental lawenforcement systems, survival of the fittest becomes a very literal and grim reality. Some

of giant plant monster — although it basically looks and acts like Karloff ’s turn as Frankenstein’s monster. Paranoia and the threat of a hostile Other continue to be the main source of terror, however, as would be expected of a Hawks film during the early years of the Cold War. Another major sciencefiction film from 1951 is Robert Wise’s influential The Day the Earth Stood Still. This movie is less about invasion and more about paranoia, and the alien creature proves to be benevolent. The primary

disturbingly, uncannily new foe, one that closely resembles the familiar movie monsters of the past, but one that behaves according to a whole new set of generic rules and protocols. Furthermore, this new terror, the contagious, cannibalistic, “walking dead” ghoul, has since proven powerful and popular enough to continue as the feature attraction in a variety of other zombie films over the past forty years. Reading the Zombie Invasion Narrative Romero was not just making another tired zombie

After getting lost, however, George must leave Edna and the car to ask for directions, and he discovers a team of scientists experimenting with a kind of radiation that gets rid of bugs and insects by causing them to attack and kill each other. This high-tech pesticide is supposedly harmless to humans, the scientists assure George, because their nervous systems are too complex to be affected by the radiation. Nevertheless, after a pale-faced transient (Fernando Hilbeck) attacks Edna, it becomes

them with a mind-scrambling cell phone signal. While the zombie renaissance is basically a given to zombie scholars and fans, such mainstream journalistic coverage as The New York Times gives Wells’ observations a greater semblance of credibility as well as publicity. The return of the zombie, most obviously and prolifically in film, has finally come to the attention of the masses generally, as box office receipts and related merchandising show. St. John summarizes the renaissance quite simply: “In

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