Caught in a Zombie Apocalypse!

 

It's not a secret that I love horror movies.  Vampires, aliens and killer sharks are all just a few references from the baddies that proliferated my formative years as a film viewer and critic.  The epic battles between Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing are among the Hammer Horror classics I still enjoy.  However, thanks to a recent keynote given by @mweller, I got to thinking about one of the horror classics in a whole new light.  

("Top Ten Horror Movies!" by AntMan3001 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)

In my own mind I had always thought of the zombie as a malignant, slow moving and mindless creature driven by a relentless need to consume.  Invariably plot lines show zombies emerging as a result of some environmental catastrophe in which some toxic agent is released (an irony not lost on me in the current climate).  Zombies multiply their numbers, and thereby gain strength in numbers, by biting their victim.  If the victim is lucky/unlucky enough to survive the attack then they themselves will inevitably become a zombie too as the infection spreads through their bloodstream.  Though a single zombie may be of little threat, the strength of the zombie comes from its ability to act as a collective sometimes referred to as the zombie hoarde.

Semiotic interpretation of the zombie isn't a new thing.  Some literature posits the zombie as a reflection of the anxieties of society, the behaviour of various fascist political groups throughout history and even a reference to rampant consumerism.  Neail (N.D.) highlights the implication that zombies could symbolise a "society lacking in spiritual or communal purpose."  But today, I had  conversation with @FraserMsc who suggested that the zombie's need to consume comes from a desire to achieve uniformity... an interesting thought, so I noted it down.  

("Zombie" by JeepersMedia is licensed under CC BY 2.0)

All that being said, every zombie apocalypse movie usually features small pockets of survivors, cut off from each other, constantly on the lookout for the attack of the zombie hoarde, fighting back with all the force they can muster up, all the while trying to make best use of their limited resources purely in order to get through each 24 hour period.  They often represent the last bastions of hope in an otherwise unrecognisable world.  Though, if exposed long enough to such combative conditions, they can become equally as vile and inhuman as the zombies they are fighting.

So, strangely I found myself reflecting on the fact that the past 12 months have kind of felt like living through a zombie apocalypse.  I'm not about to patronise people by trying to suggest that our experiences during the online pivot have all been the same.  We may all be in the same storm, but we are by no means all in the same boat.  Just like the survivors in that zombie movie, we're cut off from each other, and doing the best we can to get through.  

So, I'm going to break with the pattern of my usual writing and, in this much shorter than usual blog posts, I thought I'd just leave you with this question to reflect on:  what are your educational zombies?  How do the survivors of the apocalypse fight back?  And, how do we keep hold of those values that make us inherently human?

You can follow me on twitter @McintoshMclean.

Reference 

Neail, E. (N.D.)  The signification of the zombie [Online].  Available at: http://www.huichawaii.org/assets/neail,-elizabeth---the-signification-of-the-zombie.pdf (Accessed 2nd April 2021).  


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