Apocalypticism has exploded in popularity and, while nuclear war and pandemics have always been a starting point, the concept of the Zombie Apocalypse trumps them all. The appeal and wild popularity of shows like The Walking Dead, movies like World War Z, and the slew of apocalyptic, gloom and doom series and specials on cable television continues to grow by leaps and bounds. But the reasons behind such interest are often subconscious at times and not fully understood.
The Leftist activist and agitator Noam Chomsky was recently asked “why there’s this preoccupation with the apocalypse and with zombies right now in our culture?” I concurred with the first part of his response which was that that he felt the focus on zombies was “a reflection of fear and desperation” by “an unusually frightened country.” But quickly the obsessive liberal impulse to blame America first and foremost for all ills, real and imagined including the public’s obsession with a zombie apocalypse, rose irresistibly to the surface.
He went through the history of fear in popular culture as outlined in the book War Stars by Bruce Franklin. Although the fear is embodied in various forms, he sees a common thread throughout:
“There are a couple of themes that run through it that are pretty striking. For one thing, one major theme in popular literature is that we are about to face destruction from some terrible, awesome enemy. And at the last-minute we are saved by a superhero or a super weapon, or in recent years high school kids going to the hills to chase away the Russians, things like that. That’s one theme that runs through constantly. And there’s a sub-theme. It turns out this enemy, this horrible enemy that’s about to destroy us, is somebody we’re crushing.”
“ I think it’s, much of it is kind of just a recognition, at some level of the psyche, that if you’ve got your boot on somebody’s neck, there’s something wrong. And that the people you’re oppressing may rise up and defend themselves, and then you’re in trouble. And another is strange properties the country has always had of fear of invented dangers. There is a kind of paranoid streak in the culture that’s pretty unusual.”
And that’s about the best the Left can do I guess in trying to fathom the country’s fascination with a Zombie Apocalypse. It’s all just collective, subconscious guilt. Nice try, I suppose, but if that was a “hit or miss” explanation it’s far closer to a miss than a hit.
There is indeed a vast undercurrent of suspicion, unease, paranoia, division, worry, pain, and even trauma right underneath the surface of the national consciousness. I believe it is manifested in the popularity of zombie themed entertainment and the concept of the doomsday scenario in general in popular culture. The feeling that things are rapidly unraveling and coming apart is a constant theme in social media and shared by vast swaths of the population, not to mention visualized in everything from backyard bunkers to Zombie apocalypse decals, Facebook groups, and bar crawls.
Collectively, we have lost our belief in a positive future.
The truth is that the American political system has been dysfunctional for decades and the country seems to have become functionally insane since the attacks on 9-11. The fears and rage unleashed that day has, in turn, unleashed a fast-growing and aggressive slew of government agencies, policies, and powers. Recent revelations have made us aware that the turn-key tyranny, 1984 surveillance state is upon us with every cell call made and every internet email, photo, comment, and social media post recorded and sucked into gargantuan government data bases for no discernible or reasonable reason that the average person can fathom.
Two unpopular wars and the eventual election of the most intellectually bankrupt, corrupt, radical, and left-wing President in American history has only further divided an already deeply divided nation. Not since the Civil War has the nation been as polarized as it is now and the hatred that exists between the Right and the Left is real and palpable as each bitterly blames the others for every economic, societal, cultural, and policy ill that one can imagine.
The once powerful Republic is basically bankrupt and the financial system living only on borrowed time and credit. And a myriad of federal agencies and vast numbers of the citizenry are frantically arming themselves and stocking up on ammunition in a frenzy that shows no sign of abating. The country increasingly has no sense of itself and is flooded with everything from vast hordes of illegal immigrants to bitter cynicism while the traditional pillars and institutions of the State and society are under unceasing attack from all sides. The once proud partners, logic and common sense, lay rotting in the gutter having been slain by our progressive comrades when they were perhaps most needed.
In the end, the citizenry can sense that we are on the wrong path and that something is deeply and fundamentally wrong with the country and the direction is it headed. They may not understand why and may even vote for certain political parties and politicians that are leading them down the wrong path. But they understand it is there and that it is real.
As the vastly powerful American Empire begins to totter its societal values decay and its internal cohesiveness unravels. The New Rome begins to mimic the Old. And when the greatest empire of the ancient world did fall it ushered in an era of darkness that lasted nearly a thousand years. Perhaps such unconscious fears and realizations by the populace of what their society, culture, and nation could possibly undergo (economic collapse, dirty bombs, bloody revolution, EMP induced dark age etc.) is mirrored in the depictions of a final, gory, and horrible apocalypse on-screen.
If there’s a single theme at the heart of The Walking Dead and similar shows, it is the fragility of civilization. And as it continues to unravel at breakneck speed, fear of the future manifests itself in interesting ways.
Comments
Unfortunately, this is all true, except for one thing: illegal aliens are NOT "immigrants"! These creeps are criminal invaders!
I got rid of my TV sometime ago. I haven't been to a move sense 1994. There is more time to wasted in entertainment that has nothing to do with reality. The wide open spaces in the Intermountain West is a world that few folks appreciate. I have learned to live off the land, away from the cities that are areas of congrestion and corruption. Hunting and fishing in learning how to prepare the meat and with the use of a cast-iron Dutchoven in make a meal that is priceless. And how to make jerky in which to use as a reserve. Being able to survive way from the world of plastic and processed foods is a challange: worth acheiving. For 99% of the urban dwellers are at the mercy of the chaos that is to come when a crisis occurs: due to lack of water, food and shelter in understanding on how to be selfsufficent. The world situation is going from bad to critical with the debt that can never be paid. With idiots in government setting the American people for a down fall of which most will not survive. America shall reap what has been sowed, In letting the Progressives of the so called intelligentsia control of the education of the nation will be without common sense: the means to live in a state of anarchy that will evolve into an Autocratic Oligarchy.
Well...I for one do NOT watch any of the movie,TV crap that is on including the zombie BS....altho it took many zombies to elect this current commie admin to office the 1st time..the 2nd they had the fraud perfected......I do not fear the future other than having my family spread across this once great nation...I feel I need my kids close, at home....God is on my side and guides my every move!!!!
RFB people will go to sleep one night and wake up the next morning broke as a convict. Most will not have a weeks groceries.
Observing the twin themes of vampires and zombies developing and noting the fascination with them by the American public, particularly the young, commands our attention. Whereas we have always had Literature and now movies about mankind fighting monsters of various kinds, good versus evil, hero versus villain, the destroyer versus the creator, there is great moral benefit to exploring the theme of those who used to be like us but are now very different. The closer the resemblance to the original being, the harder it is to see them as the enemy they are.
The metaphorical benefit to the creation of films which focus on the theme of an alien race turning people into their kind is intensely interesting and provocative because it is so conflicting and disquieting.
When people change into something resembling their former selves, yet are now very hostile and dangerous to their fellows, there is confusion about whether an approaching being is really someone like themselves or is in fact the alien. The anxiety of not knowing creates the conflict because a man feels the responsibility to identify the being as friend of foe before taking action. That uncertainty necessitates allowing proximity; the being must be allowed to come increasingly closer so that their identity can be validated, eventually much too close for security.
As the enemy comes close enough to identify, there is further horror when one recognizes one’s co-worker, neighbor, or family member. The double horror of knowing the friend has been changed into the enemy and knowing that one must kill it or be killed by it often leads one into making the wrong choice. The love versus hate matrix causes a paralysis of confusion often nullifying the survival instinct.
The twin themes of vampires feeding on human blood and zombies feeding on human flesh are a perfect metaphor for big government.
Since citizens produce something the government wants, wealth in the form of capital, they find ways to tax them. Furthermore, they hire increasing numbers of employees which produce nothing. They do so because in a majority rule, governmental employees will vote to support the government they are now a part of. Often the friends and family are completely unaware of their changed lives having become the animated dead. They lose any moral sense and become unaware they must continually feed on the still living flesh and blood of their friends and family, the private citizens, and need them as hosts to survive. The perpetual seduction and coopting of citizens into the fraternity of government supporting government means there are an ever decreasing population of the citizens needed to be healthy and supply blood, flesh, and capital for the drones.
As more and more are turned into government drones, they begin to starve; their source of fuel, the citizenry has become like them and can’t be used as food. The end is a starving populace both living humans and the undead vampires or zombies.
The cure? In the film, “Daybreakers”, 2009, has a good cast, Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, and Sam Neill, they find a way to turn vampires back into humans. The story ends on a hopeful note as they prove their formula and the ravenous destructive parasites are turned back into humans.
We can turn our friends and neighbors back into citizens, even if they are afraid, even if they are used to their way of life, and cannot even imagine life as a productive human being anymore. We can accomplish this if we return to our Constitutional Republic reduce the cost and size of government, and demand the cultural loyalty of our Corporations to support the sovereign citizen, our sovereign state and our sovereign nation of the United States of America.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daybreakers
For quite a while now, I've had the idea that the prevalence of the zombie in popular culture is a subconscious reaction to the rise of the recipient class. All the elements are there; their exponentially increasing numbers, their inability to survive without exploiting healthy, productive people, the fact that the government is powerless to deal with them, if not actually complicit in their creation, and finally, the fact that it comes down to the citizens themselves do deal with the problem, in any way they can.
The real mindless Zombies who are eating our flesh are the progressive America-haters who hold out the one hand for their government cheese while the other hand pulls the voting lever for Obama and his ilk. We could throw Boehner and McConnell into that group as well.
What the tax-payers of this political rat infested country of ours needs is a new leader someone you can trust an honest man that would his every being and thoughts into helping his fellow American family, I give anything in the world if I could be placed in the position to take on this task.
Fear merchants doing what they do best. No, not the article's author, the merchants of chaos who have the films made, who create the wars, financial collapses, chemical weapons, etc. You know, Rockefeller, Rothschild, and their mouthpieces, Kissinger, Turner, Bush, Clinton, Obama, etc. They fear us, i.e. you inflow what you outflow. Need a little more reason folks...Semper Fi Nam 66-67
sorry mean we WILL survive if we join and fight, molon labe
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