For my first free write blog post, I would like to talk about the prevalence of zombies in modern technological culture. To do this, I intend to first examine the history of zombies and their rise in popularity in various electric media. After this, I will discuss the immense popularity that zombies have been enjoying across various media.
The premise behind zombies seems to have originated in African, and later Haitian, Vodou religions. In the these tradition, it was believed that a sorcerer could bring a dead person back to life to do their bidding. Fortunately, it was believed that giving salt to one of these living dead people would cause them to return to the grave.
Western folk researchers were the first to introduce the idea of zombies to the outside world. Some of the initial interest in this idea was due to the fact that some scientists thought it was medically relevant. If, after all, the claims of the Vodou sorcerers were to be found true, it would be a significant discovery. Sadly, the alleged zombies that were presented to the scientists appeared to be normal people in drugged state.
It wasn't long after the discovery of this idea that zombies began to appear in their first medium: books. These initial zombie books date back to the early 20th century. In 1932, the zombie phenomenon spread to the film industry with the release of White Zombie. However, the sub-genre of zombie horror did not become popular until George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead in 1968. The 1960's also contained a band whose name referenced zombies: The Zombies. It was not until the 1980's that a few zombie-centric video games began to appear.
With this history, it is easy to see why zombies have such an influence on modern technological culture. Zombies are now in a wide range of movies and video games. However, our conception of the zombie has changed over time. Originally, they were seen as magical beings. Then, as reflected in Romero's Night of the Living Dead they became slightly more scientific. The modern zombie is perhaps even more scientific, and usually the result of some sort of disease. Due to the fact that they are not really dead, their agility is much greater than that of the Romero zombie archetype. This increased speed is important for the modern movie and game consumers. In both instances, the hasty zombies create more intense scenarios. The fact that zombies have generally become more quick seems like a logical enough progression. In the case of games, they have become much more advanced. While slow zombies may have been acceptable in the 8-bit days, they simply do not add the excitement needed to appease the typical game consumer. The same could be said of modern film views. They do not want to see brave survivors be slowly overwhelmed due to lack of supplies. They would much rather see chase scenes and random explosions.
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