Zombie
- For other uses see Zombie (disambiguation)
A zombie is a kind of undead, or figuratively, a very apathetic person.
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Zombies in Voodoo
According to the tenets of Voodoo, a dead person can be revived by a houngan or mambo. After resurrection, it has no will of its own, but remains under the control of the person who performed the ritual. Such resurrected dead are "zombies".
In 1937, while researching folklore in Haiti, Zora Neale Hurston encountered the case of Felicia Felix-Mentor, who had died and been buried in 1907 at the age of 29. Villagers believed they saw her wandering the streets in a daze thirty years later[1] , but this was subsequently found to be false.[2]
Hurston pursued rumors that persons were given powerful drugs, but was unable to locate anyone willing to offer much information. She wrote "What is more, if science ever gets to the bottom of Voodoo in Haiti and Africa, it will be found that some important medical secrets, still unknown to medical science, give it its power, rather than gestures of ceremony."[3]
Several decades later, Wade Davis, a Canadian ethnobotanist, was the main person to present a pharmacological case for zombies in two books – The Serpent and the Rainbow (1985) and Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie (1988). Davis travelled to Haiti in 1982 and as a result of his investigations claimed that zombies could be made by the ingestion of two special powders. The first, coupe poudre, induced a 'death-like' state, the key ingredient of which was the pufferfish (Tetraodontiformes) toxin tetrodotoxin (TTX). The second powder of dissociative hallucinogens held the person in a will-less zombie state. Clairvius Narcisse was alleged to have succumed to this practice. There was considerable skepticism to Davis's claims; he was widely accused of fraud and opinions remain divided as to the veracity of his work.
Others claim zombies are sufferers of various psychiatric disorders such as catatonic schizophrenia whose symptoms are misinterpreted as a return from the dead.
Zombies in fiction
Zombies are regularly encountered in horror- and fantasy-themed fiction, films, video games and role-playing games. They are typically depicted as mindless, shambling, decaying corpses with a hunger for human flesh, most famously in Night of the Living Dead. Often, the zombies will have supernatural strength and constitution, and sometimes (more often in comedy zombie films) will be able to run, or even still possess the ability to hold conversation. Some films (such as 28 Days Later) feature living but otherwise zombie-like humans, usually as the result of disease.
In fiction zombies can generally be disabled by either dismemberment or the destruction of the brain and/or upper spinal column. In a few cases the entire body of the zombie must be destroyed as individual limbs or even fingers continue to move after being severed from the body (The Evil Dead, Return of the Living Dead, The Curse of the Black Pearl).
The Resident Evil series of video games makes particular use of zombies.
Other causes of zombies in fiction include radiation acting on the brains of the dead, evil magic or Vodun, extraterrestrials, the use of drugs, viral infection (see T-Virus, Solanum), telepathic control or the substitution of the brain for some sinister artifact.
Many works of fiction feature zombies, who spread their affliction from one to another, in a viral fashion. More often than not, the condition is spread through means of a bite, or scratch, and the victim will most likely die and mutate soon after. In others, however, the condition is only acquired after death.
The character of Reginald Shoe in Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, became a zombie after being shot by refusing to stay dead. He later formed a support group for other undead, claiming they were merely "differently alive".
Zombies in Film
Although the depiction of zombies in film has recently become varied, they were originally presented in White Zombie (Victor Halperin, 1932) as mindless, unthinking henchmen under the spell of an evil magician/overlord. This depiction continued through the 1930's until they started to move around ambiguously more of their own accord, as in I Walked with a Zombie (Jaques Torneur 1943).
In 1968, George Romero's Night of the Living Dead premiered, primarily in downmarket, urban theaters. Critics reacted negatively to the depiction of cannibalism, gore, and pessimism in the movies, since the crowds who went were predominantly children left by their parents for the matinee show and black audiences. Cannibalism in horror was nothing new at the time, but the movie cannonized a few aspects of zombies.
First, many movies followed Night in having a bullet to the head as the way to kill a zombie. Second, zombiism is contagious and not just the result of magic performed on a dead (or living) body. In Night, the explanation on TV is that radiation from a satellite returning to earth may be causing the return of the dead, but Romero only added this explanation to please the studio, and considers their origin unimportant. The movie took a while to gain a following, and Romero's sequel in 1978, Dawn of the Dead, released internationally.
Following its fame, Lucio Fulci released Zombi II (Dawn was relased under the name Zombi in Italy and internationally). Back in America, Dan O'Bannon eventually directed Return of the Living Dead, in 1985. He had worked with Romero on Night, and both had wanted to continue making zombie movies. Since then, zombies have become a stereotypical movie monster, and have spread to video games, where they are a mainstay monster. These movies have spawned parodies, with the recent film Shaun of the Dead.
Resident Evil (Paul Anderson, 2002) represents the transition back from 'video game zombies' to the movies. With a soundtrack by Marilyn Manson, the movie typifies much of what has happened in the film genre's treatment of zombies, entertaining these recurring possibilities:
- A character has been bitten and contemplates suicide, at the risk of turning into 'one of them'
- An elite team of agents runs out of ammo trying to stop all the zombies
- Zombies are scored with synth music, and occassionally rock.
- A familier character appears later in the movie as a zombie and attacks the protagonists instead of rejoining them.
- The gist of the film is apocalyptic
- Zombies are mindless and always ready to attack, no matter the condition of their bodies
Resident Evil 2 replays all these themes, speeding through all genre conventions and arriving at a very different sci-fi theme, effectively abandoning zombies, or dealing with them only as a form of superhuman mutation of the body.
Zombies in Video Games
- Resident Evil Series – Features typical flesh-eating zombies (and stranger creatures) created by synthetic means, i.e. using mutagenic viruses created by an evil corporation.
- House of the Dead, and sequels – Zombie blasting arcade games once famed for their extremely violent portrayal of anti-zombie combat.
- Typing of the Dead – A spin-off/port of House of the Dead that tries to serve as a typing trainer.
- Doom, and sequels – The player combats gun-weilding, satanic zombies (among other demons) on Mars.
- Half-Life and Half-Life 2 – Zombies are created via alien creatures called headcrabs, which take over the victim's nervous system. Half-Life 2 features several zombie variants, including a fast running one and a toxic one.
- Halo series – The parasitic flood bear a strong resemblences to most popular conceptions of zombies, including rising from corpses and mindlessly warring against the living.
Zombies in philosophy
A "philosophical zombie" is a hypothetical person who only appears to think and feel (technically, who doesn't have qualia), as opposed to a "real" person who actually does think and feel. A philosophical zombie cannot be told apart from a real person in any way.
Zombies in history
In the Middle Ages, the idea that souls of dead return to earth and haunt the living was commonly believed. These revenants (someone who has returned from the dead) are well documented by contemporary writers of the time.
See also
External links
- The Ultimate Zombie Book List – Huge listing of zombie novels, anthologies, collections, comic books, and more.
- The Zombie Survival Guide – The Undead: Myths and Realities
- Triple J's Dr Karl explains the pharmacological way to make a zombie
Categories: Death | Legendary creatures | Slavery | Vodun