The image above is from George Romero's film Night of the Living Dead (1968), one of the very first zombie movies ever made. Admittedly, the zombie has never been one of my favorite monsters to think about or study. They've only emerged to wander lethargically through my imagination quite recently, and due entirely to my sons' discovery of a certain computer game.
They seemed so taken with the muttering, shuffling, vacant-eyed creatures that I started to wonder what all the fuss was about. Zombies have certainly become famous, from World War Z to The Walking Dead to Zombie Apocalypse games and speculations. But what exactly is a "zombie" and where does the figure come from?
At root, a zombie is a reanimated corpse. In world mythology, the Egyptian god Osiris, killed by his brother Set and revived by his wife Isis, is an ancient example of a figure coming back from the dead. He is never quite the same, though, and is only able to live in the underworld, where he serves as its ruler.
In Celtic Irish myth, there is a creature called a marbh bheo, which is a human come back to life, but only for a select period of time, such as samhain (what we call "Halloween," the New Year's Eve of the Celtic calendar). The marbh bheo could eat, drink, dance, and even exact revenge for grievances experienced during life. But they could not speak, lest they divulge the secrets of what lies beyond death.
The region most associated with the Zombie myth, though, is the Caribbean, particularly Haiti and the greatly misunderstood religion of Vodun (sometimes called "Voodoo"). Put briefly, Vodun arose from the mix of West African traditions, Catholicism, and the brutality of the slave experience in the Caribbean. Vibrant rituals and personal connections to figures in a wide pantheon of gods (called loa) characterize Vodun. (As an aside, I have always found Baron Samedi to be one of the more intriguing loas. Perhaps the picture below will give some indication as to why.)
He has some interesting similarities to the Hindu god Shiva, and perhaps one day I will blog about those comparisons.
Anyways, amid the complexities of Vodun, legends grew of how bokor (priest-figures) could use their own powers or draw on the powers of the loa to transform the recently dead (or the still living) into mindless servants. In that way, the slave-master dynamic is acted out once more, but to the advantage of those historically oppressed. Some thoughtful pieces have been dedicated to sorting out this sad, forgotten part of the zombie myth.
Could there be such a thing as an actual zombie? To answer that question, we must come to terms with the fascinating story of Clairvius Narcisse, potentially a real life "zombie." Clairvius was thought to have died in Haiti in the early 1960s from a mysterious illness. His family buried him and that, supposedly, was that. One day in 1980, however, he wandered into his sister's village, dazed and confused. Over time, his memory returned to him and he recounted being given a strange powder by a bokor. He claimed that his "death" was really just a kind of coma and the bokor and others later exhumed him from the grave and shuffled him between employers as a field laborer for almost two decades. The whole time, Clairvius said, he was given more of the powder, which kept him in a foggy, hazy, and compliant mental state. Only when the powder wore off could he escape.
Could it be true? If so, what might be in the mysterious powder? Wade Davis, a Harvard-trained ethnobotanist, has long argued that the answer lies not in magic or religion, but neuro-toxicology. Davis suggests that the zombie myth, especially as it appears in Haiti, can be explained by a toxin (called "tetrodotoxin") present in certain plants and some fish. When harvested from these sources and administered at a sub-lethal dose, the toxin impairs metabolism and the parts of the brain that govern speech and willpower. Hence, you get a shuffling, mumbling, compliant servant - in other words, a zombie.
Both the story of Clairvius Narcisse and the findings of Wade Davis are controversial. Putting aside the question of whether zombies are "real" or not, we are still left with the question of why they are seemingly everywhere now in popular culture. Whether it's terrifying zombies (like 28 Days Later) or silly zombies (Shaun of the Dead), the figure has certainly evolved, but its prominence appears to be growing. Why?
In the wonderful phrase coined by scholar Judith Halberstam, "Monsters are meaning machines." In other words, monsters are closely connected to the times they represent, expressing the particular thoughts, fears, anxieties, animosities, and so forth of the period in which they appear. A perfect example is Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, which is a tapestry of Victorian England's repressed tumult over issues of class, race, and gender. Similarly, the original Japanese movie Godzilla (1954) is a poignant and visceral treatment of the horrors of atomic warfare. What do zombies embody that make them a meaningful monster for the current cultural moment?
The most persuasive argument I uncovered in the course of researching this blog is that zombies represent total societal and moral breakdown. They are a marauding, speechless, senseless, irrational, random force that threatens to consume you and turn you into one of them. A time of failing economies, environmental devastation, and perpetual war and strife is a moment when the threats to civilization are global and dispersed rather than specific. In that situation, the zombie, a monster that symbolizes the utter breakdown of civilization, would be popular.
That's all for the zombie, for now. Next time, I tackle the third highest vote recipient: religion and music. Until then, take care.
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