Race, Class, and...Zombies?

To be honest, I don’t care much for zombies or vampires. I’ve managed to avoid anything remotely related to Twilight like H1N1. If a conversation turns to the age-old question, “Who’d win in a fight: A zombie, a vampire, or a pirate?” I’ll politely excuse myself.

But, as a wanna-be, pseudo intellectual with a blog at my fingertips, I’ll readily admit that pop culture does not exist in a vacuum. Zombies, vampires, jackalopes, chupacabras—their stories influence the way we view the world, and also reflect the state of our collective consciousness.

In an op-ed contribution to the New York Times entitled “Why Vampires Never Die,” Guillermo del Toro writes, “Monsters, like angels, are invoked by our individual and collective needs.” According to del Toro, vampires represent our collective longing for youth and limitless possibility—a sort of primal lust. But vampires, like all mythical creatures, are slippery and malleable. Today, he writes, we are bombarded by information and daily leaps of scientific innovation. Yet despite this, or perhaps because of this, we are especially vulnerable to our fears, nightmares, the unseen.

He writes: “The current vampire pandemic serves to remind us that we have no true jurisdiction over our bodies, our climate or our very souls. Monsters will always provide the possibility of mystery in our mundane “reality show” lives, hinting at a larger spiritual world; for if there are demons in our midst, there surely must be angels lurking nearby as well.”

So, what about zombies? It seems that that zombies and vampires are always engaged in a vicious turf battle for monster stardom. Zombies aren’t as sexy as vampires. They’re smelly, rotting, lumbering beasts. Munching on brains simply isn’t as sensual as sucking blood from a tender neck.

But according to a Time magazine article from earlier this year, zombies are making a comeback. Vampires may have stolen the stage, but zombies are slated for a host of upcoming books, feature films and video games. As Lev Grossman tells us, zombies may not be as classy as vampires, but on some level they resonate with us. From social networking (old acquaintances resurrected through Facebook) to environmental concerns (zombies are recycled monsters), Grossman argues that zombies are the monsters of today’s day and age.

But perhaps most important, he writes, George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (perhaps the foundational zombie flick) was designed as a commentary on the Vietnam War. See the connection? **coughcoughAfghanistancoughcoughIraq ** ahem…

When you stop and think about it, zombies in pop culture have almost always tapped in to our concerns about the world around us. Over the summer, a friend and I decided that it was time for us to close the gaps in our knowledge of classic zombie movies. We started with Romero’s 1978 Dawn of the Dead…a movie that I now know could serve as a primer on late ‘70s anxieties over issues of race and class.

Remember the controversy surrounding the release of Resident Evil 5 last year? Capcom’s game was bombarded by criticism because the storyline had a white protagonist killing black zombies in an African village. Whoops.

But, Dawn of the Dead beat Resident Evil to the uncomfortable zombie race punch. Romero’s films have often been described as “frustrating”—what is he trying to say, exactly?

DOTD opens with a SWAT raid on an urban housing project. Depending on what you focus on, Romero’s politics are wildly different. Is the opening sequence a glimpse of racist white cops leaving poor blacks to die in the ghetto? Or are we seeing a team of white cops killing violent, bloodthirsty black zombies? We could be watching a commentary on race relations, police corruption, or urban decay.

DOTD quickly transitions into a Marxist commentary on class and consumerism. Our protagonists find shelter in an abandoned shopping mall, where they barricade themselves from a hoard of shop-happy zombies. The hilarious scenes of greenfaced zombies staggering through the shopping center, ogling pearl necklaces, isn’t all that far removed from what you might see over at Providence Place Mall. When everything else (namely, the superego and the ego) is stripped away, Romero seems to be telling us, all that remains is the id—and it REALLY wants to go shopping. When our outer layers of makeup, clothing, and polite behavior are peeled back, we’re nothing more than zombies ourselves…but instead of brains, we’re driven by a underlying desire for commodities and conspicuous consumption.

Hot damn, George Romero.

So I ask you, dear readers: What’s the best recession-era monster for us? Vampires—who appeal to us with escapist fantasies of castles, old money, satin, and sex, or zombies—who connect with our yearnings to go out and pursue our basest, most greedy nneds despite tight financial times?