George Romero’s 1968 horror movie, "Night of the Living Dead," introduced the American imagination to a new kind of undead. These were not the sophisticated blood-drinkers of Dracula and his vampiric kin. No, rather than seduce, haunt, or possess, these mindless hordes of brain-eaters slowly shambled forward in an unstoppable wave of inevitable doom.
Zombies have only gotten more common in the past 50 years of storytelling, and they're not just scary because of the blood and violence. Their presence is part of the zeitgeist, the “spirit of the age,” and their popularity wouldn’t be so wide-spread if they didn’t represent a variety of political and psychological fears that we have as a modern society.
1. Death.
This one is pretty straight-forward. Rather than charging at us with weapons and spoken threats, zombies slowly shamble, reaching out with mangled fingers and empty eyes. They refuse to stay in the graves we dig for them, and their continued presence reminds us of our inevitable deaths. And like death, we can only run away from their jaws for so long.
2. Science.
In some ways, zombies are similar to another undead character: Frankenstein’s monster. In "28 Days Later" and "I Am Legend," scientists were trying to fix a problem and accidentally created the zombie mutation. With these and other “science” zombies, they represent our fears about how scientific advancement changes our lives and risks creating total disaster if something were to go wrong.
3. Disease.
Most zombies pass their undead condition like an infection or virus by biting or scratching. Political commentary sometimes comes into these stories as governments respond to the zombie hordes like a disease outbreak, like in Max Brooks’ novel "World War Z."
4. Overpopulation.
Eat eat eat! There are so many mouths to feed, and their numbers just keep growing! Not only can zombies represent the many hungry people in the world and the discomfort we privileged first-worlders can feel about the issue, but they also remind us of just how many people are buried underground or living down the street.
5. Political disagreement.
You might have heard a political speaker (or at least an opinionated friend) refer to people on the other side of the political fence as “zombies.” We often have trouble understanding why someone else would disagree with us politically. And with political riots being a very real threat around certain issues, painting the other side as mindless, violent sheeple can be a tempting way to write them off and resist understanding where they’re coming from.
6. Consumerism.
In Romero’s "Dawn of the Dead," some surviving characters visit a mall to look for supplies, only to find that zombies already fill the place. One of the characters worries that the zombies somehow know that people will be attracted to the mall, but their friend says, “They're after the place. They don't know why; they just remember. Remember that they want to be in here.” Zombies, wanting to eat and consume everything that’s put in front of them, in some ways represent the rampant mindless consumerism of buying and consuming every new popular product that is released.
7. Nostalgia.
Finally, College of Lake County Sociology Professor John Tenuto has said that zombies can represent a sort of “twisted nostalgia,” the feeling you get when you look back fondly on something, but it doesn’t live up to your happy memories when you revisit it. That movie or book you loved as a kid hasn’t changed at all, but you feel like it’s become corrupted into something completely different from what you used to love, and you regret ever wanting it to come back from the grave. Many zombie stories bring this up directly when a family member gets turned into a zombie, and the characters have to decide whether they’re willing to admit that the now-zombie is different from the person they once loved.
