Zombies

I am deathly, irrationally afraid of zombies.

Oh, I know they are not real, etc. But I saw the Dawn of the Dead remake when it came out in 2004 and I still have nightmares.

But alas for me, I am friends with (and have dated) people who just adore zombies. So I've read the synopsis of every zombie movie I could find on Wikipedia and as such feel I'm pretty hip with the zombie culture. To further enhance my zombie street cred, I have a zombie shirt my sister gave me -- and I do in fact wear it.

So, while reading the chapter on the Plague in Tuchman's Distant Mirror, I was struck but just how much it sounded like a zombie movie. I learned about the Plague a long time ago, but Tuchman's writing is especially -- emotive? Provocative? Evocative? It was the first time I could really imagine the horror, the terror of living through that first outbreak.

It reminded me of Dawn of the Dead, and how I felt while watching it and immediately afterward. That movie, this chapter. . .both grip my imagination, both are so real. Both haunts me, it all haunts me.

So, what is going on? What are the connections?

Do zombies serve as a modern dans macabre? I mean, it's tempting to say zombies are a response to AIDS or something, but the first zombie movies date to the 1930s. But of course, those movies followed a time of intense warfare, and the flu epidemic of 1917.

Maybe zombies are part of some sort of "race memory" (Tuchman uses that term, I don't know if people use it anymore) -- the same thing that compels cultures all around the world to tell stories about dragons. Etc.

I wish I was less scared of zombies so I could write a paper about this