quotations about zombies
Many of the earliest zombies to appear in comics follow this lead, especially those that use misrepresentations of Vodou practices as the cause of the zombification and show the zombies as the sympathetic victims of nefarious foes. Even though these early zombies are difficult to classify -- they were "caught between the mildly influential voodoo slave shufflers of the '30s and the wildly redefining insatiable Romero gut-munchers of the late 60s," after all -- they share the status of walking dead, be they avenging revenants of feckless slaves.
KYLE WILLIAM BISHOP
How Zombies Conquered Popular Culture: The Multifarious Walking Dead in the 21st Century
One could dismiss the zombie trend as merely feeding a mass public that craves the strange and bizarre. Such an explanation would be only skin-deep. Popular culture often provides a window into the subliminal or unstated fears of citizens, and zombies are no exception. Some cultural commentators argue that the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks are a primary cause for renewed interest in the living dead, and the numbers appear to back up this assertion.
DANIEL W. DREZNER
Theories of International Politics and Zombies
I used to lie in bed in my flat and imagine what would happen if there was a zombie attack.
SIMON PEGG
interview, "The Zombies Live", TAlkTAlk
For all our zombie apocalypse anxiety in popular culture ... there's a zombie for literally every occasion. All that's left to be seen is what actually happens when the zombie virus takes over the world.
KAT GEORGE
"100 Years Of Zombie Evolution Is Perhaps The Grossest Thing You'll Feast Your Eyes On Today", Bustle
Yeah, okay. You're right. I was having dinner with Zombie Carl the other night. You know, steak, rare, and a bottle of vintage type A. He told me all his secrets, but too bad for you I promised him I wouldn't tell. In exchange I asked him to gather his best undead buddies and stalk me through my friend's yard. And oh, yeah, it was totally fine if they wanted to use me as an all-night-dinner buffet, because having organs is SO last year.
GENA SHOWALTER
Alice in Zombieland
Modern zombies are now more than just fictional monsters that allow people to catharically deal with the horrors of the post-9/11 era; they are "meaning machines" that have become the "allegory of the moment," embraced not only by the entertainment industry but also by academic and professional disciplines beyond film and cultural studies as a valid subject of investigation and critical study.
KYLE WILLIAM BISHOP
How Zombies Conquered Popular Culture: The Multifarious Walking Dead in the 21st Century
Neither angels nor cyborg-vampires but basely material, [zombies] embody not joyous states to come, but states, beliefs and habits that recur with possibility of supercession, shadowy figures of a permanent and inescapable contemporaneity unable to achieve distance from itself and incapable of moving on.
FRED BOTTING
"Post-millennial monsters: monstrosity-no-more", The Gothic World
It's their strangeness. They are so slow and inept, but they don't appear to have any motive or moral rage. They are eerie and hungry.
SIMON PEGG
interview, "The Zombies Live", TAlkTAlk
As if zombies needed to be any more disturbing, The Walking Dead has decided to give them armor.
CAITLIN BUSCH
"Here's What's Up With That Crazy New Walker in The Walking Dead", Inverse, February 8, 2017
Okay, well zombies are death porn: the culture is exhausted with erotic imagery, so it turns to thanatos instead. Abortion? Zombies are our collective nightmare of all of the children that have been murdered coming back to life and devouring the mothers that devoured them. Consumerism? Zombies are exactly like people on Black Friday soullessly fighting over children's toys -- they even "consume" brains and there was that one zombie movie that was even set in a mall. Rugged individualism? Well, the entire zombie genre is really a way of justifying the feeling that one is in a survivalist struggle against innumerable others who aren't really human.
MELINDA SELMYS
"It's Lent, American Civilization is Crumbling, Let's Talk About Zombies", Patheos, March 9, 2017
Zombies are the physical enactment of death, a constant reminder of a violent end that awaits all.
JEROME DE GROOT
Remaking History: The Past in Contemporary Historical Fictions
There's something just as unsettling [about] the subtle undead as there is about dramatically rotting flesh.
KAT GEORGE
"100 Years Of Zombie Evolution Is Perhaps The Grossest Thing You'll Feast Your Eyes On Today", Bustle