|
|
|
|
Zombies: The New Vampire?
I’m going to share some news with you that’s might be very saddening, perhaps even shocking. Just be prepared, because it can be a little jarring and I don’t want to be responsible for you spilling your Kool-Aid all over your keyboard. In my recent cultural studies, i.e. walking around the mall, I’ve come to the inescapable conclusion that the zombie has become dangerously overexposed and in consequence is coming very close to being lame. I’ll give you a moment to catch your breath. Are you okay now? Can I continue? Okay then. Personally, I’ve never thought such a thing was possible, but after seeing the enormous amount of zombie themed games (both the paper and video variety), books, movies, comic books, etc. released in the last few years the zombie has fully asserted itself as the dominate monster in popular culture. Jesus, the other day I saw a zombie signing autographs at American Eagle. There was a huge line of kids that didn’t even have fake tattoos or the emo forward hair sweep, instead the boys had the my hair is way too long but I'm not getting it cut thing and the girls had the tiny tiny useless sweaters. These were cool kids, folks. Cool kids paying fan service to a zombie. I’m afraid that the once favored monster of nerds is becoming too big for its own torn and dirty britches. It used to be that only the truly hardcore thought zombies were awesome. You could crack a joke about eating brains and only the nerdiest of your friends would laugh. Now it seems like anyone is “in” on the whole zombie scene. Frat boys joke about zombies like they do about Chuck Norris and raping strippers. Even worse, there used to be a time when only the most elite had a zombie emergency escape plan. Now, everyone from the teller at your bank to your Chinese waiter that just fucked up your order is at least prepared for a level 2 attack. With so many people having so many escape plans, it’s going to be harder to secure supplies for yourself, because we all know that surviving zombie hordes is a very selfish business. Any collaborative effort with a group bigger than three is asking for trouble. As my grandpappy always said, “The bigger the group fighten' zombies, the higher the chance that one of them, most likely a Jew, will zombify and kill the rest.” I’ve lived my whole life by those words, well except the part about Jews. What happens when I go to Wal-Mart and the shelves are clean of life saving shotguns and delicious Hostess fruit pies? Am I to trust that someone else will blow away the hideous undead thing in my path and toss me a fruit pie like Batman in some comic book from the seventies? I think not. That’s not good enough for America, that's not even good enough for Mexico.
It struck me that the fate that is in store for the zombie is the exact same thing that happened to the vampire. When I was a kid the vampire was a noble monster, until they were suddenly everywhere and even more blatantly homoerotic thanks to Anne Rice. This coincided with the rise of those people too fat and ugly for D&D starting to live action role-play as vampires as means of pretending their lives have meaning. That’s like David Spade pretending to be a football player; it does nothing for the image of football players or pansies. Let’s not forget the damage films like Blade, starring the ghost of Wesley Snipes' career, did for the vampire image. How can the average citizen be afraid of one vampire when they’ve seen Blade kill fifty or sixty in under five minutes? They can’t be that be that threatening if they can kill Kris Kristofferson on-screen and have him reappear in the next film without too much hassle. If the zombie is over exposed and the vampire is well past done, we are left with the question of what’s the next big monster? What else hasn’t been overdone? Werewolves? Forget it. They’re certainly scary, but they don’t have the staying power. One silver bullet and a werewolf is done. You might find yourself drawn to mummies. They are scary right? In theory they are, but the chances of encountering a mummy outside of a museum in the modern age is practically zilch. So unless you’re the 1% of the population who’s a curator to a British museum and you decide to steal some stupid jewel from a mummy, then you’re safe as a Sunday ham in a Jew’s house (sorry, its my upbringing). The mummy lost a lot of its fright factor when Brendan Fraser started fighting them on the big screen. If Encino Man can defeat a mummy, who can’t? Besides, most mummies have blown their curse loads already or have been turned into a fine powder that was snorted in the 1800s by males in the British Royal family as the only means they could achieve a weak erection. Until we start encountering space mummies, the mummy threat is just about over. In the meantime we are left with the shambling, rotting living corpse of what used to be the coolest monster of them all. The only thing that could save the zombie at this point is to let them lay fallow for awhile. Keep a couple in some barrels at a military storage facility and let’s all forget about them. Then someday when some young recruit who’s too dumb to work at Burger King accidentally opens one of the barrels, the zombie will be reborn into something horrible, something we can all collectively poop our pants at the sight of. God, we could only be so lucky. - Paul - 06/21/06 |
|
