Zombie (nonfiction)
A zombie (Haitian French: zombi; Haitian Creole: zonbi; Kikongo: zumbi) is a mythological undead corporeal revenant created through the reanimation of a corpse. In modern popular culture, zombies are most commonly found in horror genre works. The term comes from Haitian folklore, in which a zombie is a dead body reanimated through various methods, most commonly magical practices in religions like Vodou. Modern media depictions of the reanimation of the dead often do not involve magic but rather science fictional methods such as fungi, radiation, gases, diseases, plants, bacteria, viruses, etc.[1][2]
The English word "zombie" was first recorded in 1819 in a history of Brazil by the poet Robert Southey, in the form of "zombi".[3] Dictionaries trace the word's origin to African languages, relating to words connected to gods, ghosts and souls. One of the first books to expose Western culture to the concept of the voodoo zombie was W. B. Seabrook's The Magic Island (1929), the account of a narrator who encounters voodoo cults in Haiti and their resurrected thralls.
A new version of the zombie, distinct from that described in Haitian folklore, emerged in popular culture during the latter half of the 20th century. This interpretation of the zombie, as an undead person that attacks and eats the flesh of living people, is drawn largely from George A. Romero's film Night of the Living Dead (1968),[1] which was partly inspired by Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend (1954).[4][5] The word zombie is not used in Night of the Living Dead, but was applied later by fans.[6] Following the release of such zombie films as Dawn of the Dead (1978) and The Return of the Living Dead (1985)—the latter of which introduced the concept of zombies that eat brains—as well as Michael Jackson's music video Thriller (1983), the genre waned for some years.
The mid-1990s saw the introduction of Resident Evil and The House of the Dead, two break-out successes of video games featuring zombie enemies which would later go on to become highly influential and well-known. These games were initially followed by a wave of low-budget Asian zombie films such as the zombie comedy Bio Zombie (1998) and action film Versus (2000), and then a new wave of popular Western zombie films in the early 2000s, the Resident Evil and House of the Dead films, the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake, and the British zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead (2004). The "zombie apocalypse" concept, in which the civilized world is brought low by a global zombie infestation, has since become a staple of modern zombie media, seen in such media as The Walking Dead franchise.
The late 2000s and 2010s saw the humanization and romanticization of the zombie archetype, with the zombies increasingly portrayed as friends and love interests for humans. Notable examples of the latter include movies Warm Bodies and Zombies, novels American Gods by Neil Gaiman, Generation Dead by Daniel Waters, and Bone Song by John Meaney, animated movie Corpse Bride, TV series iZombie and Santa Clarita Diet, manga series Sankarea: Undying Love, and the light novel Is This a Zombie? In this context, zombies are often seen as stand-ins for discriminated groups struggling for equality, and the human–zombie romantic relationship is interpreted as a metaphor for sexual liberation and taboo breaking (given that zombies are subject to wild desires and free from social conventions).[7][8][9][10]
Etymology
In Haitian folklore, a zombie (Haitian French: zombi, Haitian Creole: zonbi) is an animated corpse raised by magical means, such as witchcraft.[11]
The English word "zombie" is first recorded in 1819, in a history of Brazil by the poet Robert Southey, in the form of "zombi", actually referring to the Afro-Brazilian rebel leader named Zumbi and the etymology of his name in "nzambi".[3] The Oxford English Dictionary gives the origin of the word as Central African and compares it to the Kongo words "nzambi" (god) and "zumbi" (fetish).[12][13] A Kimbundu-to-Portuguese dictionary from 1903 defines the related word nzumbi as soul,[14] while a later Kimbundu–Portuguese dictionary defines it as being a "spirit that is supposed to wander the earth to torment the living".[15]
How the creatures in contemporary zombie films came to be called "zombies" is not fully clear. The film Night of the Living Dead (1968) made no spoken reference to its undead antagonists as "zombies", describing them instead as "ghouls" (though ghouls, which derive from Arabic folklore, are demons, not undead). Although George A. Romero used the term "ghoul" in his original scripts, in later interviews he used the term "zombie". The word "zombie" is used exclusively by Romero in his script for his sequel Dawn of the Dead (1978),[16] including once in dialog. According to Romero, film critics were influential in associating the term "zombie" to his creatures, and especially the French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma. He eventually accepted this linkage, even though he remained convinced at the time that "zombies" corresponded to the undead slaves of Haitian voodoo as depicted in White Zombie with Bela Lugosi.[17]
Commentary
How do zombies metabolize energy? And how do they move?
We can rule out silly tropes like "eating brains" and "shambling".
My guess is radiation and slime molds. Radiation for food, slime plasm for locomotion.
- Post @ Twitter (1 November 2024)
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External links
- Zombie @ Wikipedia
- [] @ YouTube
- Zombie @ Wikipedia
- STILL - zombie horror short | Dark Matters Original @ YouTube
- Train to Busan @ YouTube
Social media
- [ Post] @ Twitter (17 January 2025)