Recent interactions on X revived the evergreen debate over which genre Star Trek belongs in.
Writer Isaac Young sparked the discussion with this incisive thread.
But it was user Brainwright who introduced a related topic that bears on today’s meditation:
Related: Star Trek—The Motion Picture
Miles of page inches have been spent pondering why zombie horror rose to dominate pop culture in the late 90s and early aughts. Film critics have yet to devise a satisfying answer, which suggests that the real reason involves facts we’re not allowed to discuss.
The usual suspect is Gen Y nostalgia. But that answer is a little too obvious because Ys are nostalgic for childhood entertainment product, and the zombie craze peaked in their college years. Sure, zombie horror produced some cult hits in the 80s, and the subgenre’s roots go all the way back to the 30s, but George Romero’s films didn’t achieve anywhere near the cultural penetration of 28 Days Later or The Walking Dead.
So if Gen Y popcultism can’t explain the aughts zombie fad, what can?
One clue lies in zombie horror’s early film origins. Because Hollywood didn’t originally portray of zombies as rotting cannibals. Instead, they were depicted as living victims enthralled by black magic. The great granddaddy of zombie films, White Zombie, features a young American woman who ends up zombified when a plantation owner tries to steal her from her husband with a potion he got from a white slaver.
Zombies only gained fame as shambling corpses when Night of the Living Dead premiered in 1968. And no, it’s not a coincidence that Congress had passed the Hart-Celler Immigration Act just three years prior.
Now consider that Night of the Living Dead director George Romero followed up with Dawn of the Dead, which notoriously made zombies an allegory for mall-addicted consoomers.
Seeing a pattern yet?
Related: “Hollywood Is in Shambles”
In the mid-80s, a disagreement over the rights to Night of the Living Dead split the IP into rival franchises. Dan O’Bannon of Alien fame spun off the first Return of the Living Dead movie, which introduced the brain-eating zombie trope. It also made them intelligent.
Among Return of the Living Dead‘s new zombies is a bunch of punks rebelling against society. In sharp contrast to Romero’s undead conformists, O’Bannon shows zombies as dyscivic wreckers and provides another piece of the puzzle.
Many film buffs would say that zombie horror went moribund in the 90s. But as alluded to earlier, Star Trek is a horror franchise with science fiction trappings. And it gave zombies a sci fi makeover.
Before you scoff, Romero’s and O’Bannon’s zombie films had sci fi elements from the start. Night of the Living Dead briefly mentions radiation from a recently returned Venus probe. Return of the Living Dead advertises that zombies are caused by a hazardous chemical. The later zombie apocalypse fad preferred the equally SF plot device of rabies-like viruses.
But between the zombie genre’s 80s shlock and its apocalyptic revival, we had no shortage of deathly white thralls divested of all personality and forced into a ravaging mass. And it was all courtesy of Star Trek.
In B4 “Ackhsully, the Borg aren’t zombies.” Star Trek: First Contact begs to differ.
Related: Star Trek—First Contact
Want more proof? 2005’s Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis bridges both series by featuring zombies that are brazen Borg knockoffs.
And Necropolis followed films that kicked off the zombie apocalypse craze like Shaun of the Dead, in which the UK is overrun by “scientific” zombies.
But it was an American IP that would perfect the formula.
You remember The Walking Dead: the Frank Darabont zombie series destroyed by invasive wokeness.
That leaves one more clue to zombie horror’s true nature, and sharp readers will have already detected the Woke Cult’s DNA at the scene.
What cultural force drove the zombie horror phenomenon?
Being grounded in the horror genre, the fad’s basis was fear.
But fear of what?
What’s scary about zombies—especially apocalyptic zombie hordes?
Four things:
- They look human but with easily identifiable deviations. They’re you, but not you. That’s the uncanny valley, a paradox that causes primal level CogDis.
- Among the biggest of these differences is the total inability to be pleaded, reasoned, or negotiated with. Zombies go after what they want, period.
- What do zombies want? To consume you, everyone you know, and your entire civilization. And they’ve got the numbers and tenacity to do it.
- Even worse, zombies can be anyone. Maybe the first wave that escaped their coffins are easy to notice. But if they bite your friend, you may not realize what he’s become until it’s too late.
So the final question is “What do zombies represent?”
The fear of Western civilization ending?
That would explain why the zombie apocalypse was the first mass entertainment sensation after Ground Zero. There was a feeling in the air that we’d burned through our cultural capital. So all that was left for atomized consumers to do was celebrate the collapse.
And yet, that was a major symptom, not the cause.
Perhaps the zombies stoof for mass immivasion, imploding social trust, and Millennial hatred of tradition. But if so, what was the contagion’s vector?
Related: Death Cult Sacraments
It was the germ of all dyscivic crises; the sum of all errors.
In a word: Modernism
The heretical ideology so virulent that we call its adherents the Death Cult.
Think about it for a second. The zombie is a perfect symbol of the Modernist. Falling prey to the Cult’s mind plague frees him to pursue forbidden urges at the price of his humanity.
For decades, Modernist heretics promised a shiny, sexy utopia right around the corner. All we had to do was abandon time-tested Tradition.
Then, inevitably, Cultural Ground Zero came. And people began to realize there would be no bugman Heaven on Earth. Instead we got ransacked Walgreens, drug hobo shanty towns, and torched cities.
It makes sense that the real-life zombie plague would arise from a heresy. “Apocalypse” was a red flag.
By the way, apocalypse means unveiling. Zombie horror got popular with the Cultists because they saw themselves on screen.
They could always turn away from their error and turn back to the Gospel. But the way back is hard, since it’s not cosmic radiation, hazardous chemicals, or a pathogen keeping the Cultists enslaved. It’s their own despair—the one unforgiveable sin.
That’s why those mired in the Death Cult aren’t to be hated. They’re to be pitied.
And prayed for.
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