| George Romero |
In 1983, Michael Jackson released the most popular music video of all time, Thriller. In a sad, prophetic fashion, Michael Jackson, for an unknown reason, undergoes a physical transformation turning into a pale-skinned creature we have come to recognize as a zombie, and begins a choreographed dance of the dead (too soon?)
The 80s saw a boom in horror movies and the zombies continued to ride the Romero/Jackson wave. The third movie in Romero's series came out in 1985, Day of the Dead (which picked up where Dawn of the Dead left off), as did Return of the Living Dead. Return of the Living Dead was not part of Romero's series, but referenced Night of the Living Dead and had the same premise. Return of the Living Dead taught us one more important thing about zombies: they still look good topless. Likewise, we learned that a nipple flash can be a substitute for a plot or for special effects. Flash both, and you can save a lot of time and money.
The next significant event in zombie pop culture came in 1996 when Resident Evil came to Playstation. Resident Evil, the first "survival horror" game, introduced the dog zombie and the plant zombie. However, zombies remained, for the most part, slow-moving, flesh-eating monsters. While scary, these zombies provided two methods of escape: walking away with a brisk pace or standing there for a little while to think of a better plan. The Resident Evil movie came out in 2002. It fixed the main flaw that afflicted the video game: no hot chick in a designer dress who killed zombies by jump kicking them.
2004 turned out to be one of the most significant years in zombie films. Not only did we see Dawn of the Dead, we also got Shaun of the Dead, quite possibly one of the greatest movies ever made (in England). Shaun of the Dead was the first romantic comedy about zombies (to hell with Warm Bodies. That film doesn't even come close to Shaun of the Dead). It parodied Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later and just about every zombie movie ever made. Zombie culture has come a long way and is only expanding. At the beginning of the course, I wasn't quite sure if I believe in the immense popularity of zombies in mainstream culture. As the course has gone on, I now realize that I was utterly wrong. Zombies are taking over our world as we speak!
This post brings up some great questions. Firstly, while we have talked about zombies in terms of religion, drugs, serial killers, corporations and many other topics, we have not addressed the seemingly obvious topic of plastic surgery. Fighting the human body's natural aging and decomposition process seems like the perfect thing to compare with the living dead and MJ is a great example! It specifically made me think of the South Park episode where Mj appears as "Mr. Jefferson" and is depicted following the kids around as his plastic surgery slowly decomposes until it ultimately turns into a zombie scenario. Secondly, and in regards to "Shaun of the Dead", I feel there is a serious lack of zombie comedies. It seems, with the success of the film, someone would have tried to follow in it's footsteps, especially with the parallel increase in popularity of the genre in genera (given films like "World War Z" and shows like "The Walking Dead").
Along with comedy and zombies, this post also makes me think about zombies and sex. As you mentioned, the music video as well as the movie brought combined a sexual aspect with a very unsexy idea. I find this funny because now that I think about it, I have seen these images in other places. One that jumps out to me specifically is portrayed in tattoos. If one was to search for zombie tattoos, for every tattoo that is terrifyingly gross, there is one that is sexualized, for the most part. I think those trying to sell zombies, as you talked about, think that a sexualized version will help.