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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]
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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]
- ^ a b Maçek III, J. C. (15 June 2012). "The Zombification Family Tree: Legacy of the Living Dead". PopMatters. Archived from the original on 3 June 2020.
- ^ Deborah Christie, Sarah Juliet Lauro, ed. (2011). Better Off Dead: The Evolution of the Zombie as Post-Human. Fordham University Press. p. 169. ISBN 978-0-8232-3447-9.
- ^ "Zombie"[permanent dead link], in Oxford English Dictionary Online (subscription required), accessed 23 May 2014. The quotation cited is: "Zombi, the title whereby he [chief of Brazilian natives] was called, is the name for the Deity, in the Angolan tongue."
- ^ Deborah Christie, Sarah Juliet Lauro, ed. (2011). Better Off Dead: The Evolution of the Zombie as Post-Human. Fordham University Press. p. 169. ISBN 0-8232-3447-9, 9780823234479.
- ^ Stokes, Jasie (17 March 2010). Ghouls, Hell and Transcendence: The Zombie in Popular Culture from 'Night of the Living Dead' to 'Shaun of the Dead' (Master's thesis). Brigham Young University. Retrieved 3 February 2016.
- ^ Savage, Annaliza (15 June 2010). "'Godfather of the Dead' George A. Romero Talks Zombies". Wired. Retrieved 2 October 2011.
- ^ Szanter, Ashley; Richards, Jessica K. (24 August 2017). Romancing the Zombie: Essays on the Undead as Significant 'Other'. McFarland. ISBN 9781476667423.
- ^ McGlotten, Shaka; Jones, Steve (26 August 2014). Zombies and Sexuality: Essays on Desire and the Living Dead. McFarland. ISBN 9780786479078.
- ^ George, Sam; Hughes, Bill (1 November 2015). Open Graves, Open Minds: Representations of vampires and the Undead from the Enlightenment to the present day. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9781526102157.
- ^ Moreman, Christopher M.; Rushton, Cory James (10 October 2011). Zombies Are Us: Essays on the Humanity of the Walking Dead. McFarland. ISBN 9780786488087.