A zombie is a fictional undead being created through a human corpse. The term comes from Haitian folklore, where a zombie is a dead body bought back to life through various methods, most commonly magic. Modern depictions of zombies do not necessarily involve magic but often invoke science fictional methods such as radiation or viruses. One of the first books to introduce the Western culture to the idea of the voodoo zombie was The Magic Island by W.B. Seabrook in 1929. This is the sensationalised account of a narrator who encounters voodoo cults in Haiti and their resurrected thralls.
Zombies have a complex literary heritage, from Richard Matheson and H. P. “Lovecraft” to Mary Shelley's “Frankenstein” all showing the European folklore concept of the undead. In 1932, Victor Halperin directed White Zombie, a horror film starring Bela Lugosi. Here zombies are depicted as mindless, unthinking men under the spell of an evil magician. A new version of the zombie, different from that described in Haitian folklore, has also emerged in popular culture in recent years. This "zombie" is taken largely from George A. Romero's seminal film “Night of the Living Dead”, which was in turn partly inspired by Richard Matheson's 1954 book “I Am Legend”. The monsters in the film and its sequels, such as “Dawn of the Dead” and “Day of the Dead”, as well as its many inspired works, such as “Return of the Living Dead” and “Zombi 2”, are usually hungry for human flesh, although “Return of the Living Dead” introduced the popular concept of zombies eating brains. The "zombie apocalypse" concept, in which the civilised world is brought low by a global zombie infestation, became a staple of modern popular art.
No comments:
Post a Comment