Who are the zombis meant to be? | INFJ Forum

Who are the zombis meant to be?

Lark

Lark

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May 9, 2011
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In a discussion on another forum not too long ago someone commented that when people talk about zombi apocalypses they always mean someone the zombis as a proxy for someone or some group in particular, so who do you think they are most of the time?

I know that the zombis in some of the earliest movies were meant to be proxies for mindless consumerism or hippy protestors or psychopaths, assault on precinct thirteen wasnt even zombis proper but druggies and I've heard that zombis sort of fill an existential space once occupied by "the crowd" or "the plebs" and "the proles", what do you think?
 
Zombie!

My sister loves zombie movies, we have quite a collection of books and movies. A lot of people speculate what they are..the uninformed masses..blah, blah, blah.

I tend to see the zombie as representing/symbolizing our dark fear. Like fear, the Zombie is mindless and seeks to consume and destroy mankind. It can only be killed "head on" (head shot). Whether it is a fast zombie or a slow one, without that kill shot, it struggles to reach us and consume our living body.
 
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Zombies are retribution and tribulation for the survivors.

If you end up with zombies then you did something to deserve it.
 
Nixie said:
Zombie!

My sister loves zombie movies, we have quite a collection of books and movies. A lot of people speculate what they are..the uninformed masses..blah, blah, blah.

I tend to see the zombie as representing/symbolizing our dark fear. Like fear, the Zombie is mindless and seeks to consume and destroy mankind. It can only be killed "head on" (head shot). Whether it is a fast zombie or a slow one, without that kill shot, it struggles to reach us and consume our living body.
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To be honest, I've never really thought about this, but its an interesting idea. Really I found this a good idea about it.
 
Zombies represent general drone society. Moving forward without thinking or caring, only in it for their own profit and nothing else matters.
Survivors are the ones trying to figure out how to stay sane.
 
It depends where they come from...like how they became zombies or what exactly is a zombie
 
Eventhorizon said:
Zombies represent general drone society. Moving forward without thinking or caring, only in it for their own profit and nothing else matters.
Survivors are the ones trying to figure out how to stay sane.
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and they are extremely extroverted
 
http://beamsandstruts.com/bits-a-pieces/item/972-slavoj-zizek-on-zombies

[h=2]Slavoj Zizek on Zombies[/h] Written by Chris Dierkes
I'm going to begin with a long quotation from contemporary philosopher Slavoj Zizek on zombies. I'll then come back and try to tease out some of the meaning. The context of this passage relates to a shift in the understanding of habit in Western thought from the ancients (represented by Aristotle for Zizek) to modernity (represented by Hegel). There's also a dialectical relationship being explored between freedom and habit.
dawn.jpg

Here's Zizek:

Perhaps, this Hegelian notion of habit allows us to account for the cinema-figure of zombies who drag themselves slowly around in a catatonic mood, but persisting forever: are they not figures of pure habit, of habit at its most elementary, prior to the rise of intelligence (of language, consciousness, and thinking). This is why a zombie par excellence is always someone whom we knew before, when he was still normally alive – the shock for a character in a zombie-movie is to recognize the former best neighbor in the creeping figure tracking him persistently. (Zombies, these properly un-canny (un-heimlich) figures are therefore to be opposed to aliens who invade the body of a terrestrial: while aliens look and act like humans, but are really foreign to human race, zombies are humans who no longer look and act like humans; while, in the case of an alien, we suddenly become aware that the one closest to us – wife, son, father – is an alien, was colonized by an alien, in the case of a zombie, the shock is that this foreign creep is someone close to us...) What this means is that what Hegel says about habits has to be applied to zombies: at the most elementary level of our human identity, we are all zombies, and our "higher" and "free" human activities can only take place insofar as they are founded on the reliable functioning of our zombie-habits: being-a-zombie is a zero-level of humanity, the inhuman/mechanical core of humanity. The shock of encountering a zombie is not the shock of encountering a foreign entity, but the shock of being confronted by the disavowed foundation of our own human-ness.
There is, of course, a big difference between the zombie-like sluggish automated movements and the subtle plasticity of habits proper, of their refined know-how; however, these habits proper arise only when the level of habits is supplemented by the level of consciousness proper and speech. What the zombie-like "blind" behavior provides is, as it were, the "material base" of the refined plasticity of habits proper: the stuff out of which these habits proper are made.
This notion of the need for habit (or necessity) in order to have freedom interestingly is also discussed in process and integral philosophy (which carried it over from process thought). In each moment the entire process of life is alive within us--physical, chemical, biological, evolutionary--and it runs largely on habit. It's our zombie life. And it is this routinization that allows for creativity. What Whitehead called the creativity (freedom) that is added in each new moment. I had never thought of that as zombic however. The rest of the article goes through this dialectical through a number of different dimensions. For example, language: we have to become habituated to speaking (in sentences, with words, in a certain tongue) and only then can we be creatively expressive.
s_zizek1.jpg
So as Zizek points out it's not simply that our zombic existence is our level of biological habit and then our minds are our freedom but rather the zombic parts of ourselves create habits that allow for the creation of more habits--in the realm of mind, subjectivity, and language--which allow for more freedom. What I like in that is the way it reveals multiple layers of habituation.
 
If there is an implicit, or explicit, metaphor that zombies fill, it will depend on the particular film-maker, writer.

I think most zombies have just become a backdrop to highlight human drama in survival situations.

Some general themes which I think to be common to almost all zombie fiction:
* The tension between reverence for the dead and the danger that corpses pose to the living (whether those corpses are moving, or not).
* The distorting effect on behaviour (especially in respect to passions like hunger/appetite) when the conscious mind is not entirely present. (ie. the kindly old lady trying to eat her grandkids zombie).
* The disturbing reminder that fresh meat is appealing as food, and that our living bodies are "fresh meat", and thus, potentially food for other things.
 
Flavus Aquila said:
If there is an implicit, or explicit, metaphor that zombies fill, it will depend on the particular film-maker, writer.

I think most zombies have just become a backdrop to highlight human drama in survival situations.

Some general themes which I think to be common to almost all zombie fiction:
* The tension between reverence for the dead and the danger that corpses pose to the living (whether those corpses are moving, or not).
* The distorting effect on behaviour (especially in respect to passions like hunger/appetite) when the conscious mind is not entirely present. (ie. the kindly old lady trying to eat her grandkids zombie).
* The disturbing reminder that fresh meat is appealing as food, and that our living bodies are "fresh meat", and thus, potentially food for other things.
Click to expand...


Don't forget the audio log of the guy in Dead Space who dismembers himself one limb at a time with mining equipment while he was still alive so that after his inevitable transformation he will be less of a threat.
 
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[video=youtube;dpBWdNXCqfY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpBWdNXCqfY[/video]
 
I think the meaning of zombies is linked to the author's or artist's story/intention. But for me, zombies are a symbol of our irresponsibility and greed of knowledge. I see zombies as being the result of a biological mishap.
 
[MENTION=10252]say what[/MENTION] can you elaborate further on what you mean by greed of knowledge?
 
Eventhorizon said:
[MENTION=10252]say what[/MENTION] can you elaborate further on what you mean by greed of knowledge?
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I think there is a lot of research on biochemicals and deadly diseases that, while very informative, are dangerous. Tbh, I don't know a whole lot about the reality of this stuff, but it does seem that as a society our hunger for new knowledge, creating better more stronger 'things' (such as diseases for warfare), and doing so without fully understanding the consequences or longterm impacts - puts us at risk for some major flubs.

I think our thirst for knowledge and understanding of the world is what makes humans so unique to other lifeforms on earth, but at the same time our greediness can often times compromise the safety of that pursuit.

I just imagine something like outbreak happening. A mouse is injected with a crazy disease that we know nothing about, it escapes because someone accidentally left the latch on the cage open (they were probably sexting), and then the human race is infested with zombies....I'm pretty sure this was a movie at some point... ;)
 
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