This is a piece of work I did for a 'journal paper' at Uni, it's meant to be about genre changing over time, and how it affects the zombie film genre, I might put up some more work later, I did a really pretentious essay on Soviet Montage films, but it has a few more references.
Genre changes over time, it shifts the elements that construct its narrative to make something original or it adds elements from other genres to mix the conventions the audience are used to and create new meaning, surprises and ideas.
I looked into the changes and shifts in genre that affect the zombie film genre, and how it affected the meaning of the films and where the genres took the narratives.
I tried to define the main characteristics of zombie movies that appear throughout the genre in each film. Tudor makes the point (using westerns) that: “…we must first isolate the body of films that are ‘westerns’. But they can only be isolated on the basis of the ‘principal characteristics’…”
I tried the find and define the principal characteristics of the zombie film, so mapping the genre changes and shifts would be more precise. The first and most obvious characteristic of the zombie film genre is Zombies. The Zombie is the main aspect of the genre, there are several types of zombie which I have identified from the films that I have seen and I will explain them in more detail later, I have identified several, the voodoo zombie, the undead zombie and the science zombie.
The fear of the undead is present in many different forms of fiction; stories, novels and poems all reference the dead or undead coming back from the grave to haunt the living.
”The original zombies came from witchcraft and magic, voodoo and rituals” (London, (1976) p.76) Films like Plague of the Zombies (Gilling 1966), White Zombie (Halperin, 1932) and I Walked with a Zombie (Torneur, 1943) used voodoo as the creation behind the zombie force. The Zombies were usually controlled by a voodoo priest and performed manual tasks for him, for instance in Plague of the Zombies, the zombies are used to mine tin for the “tyrannical Victorian mine owner” (London (1976) p.88).
The next incarnation of the zombie was the undead zombie. Made popular by George A. Romero’s ‘Dead’ Series, the undead zombie set the standard for the future zombies seen in television and cinema. Night of the Living Dead (Romero, 1968) was in the first in a series of five films, with more being made to this very day. These zombies were not controlled by anyone, and their only desire was to feed on living humans, adding to their own number.
After the undead zombie, the need for a more explained creation story was needed; the science zombie used scientific accidents and mistakes to explain the concept of the undead rising. This idea could be attributed to the progression of medical and experimental science in our modern age; transplant procedures and the freezing of dead bodies to be resuscitated when death and disease are not a problem seem common place today. Films like Resident Evil (
The post apocalyptic society features heavily in the zombie genre; the science and undead zombie appear almost exclusively in the destroyed world as the dominant species, while human survivors struggle by. The idea of life being wiped out by an infectious outbreak was taken from Richard Matheson’s Book I am Legend (1954), which was originally a story of a vampire outbreak infecting the inhabitants of a city. More modern zombie films like 28 Days Later cite Day of the Triffids (1951) as an influence on the post apocalyptic vision of the future. Another common characteristic in zombie films is the group of survivors; each Romero film has a group of survivors struggling by against the zombie hordes, until they become complacent and kill each other off or let in the zombies, usually because of their own inadequacies and differences, rather than the zombies out witting them.
”…the zombie walks amongst us in many disguises, and he represents many of our fears.” (London (1976) p98).
Since the earliest incarnations of the Zombie film, the abilities and the causes of the undead rising from the grave have been different.
The voodoo zombies of the early films were not seen cannibalising other humans until the Romero dead series of the early 1960’s. Zombies then changed from being under the control of a voodoo priest and having an origin to being under no control and having no explanation of their origin at all. One could say that with the lack of an origin to the zombie, the films just became about gore; many of the substandard zombie b-movies that came following Night of the Living Dead’s success blatantly played on the ‘gore’ factor to attract an audience.
The gore factor has been carried through many of the incarnations of the zombie genre, many of the audience just came to see gore; the recent Grindhouse: Planet Terror (Rodriguez, 2007) used gore excessively to make up for an extremely poor story line, and the remakes of Dawn Of The Dead (Snyder) in 2004 and Day Of The Dead (Miner) in 2008 used gore a lot more than their predecessor, possibly for a modern desensitised audience, who care less about the narrative of the point it tries to make and more about the way to dispatch the monster, and the effect it has on the decorating.
One aspect between the science and undead zombie films that remains different are the zombies origins; were as the science zombie’s origins are usually explained at the beginning or in the climax of the film, the undead (particularly Romero) zombie’s origins are unexplained or just hinted at, leaving it up to the audience to decide where the monsters come from.
The science zombie is usually the result of a mistake that contaminates the whole world due to science failing, or a military weapon backfiring against its creators, where as the undead zombie contaminates the whole world, leaving figures of authority like scientists, police and army offices and elected leaders redundant and confused. Both types of zombie film comment on authority figures and their ability to deal with mass hysteria, whether it is from zombie hordes or rampaging citizens.
The zombie has been through some changes since its first incarnation in horror novels and stories. For example, Frankenstein’s monster was one of the first zombies, on screen and in literature, although he didn’t eat any living people.
The first film zombies were originally workers for a voodoo priest. A recently deceased person could be brought back from the dead by voodoo to do the priest’s bidding, usually some form of manual labour.
From Voodoo, the zombie adapted into the most recognizable form of the zombie we know today, the undead zombie. The change from Voodoo zombie to undead zombie could be attributed to the lack of religion in our modern society, or the way we view other culture’s religions. The tag line for Dawn of the Dead was “When there is no more room in hell, the dead shall walk the earth”, implying a Christian or Catholic view on the origin of the zombies without any proof. The voodoo origins of the original zombie would have been too far fetched for a modern audience.
The first undead zombie movie was Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, which was followed by the rest of the series as well as many other films which used the undead zombie as the main antagonist. There have been many variations on the undead zombie; some adaptations of the zombie have been comical, such as the films Return of the Living Dead (O’Bannon, 1985) and Peter Jackson’s Braindead (1992). Films like Shaun of the Dead (Wright, 2004) have taken a comical look at the zombie genre, but kept the zombies true to the Romero standards, poking fun at the concepts used in zombie films, rather than the zombies themselves. This could be to either revive the conventions of the zombie genre or to highlight the inadequacies of the zombie as a menace to the world; by the end of the film we are watching the zombies entertain us in stupid game shows.
Most recently zombies have adapted again into the fast moving modern zombies, probably because of the worn out conventions of the Romero-style zombie film. The modern versions share little in common with each other, apart from the fact that they are zombies.
In some instances, the zombies are faster and stronger than they’re counterparts, in the remake of Dawn of the Dead and the E4 series Dead Set (Demange, 2008), the zombies can sprint and appear more agile and stronger than their previous counterparts, again highlighting the differences and weaknesses of the Romero-style zombie and the difference of the faster modern zombies.
The adaptation of the Romero-style zombie started with 28 Days Later, although the infected are not strictly zombies, they follow the same design as some of the zombies that came before the film. In the film they are infected with ‘rage’ and they can infect others by spitting blood and by scratching or biting. They are also large in number, and choose not to attack the infected. One of the main differences to the previous zombies is the speed at which the infected from 28 Days Later move, they sprint and jump to try and attack the uninfected. The infected in 28 Days Later don’t eat the living either, the infection being carried through bodily fluids, as Christopher Ecclestone’s character Major West keeps an infected soldier tied up to see how long it will take for the infected to die from starvation.
Other modern zombie films and series include the remakes of Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead. The zombies in Dawn of the Dead are much like the infected of 28 Days Later, although they eat people and are physically rotting. In Day of the Dead the zombies have gained abilities that they did not have in life let alone death, they can climb walls and jump great distances.
The E4 series Dead Set takes a zombie outbreak and sets it in the big brother household, with the housemates unaware of the zombie nation surrounding them. In this adaptation the zombies have the same abilities as the zombies in the remake of Dawn of the Dead.
The conventions of the undead/Romero-style zombie have grown old, and warrant a change to shock and scare the audience. In the fast pace modern society we live in, it makes sense that as the undead we would move just as fast as we did in life to get what we want.
The zombies in the remakes of Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead and Dead Set offer no explanation to why or how they have been created much like Romero’s Living Dead series. 28 Days Later offers an explanation at the beginning of the film to explain the origins of the infected, much like the ‘science’ zombie films.
The remakes of Romero’s films and Dead Set offer no explanation possibly because of the ideology present in the films subtext, Dawn of the Dead addresses issues about consumerism, Day of the Dead comments on the use of science and man playing god and Dead Set comments on the culture we have before us; reality TV and ‘celebrity culture’. The origin of our societies downfall is entirely of our own doing, rather than blaming a scientist or a voodoo priest the film states that we must point the finger inwards and blame ourselves about what we have created.
Films that use science to explain the origin of zombies became popular from the films 28 Days Later, and the computer game Resident Evil. But the first science zombie film was made in 1936; The Walking Dead (Curtiz), it was the story of a man wrongly executed for murder, who is resuscitated using electricity to claim vengeance on the real killers, only to be killed again after making the scientists responsible for his rebirth promise to never do it again. (London, (1976),p 58). The film of Resident Evil explains the origin of the zombie as a mistake from a chemical weapons factory; the zombies used to be the staff of the evil umbrella corporation of the film and games. The zombies display the same abilities and characteristics of a Romero zombie, except we know how they were created. The film also uses a large monster, called a Licker, which is a prominent ‘baddie’ in the video game. It has nothing to do with the zombie genre, and is the film only to remind the audience of the films adaptation from a computer game.
The Grindhouse production of Planet Terror also uses science zombies, but to a more comedic effect. The soldiers were infected by a gas and must constantly inhale the antidote or they become zombies.
The science zombie could be a comment on the lack of an origin story for the Romero/Undead zombie, the science zombie has a back story and origin, so it is probable that the antagonists of the film can be killed in a scientific way, giving the audience closure on the horrific nature of the film, where as the lack of origin for the undead/Romero zombie takes away the closure aspect that the audience wants by the end of the film, most of the endings of Romero films are left ambiguously, letting the audience decide the survivor’s fate.
To further explore the idea of genre changing I would investigate the other adaptations of ‘the monster’. For instance, Vampires and the changes from the first vampire films like Nosferatu (Murnau, 1922) and Dracula (Browning, 1932), to the modern versions like Twilight (Hardwicke, 2008) and Interview with a Vampire (
The limitations of this study could be the genre, although the horror genre is massive and full of many monsters, and sub genres. There is always a common denominator of a monster or bad guy, in sequels and adaptations, in other genres such as action or comedy, there wouldn’t be such a common denominator.
It would also take a lot of viewings to identify the aspects of the monster that appeared in each adaptation or sub genre, which would link them all together.
To start I would map the different types of genres from each ‘monster’, e.g. Vampire, Zombie, Werewolf etc, to get a better idea of the spread of films.
During my investigation I found that the Zombie genre has been constantly changing, much like the idea of genre itself. The zombie genre has borrowed ideas from previous films, series and video games to keep itself original and refreshing. From the original Voodoo Zombies of the 1930’s to the Science zombie of 2000, the zombie genre has been constantly changing, using different origin stories and abilities of zombies to change the genre into different sub genres.
Bibliography
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