tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852401976091776228.post5073048942261687441..comments2024-03-28T16:39:46.847-04:00Comments on Tellers of Weird Tales: ZombographyTerence E. Hanleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852401976091776228.post-80456268919733514732017-02-25T14:53:00.446-05:002017-02-25T14:53:00.446-05:00Marzaat,
I think you're right that by partici...Marzaat,<br /><br />I think you're right that by participating in the story of the zombie apocalypse, people can live out their fantasies of murder and destruction. Instead of being powerless, they are suddenly powerful. They get to kill as many people as they want without compunction because those people are not really people but zombies. Every day in our real lives, we encounter people--individuals or masses--whom we consider zombies for whatever reason: for their apparent mindlessness, slavishness, conformity, etc. The fantasy, I suppose, is that instead of tolerating these people, you get to destroy them because they're zombies. Added to the attraction is the fact that any person who sees himself as a human being in a struggle against zombies also gets to decide who are the zombies according to any scheme he has for categorizing people: "If you belong to category X, that makes you a zombie in my book, and that means in my fantasy I can kill you without a second thought."<br /><br />You have an interesting idea that zombies fall into a biological category that leftists can embrace. Or, as they might say, the science on zombies is settled; they are that way naturally and to deny them anything that they might want is hateful and discriminatory.<br /><br />I'm planning to write a little more on that topic, but I haven't thought about it in the way you have phrased it here.<br /><br />Thanks for writing.<br /><br />THTerence E. Hanleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852401976091776228.post-40671388237841434842017-02-25T14:29:58.918-05:002017-02-25T14:29:58.918-05:00Might there be a darker side to zombie fascination...Might there be a darker side to zombie fascination: the vicarious and cathartic thrill of tearing society apart and killing your neighbors and friends? In the zombie story such violence is justified.<br /><br />The left seems interested in social fragmentation by tearing down old boundaries and denying the legitimacy of old classifications.<br /><br />The zombie story splits peoples into survivors and zombies, no rights for zombies or argument with zombies. The zombie world is a Hobbesian world. No rationalization is needed for survivors to kill zombies. They are enemies by their mere existence. (I haven't read many zombie stories so I don't know how many try to remake the post-zombie world along some utopian scheme.)<br /><br />Remaking the post-zombie world is propaganda by the deed, eliminating the enemy in a final sense.<br /><br />Granted the survivors have their own problems politically and providing the necessities of life. But they can dispatch the zombie enemy (and whatever they represent -- the conventional order, government, the military, capitalism)without guilt.<br /><br />Also the zombie is a biological menace, and the left's great characteristic of the last few years is a strident denial of the biological strata underlying human existence. Perhaps the zombie is the one innate, if fictitious, biological category the left can embrace without guilt. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com