What a cute zombie! I am posting him because he was my favorite zombie at Eastern State Penitentiary's Terror Behind the Walls last year. I stopped by this year, and though I did not see him, I thought I heard his high musical giggle--like lunatic panpipes. If all zombies could be as smooth-skinned and towheaded as this one, I might welcome the invasion.
But zombies, though I enjoy you, and have been fascinated to see you become more popular, I have a caveat or two.
Or three. The trouble with zombies is threefold.
ONE: You have effectively upstaged Frankenstein's monster as the archetypal reanimated corpse! Vampires and werewolves are holding their own, but you zombies have edged Mary Shelley's morose flat-topped green guy off the halloween paper plate.
TWO: Zombies have lost their mystique! The deep weirdness and pseudo-ethnographic patina you guys had in the days of White Zombie and I Walked with a Zombie has been worn away by familiarity and sheer numbers. Careful, zombies! Do not squander your chic!
THREE: Zombie methodology is fundamentally misguided! Animated corpses stumbling around with limbs flailing, this is scary? If you want to unnerve someone, zombies of the world, don't move at all.
Bram Stoker said the dead travel fast, and he meant it for menace--but the most disquieting quality of the dead is not motion, but stillness.
No comments:
Post a Comment