Zombie Meme and the American Culture - Literature review Example

Zombie Meme and the American Culture Richard Dawkins avails a detailed discussion on genes and “memes” in his article, “Memes: the New Replicators”. The discussion entails the way in which memes dominate human culture. While genes are replicated from one generation to the other, memes are replicated from one brain to another. The idea of Zombies originated from Haiti, and its uniqueness made it spread to the US film industry. Elizabeth McAlister, an Afro-Caribbean religion scholar, provides a deep discussion on the idea of Zombies in her article with the heading “Slaves, Cannibals and Infected Hyper-whites: The Race and Religion of Zombies”. Additionally, John Minchillo takes a photo of protesters marching in Wall Street, New York City, who have dressed as zombies. He shows how the corporate world has turned some people to corporate zombies (Minchillo 1). Lastly, Kyle Bishop in his article titled “Dead Man Still Walking: Explaining the Zombie Renaissance” talks of how the idea of Zombie has come to inspire the stories behind some Hollywood movies. Dawkins in his article has asked the question “what is it about the idea of a god “the god meme” that gives it its stability and penetrance in the cultural environment (Dawkins 1). He has explicitly answered that memes are replicates, which move from one brain to another brain. Moreover, memes’ prowess is characterized by its longevity, fecundity and copying-fidelity. In accordance with Dawkins’ texts, then the idea of McAllister’s zonbies/zombies from Haiti becomes a perfect example of a meme. Zombie as a meme has been embedded in the American Culture to the extent that numerous Hollywood films are centered on this idea, and this is shown in Bishop’s article. This paper seeks to answer the question, “what is it about the Zombie meme that gives it stability and penetrance in the American Culture”. A meme is a style, behavior, or idea that is spread from one individual to another within one culture. This meme is a unit that carries cultural practices, symbols, or ideas that are transmittable from one individual mind to another via rituals, gestures, speech, writing, and other phenomena. This concept requires its supporters to regard memes as analogues of cultural genes since they are self-replicating, can mutate, and are also responsive to particular selective pressures. Meme is modelled after the word gene and is a shortened form of the word mimeme, which refers to something imitated or to imitate. Richard Dawkins, a British biologist first used it in his book The Selfish gene as a way of discussing principles of evolution to explain the spread of cultural phenomena and ideas. In his book, he used the idea of memes to describe catch phrases, arch building technologies, fashion, and melodies (Dawkins 3). It is theorized that the evolution of memes may be caused by natural selection in a manner that is analogous to the already established idea of biological evolution. The processes that are involved in the evolution of memes include inheritance, competition, mutation, and variation, each that influences the reproductive viability and success of a meme. These memes propagate through the behaviors that they establish in the hosts in which they reside. Those memes that are not prolific in their propagation die out and become extinct while some may effectively and efficiently replicate and even mutate. Those that are more effective in their replication are more successful some are even replicating effectively when they are detrimental to their host’s welfare. Memetics as a field of study has taken to exploring transmission and concept of these memes in regard to the evolutionary model. Dawkins coined the term in reference to cultural entities that observers could consider as replicators. He contended that it was possible to view cultural entities, for instance, in this case, the zombie idea, as replicators, pointing to learned skills and fashion as an example. These memes will replicate via their exposure to humans who, in turn, have evolved as copiers of behavior and information. Since humans are not efficient copiers of memes and through their affinity to refining, modification, and combination of these memes with others, the memes can be altered over time. He drew a comparison between the process through which these memes survive, and become altered via cultural evolution to the natural selection prevalent in biological genes (Dawkins 5). The concept of the Zombie originated from the culture of Voodoo in Haiti, with the word meaning the spirit of the dead in Haitian. Voodoo folklore believes that the ability to resurrect dead humans via an orally issued powder, coup padre, was possessed by the Bokors, or Voodoo priests, who were concerned with application and study of magic, especially black magic. The primary ingredient for this powder was tetrodoxin that was produced by the fatally poisonous porcupine fish. The zombie, according to legend, is a person who has transgressed their family and society to such a degree that the person is no longer acceptable. Because of this, they hire a Bokor and pay him to turn the person into a zombie. Once coup padre is issued, the subjects that were being transported into zombidom appeared to die with regards to their heart beat that would grind to a halt with their breathing patterns being subdued, coupled to a significant decrease in their breathing pattern. Thinking them to be deceased, the family and society would bury them as they would bury a corpse. The Bokor would them exhume them, still showing signs of life. Although they did, show signs of being still alive, their memory was no more, and they became drones without minds. They remained "alive" and under the power of the Bokor until the passing away of Bokor (McAllister 6). Zombies, as depicted in American popular culture come out at night. They are shuffling creatures that move slowly toward their target who are humans, with a voraciously, mindlessly, and devoid of pity. Caring for nothing but their continued existence, the zombies will eat up anything in their path if unchecked. These zombie ideas involve creatures that died out but nonetheless continue to walk among humans. While living in the US, it is impossible not to be confronted by the zombie idea. They are an overriding theme in the US and its popular culture, just as werewolves and vampires are. However, whereas the vampire is depicted as a dangerous and romantically dangerous creature and werewolves are depicted as tragic and doomed creatures, zombies have no socially redeeming value. The creature does not feel, think, or communicate. They just lumber up and down searching, for human flesh, to satisfy their craving. The current idea of the zombie in American popular culture differs significantly from earlier beliefs. Zombies were traditionally not resurrected corpses, but humans who had lost all their capacity for thinking and acting independently after they fell under a voodoo spell from a witch doctor (McAllister 8). This changed with the release of The Night of the Living Dead a film created by George Romero, which, to date, still stands as a classic film. Romero, in an attempt to conjure a new scare, changed the zombie concept from a hypnotized human being to a re-animated dead person with an insatiable lust for human flesh (Bishop 16). He incorporated all aspects of the traditional zombie with its mindless, relentless, and slow movement with various aspects of the Arabic ghoul who haunted cemeteries and fed on unsuspecting passers-by. Until this movie, most of Americas horror movies, post WWII, consisted of either gruesome extra-terrestrials from outer space or creatures that had mutated into gigantic sized creatures. The terror shown in this movie was that of a familiar creature suddenly turned deadly. The action did not occur on a lost and wild continent or a planet beyond the earth, but in a rural and peace loving community in Western Pennsylvania. These creatures were human undead and came at a time when the United States was at war with Vietnam. The very idea of dead men and women rising from the dead and devouring the living tapped into a primal fear present in the country at the time and mirrored, in a way, the grim reality facing the country at the time (Bishop 17). One of the reasons for the resurgence of the zombie film and its increased popularity may have to do with a general resurgence in dread for the apocalypse, especially with the near collapse of the economy, scares of emerging infectious disease, terrorist threats, and the threat posed by global warming. Majority of films made in the past decade, which have to do with the apocalypse have imagined the earth as a blighted and scorched landscape that zombies populate that are created either by a particular agent of biological warfare or some genetic experiment that goes horribly wrong. Such movies have been very successful because they tap into an increasing worry by Americans; that life sciences and other related branches of sciences are out of their control and are now under the control of amoral technocrats (Bishop 14). In American popular culture, especially within the film medium, the zombie is representative of various fears. Zombies that are descendant of the Haitian variety of Voodoo are representative of a loss of consciousness or cognition, as well as the absence of free will. These same identities are what separate humans from animals. Via the controlling of other humans and the elimination of their ability to make their own choices freely, the individual controlling them reduces the person or zombie in this case, to an animal level and robs them of their humanity. There is a distinct parallel that can be made between various cultures that have at one time championed the use of slaves, for instance the United Sates, and Zombie films (Bishop 15). Fearing the possibility that zombies could be a reality can then be tied to the fear of enslavement. Taking into consideration that reanimated zombies consist of nothing but moving dead corpses, zombies also embody human fear of their own decaying tissue. Humans go to extremes in the process of hiding or getting rid of dead human remains, especially those belonging to their loved ones. Human mental images of dead loved ones end at the grave. Even when they make mental re-constructions of the dead, humans will not see a rotting corpse or a bare skeleton, which is the current state of that person, but the memories of that individual in their conscious life. The reason that humans are either buried or burnt is to eradicate the undesirable nature of decomposition. Confronting the zombie idea is, therefore, a reminder of human mortality and the fact that, at one time, humans will return to the same earthly essence that they were born. Elizabeth McAllister in her article Slaves, Cannibals, and Infected Hyper-whites: The Race and Religion of Zombies, states that the first decade saw a new interest in American popular culture with regard to zombies. Her article contends that an analysis to compare nightmares could act as a productive means of analyzing themes, which are prevalent in the practices and imaginative products of cultures that are in close contact. Zombies, it is argued, are the first monster of the modern era and are embedded in a group of structures that are deeply symbolic of a religious thought. McAllister draws from her experiences in ethnographic studies of Haiti in coming up with the argument that the zonbie is a part of mystical arts, which has developed over time since early colonial times. She also contends that it comprises mythmaking that is representative of, mystifies, and responds to the fear of slavery, as well as collusion with slavery and the uprising against it. In addition, various elements of the Haitian form of the zonbie figure is consistent with patterns that haunt zombie movies in American film culture. In these films, the zombies are viewed as figures in myths and parables concerning death-dealing consumption and whiteness. In her essay, McAllister is suggestive of the fact that the messianic mood that came with Barrack Obamas candidacy was reminiscent of various patterns in Zombie films since their emergence in the 1960s, whereby majority of zombie killers happened to be African American males. These creatures are utilized in both film and ethnographic contexts in American popular culture to think about repression and freedom, conditions of embodiment, racialized manner of thinking, boundaries between death and life, and human repression and oppression of other humans (McAllister 10). Works Cited Bishop, Kyle. "Dead Man Still Walking: Explaining the Zombie Renaissance." Journal of Popular Film and Television (2009): 16. Print. Dawkins, Richard. “Memes: The New Replicators”. The Selfish Gene. New York City: Oxford University Press, 1976. Print. McAlister, Elizabeth. "Slaves, Cannibals, and Infected Hyper-whites: the Race and." Anthropological Quarterly (2012): 457. Print. Minchillo, John. The Associated Press. “Protesters from Occupy Wall Street march through New York’s financial district dressed as ‘corporate zombies. 2011. Photo. Read More