Monday 28 May 2012

Zombies or Vampires?

Hi folks!
I've been away from blogland for the last week - a much needed break away from home, lying on a sunbed!!! But now I'm ready to get going again... My last a-z post is beckoning...



Z – Zombie
I find Zombie to be a strange word… My dictionary defines it as “a person appearing lifeless or apathetic”. Or in the case of horror stories “a corpse supposedly brought to life by supernatural means”.
A Zombie appears to be first mentioned in voodoo culture in Haiti and does refer to someone coming back from the dead. In popular culture zombies have been used to great effect in many horror movies. They are traditionally half rotted corpses with physical resemblance to people and ability to physically move but their brains and therefore any emotions or cognisance has gone. I think this may be why they are so scary when used in films and books. There is just no reasoning with them so they might as well be aliens!
I think nowadays, they are monsters who have become so caricatured that, in and of themselves, they do not scare so much, rather like Frankenstein. We are rather more sophisticated today and know that there are much scarier things than zombies. Besides, they have been overtaken by vampires, in this day and age…
But despite falling out of fashion, all monsters and superhuman beings can be scary if used in the right way, and as part of a rollicking good story, they can still be useful scaremongerers.

Do you think Zombies are past their sell by date? Do they scare you?

7 comments:

  1. I only recently read my first zombie book (check out my Zombie Weekend Follies from last week). I'm not big into zombies. But I think they will always be around. Not sure why. But seems a lot of people are attracted to that genre.

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  2. I don't think that zombies are my thing. I don't know why, but I just don't like zombies in general.

    www.modernworld4.blogspot.com

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  3. I can't get into the zombie scene, I'm a fan of Thomas Emson, who writes horror-thrillers. So when he wrote, and published Zombie Britannica, I decided to try it as I have enjoyed all his other books.

    I'm afraid I didn't get very far, before discarding it, I just couldn't get into the zombie genre at all, and I'm sure it wasn't the writing.

    No...zombies are not for me. Give me a vampire any day!

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  4. I've never been into the whole zombie thing, I must admit. They just don't do it for me!

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  5. I think The Night of the Living Dead was a great movie, but zombies just don't scare me like they used to. I believe the expiration of their expiration date has definitely expired. :D

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  6. I think we are so saturated by images and stories of zombies that they have almost no effect anymore. They are like the new vampires! LOL.

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  7. Yes, for me their time is over. Zombies were common language in my youth, now I move on when I see the word on the internet or books... I nearly even moved on from your blog.... Oops

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