Since this a humanities board as well...

Since this a humanities board as well, I'd like to bring up my theory of why the Zombie movie/show has taken America by storm. It could be called a fad, but the cult following for zombie movies, TV, videogames, and literature has been entrenched in the American media landscape for over fifty years now, if we set the beginning at the original Night of the Living Dead movie in the sixties.

Now, common theories for why they're popular, zombies are disgusting, rotting corpses that have an insatiable hunger for flesh. Humans have a natural fear of predators and also a rational fear of the unburied rotting carcasses.

There's also the apocalyptic vein many of the movies have, with at worst humanity being almost entirely wiped out and the remaining people have to scavange until inevitable death due to a lack of ability to find or build a safe zone. In better circumstances, there are isolated walled cities where normally comfy Americans live in constant fear and squalor under war lords a la The Land of the Dead or a great war in which humanity prevails a la WWZ.

There are thousands of titles in some each form of media consumption available, and zombie fever has gone so far that toy and firearms manufacturers make the perfect zombie killing weapons to sell to fans, though these fans (especially firearms collectors) know there is zero chance of a WWZ/walking dead/George A. Romero type of zombie outbreak ever happening. Im sure the toy companies and firearms manufacturers are great sponsors of TV shows like the walking dead.

Here's my hypothesis: The planet is vastly overpopulated, with the majority of the billions being in extremely dire poverty. They're very aware of their own mortality and the competition for the most basic of needs and often have a "do or die, sink or swim" view of life that IS an insatiable hunger to claw over eachother in desperation to get to a "safe zone" (Cont)

Keep going user.

>the planet is overpopulated
XDD STFU FAGGOT OVERPOPULATION IS DEBUNKED!!

I've always thought that the reason Zombies are popular is the same reason Nazi's are popular as bad guys- it's a villain you can unleash the most brutal, violent urges you have in a guilt-free way. People like feeling righteous indignation, the feeling that you are completely justified to use violence, and zombies and Nazi's fulfill this as bad guys who are totally morally reprehensible. The same reason why ideologies like Communism and Fascism are so appealing, because it paints it's adherents as crusaders in a holy war against a despicable evil.

Zombies are even better than Nazi's though, because we don't even rank them as human. For example, chainsaws and other melee weapons are so e of the most popular weapons to use against zombies in media, because they are so ultra gory, but even when used against Nazi's, the sheer brutality of them against a living, breathing human who was once a child can turn people off.

How do Nazi Zombies fit in on this

Norwegian horrorhumour.
Not entirely unique concept though, I believe I saw one about Nazis at the center of the earth and they may have been zombies as well.

(Cont)
So with America consuming roughly 25% of the world's resources while being roughly 5% of the world's population (and an individualistic, well-armed populous at that) it can be said that the average American lives a pretty comfortable life where they don't face life-threatening situations or a serious lack of basic necessities like shelter, food, water, and security on a day to day basis like the 6 billion poorest people might.

So now we look at another thing that makes zombies frightening; their desperation and their endless legions.
Many movies may have a scene where a zombie is so desperate to reach his prey that he'll squeeze through a tight space that years his arm off in the process, yet he is unphased and there's several thousand more just as desperate right behind him.

Obviously no human would be unphased by such grievous bodily harm, but they could be, and in many cases are, desperate enough to RISK such harm or death in order to come here in their endless legions by the shipload, totally overwhealming our military and police forces and kill, violate, loot, pillage, and destroy all of us in huge hordes in order to live the life we do in our bubble, relatively free of human suffering, our "safe zone".

It's not just the fear of an apocalyptic scenario, being eaten alive torn limb from limb, or a fear of the living dead. Those play a part in zombiemania, and a large one to boot.

Yet I think a component very much over looked is that it comes down to the subconscious fear we all have in wealthy industrialized nations of the world's pissed and starving masses rising up with machetes and kalishnakovs and storming into Europe in an endless sea of humans predators, leaving a wake of horrible death and destruction in their path, and landing by the shipload on American coasts whislt marching in from the south as well.

There's a thousand historical precedents for the desperate nomadic barbarians blazing through, sacking cities and killing all

>Over 2000 words just to say "Zombies are successful countries fear of immigrants"

10/10 posting OP

I always thought it was more about the desire for a primal struggle.
I can also see a large constituency of very alienated young people who simply want to be violent but their social conditioning won't allow them to have violent thoughts against masses of people.

This man raises a valid point as well. I didn't read the whole post and don't understand the Nazi comparison, but a huge part of zombie media consumption, particularly in videogames like Dying Light, Dead Rising, and countless others is the idea of unleashing you're own most base animal violent urges. Their already rotten corpses that will stop at nothing to eat you or beat you to death, so you can go wild.

You can open up full auto into a horde, watching as limbs fly off and heads explode in piles of gore. In Dying Light I get such satisfaction from drop kicking a rotter to ground the and smashing his skull under my boot, or slashing through them as heads, limbs, and while bodies are hacked in half.
I also play killing floor and killing floor 2, unloading wildly into a horde of the weak zeds and seeing the carnage, or the immense fun of grapping the wheel of a steam roller in dead rising 3 and crushing horses by the hundred, it's great. Sick, but great.

And who doesn't love the intensity, fear, and adrenaline of DayZ or a nighttime run in Dying Light?

>I didn't read the whole post
Why not? It was literally one paragraph.

(Disclaimer: the below analysis only applies to the United States. Sociocultural trends may very between political systems)
When the Democrats are in power, Zombie media becomes popular.
Zombies:
-Move in large, mindless hordes, much like how Democrats view Republicans.
-Rapidly multiply in a nigh-uncontrollable manner, reflecting the Democratic fear of overpopulation.
-Mindlessly devour all in their path, reflecting a hyperconsumerist mindset (It is no coincidence that Dawn of the Dead takes place in a shopping mall).
-Are ultimately self-destructive of their own natural resources (after all, when everyone's a zombie, the zombies will just stand around and die), reflecting environmental concerns.

When Republicans are in power, Vampire media becomes popular.
Vampires:
-Suck the lifeblood of hard-working Americans, much like how welfare leeches suck the economic lifeblood of America itself.
-Are highly wealthy "outsider" types, sometimes from foreign countries: in other words, the stereotypical "liberal elite".
-Often are obsessed with their own material comforts and are uncaring about the general populace.
-Often engage in effeminate, homosexual, or otherwise tradition-flaunting behavior.
-Utilize networks of easily-manipulated minions, like how the liberal elite trick the common man into voting against his interests.

You stupid faggot you know what I mean. For the way resources are distributed currently, yes, we can support out current population, but we don't. That's why people starve to death and die from easily and cheaply treated medical problems every day by the tens of thousands.

If what you got out of that is just "a fear of immigrants", I'm going to guess the bus that took you to school in your youth was rather short?

It's about the fear of invasion by the desperate masses of people numbering in the billions you dolt.

I'm sure immigration was the worst fear of at the time when Baghdadis were hurriedly packing enough provisions and a weapon or two each en masse to flee before the Mongols ransacked the city so badly that Baghdad to this day still has a festering rectal infection from their collective butthurt

nigger nigger nigger nigger

I have now, my apologies. I just saw a part about releasing our most gore infested nightmarish violent fantasies and made a post about it.

I do disagree with you though on the Nazi thing. Maybe if I was fighting ethnic cleansing units or death/slave labor camp guards I wouldn't feel much guilt about ripping one's throat open with a trench knife, but the whermacht for the most part were just young soldiers drafted and forced to fight at someone else's order. War crimes were committed on all sides because it was a total war. My grandfather landed on Omaha, watched all his friends die one by one as they pushed inland, and was eventually shot and hit with shrapnel, sent home, and he had respect for the soldiers he fought.

I wasn't the guy who's paragraph you ignored, I just pointed it out.
Also, while I agree that Nazis weren't inherently evil monsters, the fact is that much of our media has portrayed them as such, so people will, naturally, feel more comfortable when seeing them die on TV, as long as they don't think long and hard about who the actual people were.

Just to clarify, the poster you responded to is not me.

I wasn't implying they were like this in real life down to a man, I was describing how Nazi's are portrayed in most mainstream media.

Wow, I guess I didn't need to say that. Cool beanz

>what are limited resources

I guess I never really caught the vampire trend. Besides I Am Legend with Will Smith, those shitty my boyfriend is a vampire/werewolf books all the girls read when I was in high school, and the HBO series Trueblood, I've never noticed a vampire theme in media during the Bush administration. Then again, I was only seventeen when Obammy was elected so I might not remember.

Your proposal is interesting, but aside from the short period after 9/11, Hollywood has been pretty consistently liberal (American liberal) through out the years. I guess with the intensity of modern day PC culture, things in the past seem a lot more centrist since the new center of political alignment is far to the left of what it used to be a decade or two ago

Nazis are zombies are both mindless drones who will attack just for the sake of it.

>PC culture
What? What is that?

They are popular for the reason another user said, it's a villainous thing with no redeemable quality, that being said, as you mentioned night of the living dead, that movie was harshly criticized when it came out, but nowadays people love because it's not your usual dumb horror movie with dumb horror ending but it actually meant something (even tho, according to Romero, casting of a black lead for example was completely incidental, he was just the best actor they had).

I think your analysis is incorrect.

Many popular zombie franchises dominated during the bush years. Resident Evil, the new age romero films, left 4 dead, even shitty b horror/satire like fido, zombies anonymous, etc.

What is this? Babby's first thread after taking psychology 101?

Zombies at least were originally a critique against consumerism. Right now it is just a symptom of lazy writing. Almost every zombie story is riddled with tropes (and yes even The Last of Us)

Which useless humanities degree did you get in particular? Get a job and stop compensating.

Obviously its a culture with disdain for console plebs.

I think those trends you might have noticed are very incidental, and both vampire and zombie movies are coming out consistently (albeit we haven't had a good vampire or zombie movie in a while)

Solid.

Connect this with post-9/11 paranoia and 2008 economic 'crash' and you have an Independent.co.uk article

I think he's saying zombies in media which might have been a consumerist critique though inevitably and ironically appropriated by the said culture began showing reflections of sentiments from the socio-cultural environment of the past decade.

I think it's interesting if you begin looking at this through U.S. administrations and connecting it through everything that happened in early 21st century.

>though inevitably and ironically appropriated by the said culture began
No shit senpai. Commodfication of culture and all that jazz

>U.S. administrations and connecting it through everything that happened in early 21st century.
And all these are mere intellectual masturbation without any outside comparison

Zombies may have been an allegory for consumerism.
But I think there still being used in an allegorical fashion now.
Zombies are dead already, have no "minds", and want the flesh of you and your loved ones.

In the movies its not so much a competition of resources when its man vs. zombie. Its a competition for themselves.

A man must face vast nameless shambling hordes in order to keep himself safe.

And like the point connecting nazi's and zombies.
Zombies are the perfect personification of "the other". When you look at propaganda poster for war you could easly call your enemy a zombie.

Zombies are about consumerism, competition, and general opposition.
Zombies are always about the cirtique of mans lack of critical thinking skills and reliance on their cognitive biases

I think you just summarized the rather boring episode in Black Mirror Season 3

Seriously, what does PC have to do with it?