Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

And speaking of the Apocalypse, what is it with zombies, anyway?

We all know that the Apocalypse begins with zombies, (You all did know that, didn’t you? I mean, Rev. 11:11 is pretty clear on the subject; if Revelation can be clear on anything, that is) so I understand why the faithful are always alert to the sudden appearance of the shambling undead. I mean, they’re sort of an End of Days Early Warning System (EDAWS). See a zombie? Better pack your spiritual bags.

But that doesn’t explain the fact that zombies are just. Frakking. Everywhere. They’ve been in movies for a long time, (Personally, I’ve rarely been as scared as I was watching Romero’s “The Night of the Living Dead” for the first time.) but now they have their own TV series, they’re in books, in board games, in video games—even in games where zombies make no sense; I mean, Nazi zombies? Really? Do we have to go there?—and now they’re even used to flog products like candy and soda. Even Sears, that venerable old institution that is (some financial experts say) itself a zombie, even Sears has jumped up on the slow-moving zombie bandwagon.

What is the fascination? Personally, I tired of them sometime in the ’70s, and though I enjoyed their 1982 spike of popularity thanks to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” I feel that we have, long ago, plumbed the depth of that particular pool. They shamble, they want our brains, they never stop. What else can you do with that. The last really fresh addition to the zombie oeuvre was “Shaun of the Dead,” and to be truthful, that was a lone bright spot in a vasty blackness.

And yet they live on.

Some things shall remain a mystery to me, I suppose.

k