POP ROOTS

An UN-Living History:
A Brief Overview of the Zombie Evolution

The first recorded appearance of the word ZOMBIE came one year after Mary Shelley published Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus anonymously - History of Brazil, Vol. III (1819). The author, Romantic English poet, Robert Southey, wrote of a Brazilian chieftain called Zombi. Zombi’s name was a result of colonization, a derivative of NZambi, a snake-deity to Congolese slaves brought to South America to plant and harvest sugarcane. NZambi had the power to bring the dead back to life, and this reference was proof of assimilation between imported Africans and Brazil’s indigenous people. NZambi, Zombi, and the voodoo culture of the Congo spread northward through the Caribbean like a contagion, transferring through oral histories.

Zombi became metaphorical. Haitians, Jamaicans and other Caribbean island slaves began referring to one another as the undead. Surviving the Middle Passage, substandard living conditions and forced labor, what could they be besides something that couldn’t die? Zombi had evolved from a name to an exclamation to a noun.

The culture turned to folklore. By the 1900’s an “E” was tacked on to Zombi and ZOMBIE became commonly known throughout the English speaking world as a walking dead guy too fat to be a ghost and too ugly to be a vampire. NZambi possessing the deceased became a myth and, eventually, an afterthought. Though a small minority in the southern states of America still lived by the laws of voodoo and believed that with a little hair, and a little love, one could enchant the dead to do their bidding, reanimation still remained a foreign concept in the New World - ironically enough, a landscape largely inhabited by people that worship a Jewish-Zombie.

In 1932, director Victor Halperin with United Artists released “White Zombie,” the first film to feature a zombie. A young couple is persuaded to come to Haiti, unaware a forlorn plantation owner has lured them there with a sinister plot to pull the couple apart, realizing his unrequited love. With hopes of persuading the object of his affection to become his wife instead, the plantation owner enlists the help of a local witch doctor to turn the woman he loves into a zombie... (old time movies, no one said it had to make sense.) Four years later we were given a glimpse at the origins of the modern zombie with "Things to Come," a British sci-fi movie based on a novel by H.G. Wells. The film depicts what we would later identify as a zombie horde: "The Wandering Sickness," a large mass of infected slow moving people wandering around unresponsively.

In 1943 Zombie became military slang, a code name for the Canadian Government when referring to its 'Home Guard' army.

In 1968, on a shoe-string budget, filmmaker George A. Romero wrote and directed "Night of the Living Dead." The movie would go on to be hailed as a cult classic and a defining moment in modern horror cinema. It was the first of a quartet of zombie films that would help elevate the undead to the stratosphere of pop-culture and spawn the guide to which all zombie themed story-lines would be judged.

Unfortunately, the films of Sam Raimi ("The Evil Dead," "Army of Darkness"), the music of the Cranberries, Michael Jackson’s Thriller and the countless zombie first person shooter video games that populated the later-half of the 20th century (Resident Evil, Left 4 Dead, House of the Dead, Dead Rising, etc.) only served in hindering the zombie’s potential for allegory. Zombie inspired works became less about exploring humanity and more about creative decapitations. Somehow the terror of never finding rest in the afterlife and being a slave to an insatiable hunger that makes you less than man wasn't scary enough. Zombies started straying away from the horde appearing in the subsequent sequels to slasher films like "Halloween" and "Friday the 13th." (NOTE: these movies led to the bastardization of the slasher film. Somehow, a 7 foot sociopath with a sharp knife and/or machete wasn't scary enough; we had to make him a zombie too.)

Zombies began showing up in literature. The first mainstream Z-Lit book was the publication of Book of the Dead in 1990. 13 years later zombie literature hit its stride. Former SNL writer Max Brooks' The Zombie Survival Guide, a well researched, if not overly thorough, game-plan for navigating a zombie apocalypse, became a bestseller. Less than a year after zombie armies made their first appearance in the Harry Potter universe ("Half-Blood Prince"), Brooks followed up with World War Z in 2006. Along with Stephen King's Cell, and Marvel Zombies, 2006 was a crucial year for zombies bound in hardback. The momentum continued, inevitably leading to the grossly popular Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith in 2009. Coupling Jane Austen with modern zombie fiction, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies went on to be on dozens of recommended reading lists while proposing the zombie as a literary character every bit as worthy of being celebrated as Fitzwilliam Darcy: The boorish but well-intentioned romantic hero.

This explosion in Z-Lit can be correlated to a specific year in film. Zombies were brought to the forefront of everyone's mind when they received an overhaul in 2002. 2 films, "Resident Evil" and "28 Days Later," explored the limits of the zombie film. One of the world's most deadly and beloved film icons was made faster. Creative minds continued in this vein and by the time Zack Snyder released his 2004 remake of George A. Romero's "Dawn of the Dead" zombies were as fast as Usain Bolt. Zombies continued getting faster until "Shaun of the Dead" slowed them back down again in 2004 for comedic effect.

A year later in 2005, George A. Romero returned to the zombie realm with "Land of the Dead." The movie depicted zombies evolving mentally, working together under the leadership of Big Daddy to conquer what could be the last remaining metropolitan area left standing in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

In 2007, the evolution of zombies would be encapsulated in a film that claimed to have absolutely nothing to do with zombies. Will Smith stared in "I Am Legend," a movie that featured zombies with both incredible athleticism and problem solving skills. These "zombies" fulfilled the destiny of a zombie evolution which novelist Richard Matheson unknowingly predicted in the book I Am Legend (1954). Like Brazilians and the Congolese, like European culture fused with that of South America, zombification and vampirism commingled and what was born was a zombie horde with a chief strategist that can only strike at night. Zombies finally had an ALPHA MALE, a Dracula. Just by the timing of its release, the film "I Am Legend" accomplished more than the two film versions that preceded it. It is a severely underappreciated piece to the cinematic tradition of sci-fi/horror and a crucial entry in the evolution of zombie superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever. There is no telling what will be the next step in zombie evolution but if the work of Matheson, Wells or Southey is any example we will see it first in print.