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Night of the Living DeadbeatsPosted on Oct 8, 2009By David Sirota What’s with all the zombies lately? That could be a question about one of the hippest retro fads that pop culture has going these days. Inspired by horror genres of the past, zombies have lurched back to pre-eminence in books like “World War Z,” video games like “Left 4 Dead” and blockbuster films like “Zombieland.” Even the highbrow producers at National Public Radio recently devoted a segment to a University of Ottawa study entitled “Mathematical Modeling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection.” Indeed, the undead have become so popular, they’ve spurred “zombie walks” in cities and spawned Weird Al-ish parodies through Jane Austen knockoffs like “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” and bands such as the Zombeatles (with their hit “Hard Day’s Night of the Living Dead”). Frighteningly enough, though, that question about zombies could also be asked of America’s political culture. It was only a year ago that “zombie” first entered the colloquial economic lexicon during the collapse of the financial institutions that were cannibalizing the economy. From a balance-sheet perspective, many of these firms were dead. But they were quickly reanimated as zombie banks with trillions of taxpayer dollars. Like a typical zombie outbreak, the initial plague spread. Advertisement On Capitol Hill, the scene this Halloween season looks like Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video. Decrepit zombie politicians with the funk of 40,000 years stalk Congress alongside the very zombie lobbyists that the election was said to disempower. Lately, they are working in tandem to construct zombie health insurance companies—for-profit corporations eternalized by public subsidies, customer mandates and almost no regulation or competition. At the same time, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that should have already concluded keep plodding on with an unchanging zombie strategy—all while media zombies push zombie myths about death panels and birth certificates, effectively feasting on the last functioning lobes of the American brain. Call me a zombie pundit, but I agree with “World War Z” author Max Brooks’ suggestion that the concurrent rise of zombie pop and political cultures is no coincidence. “Zombies are an apocalyptic threat, we are living in times of apocalyptic anxiety [and] we need a vessel in which to coalesce those anxieties,” he says. In fact, I’ll go out on a severed limb and take it further: If zombies specifically represent the apocalyptic downsides of immortalized mindlessness, then today’s zombie zeitgeist is not merely a result of scary quandaries created by stupidity. It is a reaction to both those problems and the sense that they can never be thwarted. Here we are, a year after a financial implosion that should have driven a stake into the heart of free market fundamentalism. Here we are, a year after an election that was supposed to pour holy water on Wall Street vampires, exorcise the economy’s demons and challenge the ancient mummies of neoconservative foreign policy. Yet here we are, with virtually nothing changed, watching the same zombie crises indomitably stumble forward. And so what do we do? We flee to entertainment venues that let us enjoy the campy thrill of confronting the undead—even though we’ve lost the ability to do that in real life. “The zombie is a way for us to explore massive disasters in a safe way,” Brooks says. “You can’t shoot the financial meltdown in the head, but you can do that with a zombie.” David Sirota is the author of the best-selling books “Hostile Takeover” and “The Uprising.” He hosts the morning show on AM 760 in Colorado and blogs at OpenLeft.com. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com. © 2009 Creators.com Elsewhere: . CommentsAre you a Truthdig member yet? Login now, or register with Truthdig. Add Your Comment
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By Anarcissie, October 15 at 10:36 am #
Cesspools are useful things, although the more advanced folks use septic tanks which are about the same thing although industrially gussied up. In any case, while cesspools may produce enough methane for a brief burst of flame, they don’t burn very well overall and I wouldn’t recommend trying to ignite one unless your sewage contains a remarkable level of hydrocarbons.
Report thisBy stcfarms, October 15 at 2:37 am #
The criminals run every government in the world, the economy is dead and
Report thisthere are 5.5 billion more people than the earth can support. Wars are as
common as ever, the sea is rising and the weather is changing. The imaginary
god creature people want to have a conflagration called armageddon and
species are dieing off at a phenomenal rate. Add to that the lack of knowledge
and wisdom and the answer is inescapeable, we live in a cesspool.
By Sepharad, October 15 at 2:08 am #
Jon, The world is not a stinking cesspool. Despite everything and everyone who tries to turn it into one, there are enormous amounts of courage, truth, persistence, love, music, intricate brained humans able to appreciate and protect nature ... Have you been watching too much CNN? You need to move around more.
Report thisBy Night-Gaunt, October 14 at 3:21 pm #
The pheonix is mythical and it didn’t kill and burn many others on its pyre and they wouldn’t be resurrected either.
Only if the rest of us were protected from their conflagulation and subsequent immolation.
Report thisBy Jon, October 14 at 2:52 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
To Sepharad: If the world in question is a stinking cesspool run by corrupt zombie bankers, why not let it burn? Maybe the end result will be a glorious rebirth, like the phoenix rising from the ashes.
Report thisBy cootieville, October 12 at 3:41 pm #
Wasn’t it Ezra Pound who said “no ideas but in zombies” No, that was William Carlos Williams. Ezar Pound said “make it dead.” We went to the moon 40 years ago and now we’re going to hell.
Report thisBy Litl Bludot, October 11 at 4:29 am #
Sirota does get it after all. His last article conveyed a complete lack of understanding. Now, suddenly, he’s noticed the zombies. I wonder if he’ll be able to keep them in sight?
Report thisBy Outraged, October 11 at 4:04 am #
Wow, Mr. Sirota…. this article certainly engaged the zoombies. Is this the ol’ “you can attract more flies with honey than with vinegar” adage immortalized forever (supposedly anyway) here on the net? They’re buzzin’ around now, just look at ‘em….. you’d think there’s a pile of cow plop somewheres to be had. Yep.
Report thisBy Sepharad, October 11 at 3:15 am #
I’m not afraid of the zombies (unless they vote). I’m afraid of all those people who (as Alfred said to Bruce Wayne in “The Dark Knight”) just like to watch the world burn.
Report thisBy Night-Gaunt, October 10 at 11:44 pm #
They always do.
Report thisBy stcfarms, October 10 at 4:07 pm #
I had a discussion with member of the Jehova’s Witness religion. She told me
that only 144,000 people would get into heaven. When confronted with the
fact that her church had over 7 million members she seemed confused. When I
asked if she honestly believed that she would be one of the 144,000 she
assured me that she would. It must be nice not to have to carry around a
heavy cerebral cortex…
By Night-Gaunt, October 10 at 3:22 pm #
They expect to be among the “some.”
Report thisBy Night-Gaunt, October 10 at 3:22 pm #
Just remember that these End Times followers expect to come out on top in the New World Order that their god will create for them. It is a happy ending for some. They expect to be among the “some.”
Report thisBy stcfarms, October 10 at 2:58 pm #
When logical solutions are put forth they are hammered down, just like the
nail that sticks up. Lumping all ‘end time’ scenarios together is illogical as the
solutions differ. Extinction level events are common throughout geologic time
and should not be written off lightly. Sure the problems are manmade and can
be solved, that does not mean that they will be solved however.
By Jean Gerard, October 9 at 11:07 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
Consider this: The “end times” is oversold by both media and by religious
fanatics who actually want the world to end because it will justify their beliefs.
Don’t be a victim. All these problems are manmade and can be unmade.
Report thisBy bogi666, October 10 at 10:30 am #
Good analogy by Sirota. Curious, how the D.C. zombies railed against ACORN, because they register voters being the real reason, while $1,000,000,000,000’s of taxpayer monies are lavished on Wall St.so they can continue unabated with their corruption. I remember a quote from a Wall St. person concerning the “bailout” funds. He complained that the money should be used to rehabilitate the stock markets instead of benefiting those who pay the taxes plus interest for the bailout. Sure enough, the money is/has been used to rehabilitate the stock market, corruption intact of course. The failed bankers, the CORPORATE WELFARE KINGS, get the bailout proceeds at 1% interest and their investment bank division use it to prop up stock values which is the reason for the rebound from the March low’s.The bailout funds are financed by Treasury bonds, DOLED OUT TO THE CORPORATE WELFARE KINGS with the interest and principle paid by individual taxpayers.
Report thisBy Jean Gerard, October 9 at 11:07 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
Consider this: The “end times” is oversold by both media and by religious fanatics who actually want the world to end because it will justify their beliefs. End of the world scenarios are oversold for several reasons: Promotes following the leader, promotes continuous wars by keeping people scared. Keeps people glued to media, which is good for advertisers. Keeps people from thinking of solutions to serious problems and acting to prevent them. Makes people feel insignificant: Disasters are “holocausts”. The national debt is “cata-strophic”, population increase is “exponential.”
Report thisClimate change may be “irreversible.” All this demobilizes people, stuns them into over-eating and hiding under the bed. Why? To keep them from getting together? From protesting? From searching for solutions? Who’s responsible for this? Media, media, media—Radio, newspapers, preachers, blogs, tweets and twitters, and of course YouTube and the Boob Tube. Long on hysteria; short on solutions. Don’t be a victim. All these problems are manmade and can be unmade.
By Anarcissie, October 9 at 8:40 pm #
Human beings can simultaneously fear and desire the same thing.
I don’t know if parodies indicate the end of a cultural phenomenon. In the realm of zombies, Night of the Living Dead is a sort of parody, even of itself; later we have Evil Dead 2 and From Dusk Till Dawn and so on. Indeed, zombies are so over the top they cry out for satirization. I think the zombies are still with us.
Report thisBy samosamo, October 9 at 5:39 pm #
I always thought of the zombies as a reference to the vegetable garden that is fertlized to grow in numbers not in stature by our most impressive MSM.
Goebbels is trying to crawl out his grave to get in on the fun on this.
But I guess there is difference in a zombie and a vegetable, but what it is escapes meet for now other than the zombie is attached to the actual promoters of the financial zombie terrorist attack while the vegetables just stay planted and let the zombies go about their way.
Report thisBy Gmonst, October 9 at 4:44 pm #
This author is a bit behind the times, the zombie thing is nearing its death. Parodies like Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland signal an end of the Zombie fascination, not its increase. I predict there will be no new hit zombie films for many years after Zombie land.
I think that the modern Zombie movies don’t really express a fear of apocalypse, but a desire for it. The desire for a complete breakdown of society and all its structures to the instant creation of a world that requires cooperation and rebirth. I think there is a deepening sense by people in modern cultures that something has gone wrong, the system we have created is like an undead beast. I think the left and the right politically (people not politicians) are both coming from that same fear. Progressives want to move forward to make a new system, running to the new. Conservatives want to slide it back to sometime they believe it wasn’t like it is, running to old. Both feel the disconnect of modern life. Two different strategies to deal with the same fear, isolation, loneliness, and helpless dependency which makes up modern life. Lets all grow some food!
Report thisBy Night-Gaunt, October 9 at 3:09 pm #
Actually read “Herbert West:Reanimator” (1920) Lovecraft‘s first serial paid for story. The reagent used by the calm, blue-eyed, blond headed machine of a man would make the dead react in violent ways. Some became cannibals and fiends. One actually retained his intelligence even as his head was detached from his re-animated body. Six short stories taking place from 1904-1921. I wonder if Lovecraft was the first to have the reanimated dead become cannibals of the living and the dead? He also pioneered the idea that if you eat human flesh you would become strong and long lived. {Was he the first to do that too?} Not to be confused with “Wendigo.”
It would change things if we could close down all of the self actuated or zombie organizations and companies we have out there eating us alive financially and morally.
Report thisBy Anarcissie, October 9 at 2:43 pm #
A good point about zombies being apocalyptic. In the earlier myth, they were individuals raised from the dead to act as servants by witch doctors. However, with Night of the Living Dead the rising of the zombies became general, the resurrection of the dead promised in, precisely, the Apocalypse. In this version of the myth, however, the living dead aren’t as pretty as the Evangelist’s, and they’re out to conquer the world. In this model, the living dead seem to represent the suppressed and apparently defeated lower orders of world politics and nature in general, which are now beginning to strike back against their oppressors (us) in the forms of economic chaos, terrorism, and ecological catastrophe. As Uncle Sigmund said, the repressed returns in hideous form. It may well be that the interest in zombies is driven by some sort of perception on the level of the collective unconscious, if you believe in such a thing, that we are living in End Times of some kind.
However, the zombie banks and bankers don’t seem to fit into this model. Instead of surging up from the grave, they are beings that died but remained standing, simulating life, a petrified forest with petrified animals in it. They aren’t rising up against oppression; rather, they are the top layer, the upper crust, who have died and are now slowly—all too slowly—flaking off and blowing away in the wind. The people tried to shake them off a year ago, but it didn’t work. No doubt they will try again.
Vampires are popular these days, too, and they’re sexier than zombies (whose body parts tend to fall off at inconvenient moments). Any ideas about that?
Report thisBy greenferret, October 9 at 1:47 pm #
This Halloween, Reverend Billy Talen and supporters of his campaign for mayor of New York City will rampage thru the streets of NYC as dead-eyed Bloomberg zombies… the horrifying ZOMBERGS!
Details at http://www.voterevbilly.org/events/halloween
Report thisBy Night-Gaunt, October 9 at 11:31 am #
It is an infection and the only way to stop one is to get at their brain, via Congress who facilitates so much of it. Then vaccinate those not taken over by the zombie virus of greed to keep it from spreading. Strong laws and those who enforce them would stem the tide. Serious penalties for this treason and subversion like life of hard labor for starters.
So far gold, silver, platinum and chromium collar criminals are treated all too nicely and delicately in our culture. Not as the fiends they are.
Report thisBy whole2th, October 9 at 6:37 am #
Like insects bitten and paralyzed by spiders and ‘in storage’ awaiting the spider
meal sucking out their fluids, Americans are frozen in fear of another 9/11—
and stopped by paralytic psy-ops fear from even opening the Pandora’s box (a
real investigation) which would reveal that the Mossad, CIA, Pakistani ISI and
treasonous top officials and operatives in media, insurance, banking, law
enforcement, courts, Congress. When we add up the financial zombies who
continue to loot us all with the psy-ops zombies, we’ll need the FEMA camps to
hold them all.
Here’s the short list of 9/11 zombies: http://whodidit.org Open co-
conspirators to see the list. It seems that we have way too many dual US/Israeli
citizens and Zionists in high positions in our government, treasury and media.
These Zionists fear a real investigation into 9/11 like vampires fear the light of
Report thisday.
By stcfarms, October 9 at 2:36 am #
There is a cure for zombies in Washington, quit using their fiat money. The
Report thisfake money gives them power, it is without value if we do not give it value.
Stick them with all of the money and the national debt. When they have all the
money fire the bastards and ship them to China with the money. We can barter
our goods and labor with each other and not work for slave wages. The
underground economy does not need Wall Street or the government. it is
booming.