Zombies have been scaring us with terrible tactics at the table since the 16th century, but now they’re about to take an air of respectability.
On October 30, Emily Zarka of Arizona State University will present “Exhumed: A History of Zombies” on PBS. Known as THE ASU’s “monster expert,” Zarka also wrote the new documentary, which aired at nine o’clock at night, Arizona time (see local time lists).
Zarka, who earned her PhD in British romantic literature and Gothic fiction from the ASU and is an associate professor in the English Department, is no stranger to television. She is the writer and presenter of “Monstrum”, an online PBS series. “Storied” youTube channel that examines the complex stories and motivations of some of the world’s most famous monsters.
For “Exhumed,” he will talk to other researchers about why zombies have gained popularity over the past decade. ASU Now also sought to know why these carnivorous monsters also occupied a position in the firmament for centuries while scaring us to death. . So we plugged his brain into a Q
Question: My arrival in zombies goes back decades, with the clip from the film “Dawn of the Dead” (1978). When were zombies introduced into ancient literature and later into popular culture?
Answer: Historically, the zombie goes back long before written literature. It is vital to remain in the brain that there are many monsters in oral folklore and hitale, perhaps even in art, before their descriptions are written anywhere. As the concept of zombie emerged in the voodoo of West Africa’s non-secular practices brought into slavery in Haiti, Europeans have become aware of the concept only as a fleeting concept. For this reason, we can insinuate the first written iteration of the word “zombie” in any language to a French text from 1697 detailing the story of a Creole Countess in the French Caribbean who is tormented at dusk by non-secular accomplices. invisible of a sorcerer called “zombies. ” It’s a long way from the corpses of the undead that we recognize today.
In English, “zombie” seems for the first time in Brazilian history through Robert Southey (1810-1819), in reference to an African deity. It was actually only Haiti’s American profession in the early 20th century, when American hounds and the army workers’ corps documented their exaggerated accounts of zombies, which made the impression on fictional literature in some way. Soon after, Hollywood captured the idea, and that’s when zombies really got into popular culture. He came here in 1968 with George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead,” which featured the first reanimated and meat-eating corpses in the film, and replaced the zombies forever.
Q: Anne Rice’s books and the feature film “Interview with the Vampire” (1994) provoked a decade-long fascination with the vampire genre, and now it turns out that it has been replaced by zombies. Will the fascination with zombies disappear or disappear?
A: I don’t think vampires or zombies have left our popular minds, at least not for long. One may rise more powerful than the other for a while, but they are parallel to each other. The undead date back thousands of years, with a wealth of cultures and ancient periods with corpses reanimated in their tradition. Vampires and zombies are more popular in the 20th and 21st centuries due to the advent of cinema and video games, offering simple visual metaphors for everything from consumerism to segregation. They evolve in parallel with technology, so I think as long as we continue to invent new technologies used for narrative dissemination, we’ll continue to see zombies in those stories. I think vampires and zombies have an amazing long lives to look forward.
Q: Your education is in literature and Gothic, how is a great instructor like you an authority on zombies?
A: I grew up on horror, but as a child I thought that loving monsters and scary stories was all I kept hidden. No one told me, but I internalized it anyway because I was afraid of being noticed as strange. Until my BA in painting when I took two courses: History of Georgian England and Popular Culture Topics: Zombies, the same semester. These classes and teachers replaced my life. I learned that horror was a valuable read and that the best genre already existed that encapsulated everything I enjoyed: gothic. From there, I just committed to that. My honors thesis on the undead in the British Romantic era has finally become the basis for my thesis and now my career. In my research, I temporarily learned that other people haven’t been talking and writing about the undead for a long time, yet we still use them as a training tool. Once I identified this, I knew I could make similar connections with other monsters, seeming to teach us as much as they scare us, and the concept of “Monstrum” was born.
Q: As host of “Exhumed: A History of Zombies”, what experts did you consult to see how zombies have become so popular in the United States?
A: I have had the absolute privilege of speaking to a variety of experts, non-secular leaders and academics. I have spoken to anthropologists, an art curator, historians, specialists in literature and film, authors and practitioners of voodoo and voodoo. of other people who not only had wisdom, but also an exclusive wisdom on the subject, demonstrates how zombies are a subject of universal appeal. The story of the zombie is not what can be told through a single user or a type of individual. our hitale as humans, especially here in America.
Q: What are your 3 favorite zombie videos and how did they turn them into your “brain”?
A: Wow, it’s hard. ” The Night of the Undead”(1968) was the first zombie movie I saw, so it had an instant effect on me, and as I developed I learned how radical and intelligent I was. not only as a gender-changing text, but also as an observation on the social and political environment in the United States in the late 1960s. The first film that really made me see that the real villains in zombie stories are living human beings was “28 Days Later”(2002), and those surely terrifying soldiers, so I also have to come with this of my three most sensitive. In addition, it was one of the first big screen movies to show zombies in quick motion. My Favorite Zombie The movie of the last decade is “Train to Busan” (2016). Cinematography, plot and play are phenomenal, but I really appreciate the way you use zombies as a metaphor for social mobility and the division of elegance.
Top photo: Emily Zarka, associate of ASU’s faculty, poses for a portrait at the Tempe Arts Center on October 4, 2018. Photo via Deanna Dent / ASU Now
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