Zombie. I'm sure you all have an image in your mind right now of what that word represents, what creature, being or thing that you think fits that description. Zombies have become a semi-popular cultural item in films and games, but how many have pondered the origin of this mythical being? Vampires, werewolves and other supernatural beings have a rich mythology, but zombies seem to have sprung up from almost nowhere. So what is the inspiration for undead beings that want to eat your brains?
A search on wikipedia and also looking in a couple of dictionaries, there are three possible etymological origins for the word zombie. Jumbie is the West Indian term for ghost. Nzambi is a Kongo word meaning "spirit of a dead person". It may also be from the Creole/Bantu word zonbi, which means a person who is believed to have died and been brought back to life without speech or free will.
The mythology of the zombie is most attributed in Haitian culture to Vodou (anglicised to Voodoo), or Bokor, the sorcerers who practices Voodoo. They would apparently raise people from the dead, who would then be controlled by the Bokor. Skeptics tried to determine the truth of this supposedly supernatural phenomenon, but were unable to find any proof or evidence that could lead them to a more rational explaination.
In 1980, a man in a Haitian village claimed to be Clairvius Narcisse. However, he had been declared dead in Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Deschapelles, Haitai on May 2nd 1962. He claimed he had been paralysed, yet conscious, and could recall the doctor laying a sheet over him at the hospital. He was able to answer intimate questions about his childhood and family that no other people could know. His family eventually agreed that this man who had appeared to have come back to life was indeed their relative, Clairvius Narcisse. This discovery prompted the Zombie Project, which ran from 1982 to 1984.
Dr. Wade Davis, ethnobotanist and anthrolpologist, travelled through Haiti to research the zombie phenomenon. While the bokor believed it was their sorcery that was bringing people back from the grave, Dr. Davis discovered that they also used powders to prepare those that they would turn into zombies. He collected 8 samples of combined powders from various regions, and while they were all different, 7 of the 8 had four elements in common. Pufferfish which contain the neurotoxin tetrodotoxin, a marine toad which produces toxins, a hyla tree frog, and human remains.
The inclusion of the pufferfish was what most interested Davis. The tetrodotoxin, which has no known antidote, can cause paralysis and death, and victims of tetrodotoxin oftem remain conscious right up until death. His theory was that if the powder was applied to a living person, the ingredients would cause irritation and break the skin, thus allowing the tetrodotoxin to enter the bloodstream, and before long they would appear to be in a dead state. Then the bokor would retrieve the 'body', and due to cultural beliefs the person would believe they were a zombie. However, the research was found to be inconclusive and has not been accepted by the scientific community. Reasons for this dismissal include repeated applications of the powder to test animals having no effect, potential zombies being diagnosed with mental disorders or mistaken identity, and whether initial testing was done in a scientific and controlled manner.
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While I originally planned to break this into a series and discuss zombies in popular culture and their passage through literature, movies and games, a pretty thorough job has already been done on the wikipedia page zombies in popular culture, which I recommend you read before continuing. However, everything below should still make sense if you don't.
Of note in that entry is the story 'In The Vault' by H.P. Lovecraft in 1925, which the entry claims may be the first noted bite from a zombie. Which brings us to popular culture when it comes to zombies. When and how did zombies, based on the mystical summoning from bokor and then kept in their thrall, turn into the zombie apocalypse scenarios that are so common today in movies? It seems that each zombie movie have a few major things in common. Firstly, they no longer feel any pain or have a sense of self-preservation. Second, they crave human flesh, but not from those that are already zombies, only from those who have not been turned/infected. Beyond that, there are some other ideas that may turn up, but not always. One of those is the slow shuffle, but there have been an increasing number of representations of faster more rabid zombies. Most zombies are mindless creatures with only the most basic motor functions or reasoning, but George Romero showed us in Land of the Dead that they had developed some form of reasoning or emotion, and ability to communicate with other zombies. Also, most require a bullet or bludgeoning shot to the brain or to have their head cut off to be 'killed'.
Night of the Living Dead is considered the film that popularised zombies. In the wikipedia entry I linked above, it offers a quote from the book Dreadful Pleasures : An Anatomy of Modern Horror by James Twitchell "bred the zombie with the vampire, and what he got was the hybrid vigour of a ghoulish plague monster". So here we see evidence of the more traditional voodo zombie taking on the curse of the vampire, where the zombie converts those that it bites. Of course, every zombie apocalypse has to start somewhere. I've not seen Night of the Living Dead, but apparently this was caused by radiation from a Venus space probe that exploded in Earths atmosphere. In Dawn of the Dead it is not explicitly explained, but one of the survivors mentions (and is also the tag line for the movie) that once hell is full, the dead will walk the earth. More popular these days is that it is a virus (manufactured or otherwise), such as in 28 Days Later and Resident Evil. While the infected may not the dead returned to life, they are usually still considered zombie movies because of their behaviour and the sense of apocalypse they portray, as humanity is threatened to be wiped from the Earth by those already infected. Another movie I watched recently, Boy Eats Girl, took the zombie back to it's roots, and a mother resurrects her son through the use of voodoo. However, because the mystical book she used was damaged and she did not prepare the right ingredients, the resurrection was not a complete success and he did succumb to the urge and bite somebody; while he retained most of his humanity, the recipient did not and caused a zombie plague.
Zombies have also spread to other genres than horror. They have spread into comedy (or 'zombedy') with films like Shaun of The Dead and Undead, which poke fun at the genre, to Fido, which stars Billy Connelly as the titular Fido, a 'pet' who gets in trouble for eating the next door neighbour, but becomes almost like a family friend. A stranger pairing still is the film Zombie Honeymoon. A newly married husband becomes a zombie (I forget why offhand), and his wife decides that she will stick by her husband, even though he starts eating their friends. After hearing about this film I expected this to a Zombedy, and while there is some small dark comedy within, the film is more like a drama than horror or comedy, with a touch of romance.
This whole entry has been inspired from having a desire to watch a few zombie movies of late. Of course, I haven't seen them all and I'm sure there are still some other great ones, as well as terrible ones, for me to watch or avoid. What are your favourites, and what type of zombie do you prefer? I enjoyed Dawn of the Dead 'traditional' zombie, and also liked the progression they made in Land of the Dead. However, I wasn't as impressed by Day of the Dead (the remake, I have not seen the original) where there were zombies that were crawling upside down on the roof (another adoption from the vampire mythos?). I prefer my zombies to have a weakness (slower, less co-ordinated which were still exhibited in Land of the Dead despite their progress) to offset their strengths (numbers, inability to feel pain).
When it comes to games, I haven't played too many games with zombies this generation. I've yet to play Dead Space or Left 4 Dead, but I did have a good time with Dead Rising despite not finishing it. One of my favourite zombie modes in games was a mod for the original Unreal Tournament where zombies spawned in the stage. Depending on the settings you chose, they would start spawning more as you killed them. Despite their slow movement and short range of attack, it became quite a tense affair as they spawned more each time you killed one, forcing you to keep moving while you tried to blast your way through the nearest exit. Having smart AI is one thing, but sometimes I prefer fighitng overwhelming numbers of flesh bricks.
Sources
Wikipedia Page : Zombie
How Stuff Works
plus a few relatedpages and movie pages from imdb I'm too lazy to link :P