What+does+the+zombie+film+genre+reveal+to+the+historian+of+cold+war+mentalities?

=What does the Zombie Film Genre reveal to the Historian of the Cold War Mentality?= media type="youtube" key="iPNqf4S6tvg" height="344" width="425" Video Version = =

=Introduction= The Zombie film genre, today a very prevalent genre that makes millions in revenue each year, rose to western popular culture in the late 1960s; a time at which the events of the cold war weighed heavily on nearly every aspect of culture and mentality all over the world. Therefore, by studying a genre of film which arose from this time of extreme tension and chaos, we can gain a valuable insight into the state of mind of large parts of the western population.

=The Cold War - An Intro= The Cold War was a period from the end of WW2 - 1945 - to the early 90s in which there was a very precarious state of economical, political and millitary tension between the USA and Russia - two of the biggest nuclear powers in the world. Events of interest during this period include the space race, the second red scare and the Cuban missile crisis. As we will see, the world came close to ending on more than one occasion throughout the cold war (an interesting depiction of the world had history taken a different path can be seen in the recent video game "Fallout 3" - set in a post-nuclear apocalyptical version of washington DC). I will look in depth at certain aspects of this period later on.

=Zombie Movies - An Intro= Zombie Movies are classically set in a post-apocalyptic world where the viewer follows a handful of survivors through a desolate and treachorous landscape. A good example of a classic zombie movie setting can be seen in the recent re-make of the film "I Am Legend" - in which Will Smith inhabits a desolate and empty New York - which, at night is overrun by flesh hungry, deformed zombies. Which brings me onto the second important aspect of zombie films: the zombie virus. Generally, zombies will catch their victims and eat the good stuff; shortly after which their victim will rise again to join the ranks of the undead.

The origins of the zombie lie in Afro-Caribbean spiritual belief system named Vodou. Zombies were brought into western popular culture largely on the back of the success of the 1968 film "Night of the Living Dead".

I will now take the two main aspects of zombie movies that I discussed in the previous paragraph and see what I can discover about the cold war mentality through relating these to what I know about the Cold War.

=Aspect 1 - Post-Apocalyptic Setting= As I discussed earlier, films featuring zombies generally take place in landscapes that feature civilization in ruins. To a modern reader, this concept may seem fairly fantastical or far fetched; however, around the time these early zombie movies were written and produced: the nuclear apocalypse could have almost been described as inevitable. A good piece of evidence to back up this claim is the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. This was when Russia set up nuclear warheads targeting the USA on Cuba, an island just off the east coast of the states. For the entirety of this crisis, both nations had their fingers hovering over the buttons to launch their nuclear arsenals: A move which if carried out would have lead to the complete and utter destruction of civilization as we know it today. What's more, the population had already seen what a nuclear weapon could do to a civilized area - with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WW2. This shows us as historians, that the idea of the apocalypse seen so frequently in zombie movies doesn't come from fantasy, yet from every day reality.

Secondly, another idea in support of the fear of the apocalypse was the feared spread of communism throughout the world. Communism was the USA's biggest fear, the modern day witch hunt. Their fear of the spread of the communist "disease" was a main factor in their contribution to WW2. They believed that this political virus was intent on destroying their great nation. On American propaganda posters the flag can be seen burning in the background above the terrible, dirty communists. So, in consolidation, there was a real threat for the USA of both nuclear obliteration, and of being torn apart from within by communism.

Thirdly, in addition to my original points, the fear generated by the popular representation of half dead, rotting corpses as zombies was not entirely fantastical either. The nuclear disasters that we have witnessed have showed us not only the initial devastation, yet the illness and deformation caused by the residual radiation. Meaning that if there was a nuclear apocalypse, many of the survivors would also be grotesquely deformed.

=Aspect 2 - The Zombie Virus= The idea that zombies are people who have been infected with a virus is fundamental in many modern day films. I do not think it is a coincidence therefore, that the USA that they originated from saw a deadly virus spreading throughout the world, turning all those it touched into anti-american terrorists. The main event I will look at here is the second red scare. A time at which many upper class Americans, thought to have links with communism, were prosecuted and sometimes even sent to jail on very shaky or non existent evidence. This was all due to the USA's fear of a communist conspiracy against them. A good film to use as an example of this would be "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", in which aliens infiltrate the minds of ordinary people in society. This promotes the political idea that you had to be careful as you never knew just who could be a communist.



Books of interest for this topic:

[] - The Culture of the Cold War by Stephen J Whitfield [] - Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide by Glenn Kay