The Library Of Narcissism: Whoops Apocalypse and the Zombie Zeitgeist part III

I think in America there has been an uneasy feeling for a long time. I think on an almost unconscious level we know our culture doesn't quite work. We are a land of great opportunity, but not for all. This uneasiness shows up in many places, sometimes in our political yelling matches, where the most disenfranchised will attack each other in an attempt to keep their crumbs from the proverbial pie; sometimes in our response to the latest threat to our life style, and other times in our movies. I'll save the political analysis for a later post. Right now I want to look at our threats and our movies, especially zombie movies.

Remember Y2K, or the Hale bop comet, or last year's hype about 2012? Are Americans inherently crazy, or are we just prone to conspiracy theories? These events, or nonevents, weren't conspiracies in the purest sense, but in a bigger sense they offered the same things to the theorists. If you believed or believed these events would have a great terrific impact on the world you were privy to special knowledge. For a brief moment you were pulled from your day to day tedium thrust into the middle of a whirlwind of possibilities. And of course the terrific events seemed very real and very possible because some scientist had unearthed the truth; they had found the hidden message of the Maya or the secret alpha omega computer code. Just having that special knowledge put the holder above the rest of us. In a nation where everyone strives to be exceptional this knowledge is a tiny step towards exceptionalism.

It's more than just our need to be exceptional that encourages us to believe the doomsdays. Maybe it's our cultural roots that drive us towards armegedons. I think a majority of Americans are predisposed to believe the world will end, it's part of our cannon of religious beliefs. Even though many of us do not believe in Judgment day I think it has created a meme firmly bedded in our psyche, next to the boogey man, and Darth Vader.

Even that kernel of a thought isn't enough for us to have so firmly accepted all the potential armegedons we seem to believe possible. I think they have mixed together with another nagging subconscious remnant, the realization that our current consumer model doesn't work.

This idea nags its way to the surface periodically with the latest doomsday and frequently in our modern cinematic myths. The zombie zeitgeist was born with the launch of Dawn of the Dead; it was the first zombie flick to really latch on to the popular imagination. It followed the same basic plot of its predecessor. A Zombie apocalypse with survivors trapped fending for themselves against an army of Zombies. It was also different from Night, the survivors were trapped in a mall, and the zombies, while menacing, were very human, wandering through the mall, looking for flesh, instead of bargains.

Besides the visual metaphor of zombies in a mall think about the bigger metaphor: zombies are us, only slightly different. They are different in the sense that they consume only one thing and they will eventually consume it until it is gone. We on the other hand consume everything. Metaphorically at least the zombies are the ultimate consumers, they have no need to eat, they’re dead, and yet that need to consume drives them like a plague destroying everything in their path.

Just like us. That’s why we have the zombie Zeitgeist now; we are terrified of our own reflection. That’s also why we so easily believe this week’s apocalypse de jour. On some level we know overconsumption as an economic model was a bad idea, but we’re afraid to even mention such blasphemy.

With both zombies and conspiracies we know they offer us a chance to start over, and maybe get it right this time.