Zombies, A Weird Obsession

The woman is screaming as the beefy hero shoves her behind himself. He cocks his sawed off shotgun to blow the head off a gibbering, decaying zombie. Everyone knows they keep coming unless you dismantle the head. The hero, and the scantily clothed woman run for some abandoned building to hole up in, preferably with lots of ammunition and provisions to sustain them for a while. This scene has been played out so many times. We have to wonder how it can still titillate teens and twenty-somethings, who flock to theaters and big screen televisions to catch every gory second.

They actually have a zombie soap opera now called The Walking Dead.  The young men I know and admire can be found glued to their seats, watching this horrific show. I am always amazed and somewhat alarmed by their fascination with zombies. What is it about zombies that attracts young males? The zombies are already dead, which dehumanizes them and makes them fair game. They crave human flesh and if you are bitten you will turn into a zombie, so they must be killed. It becomes a twisted kind of sport, to see how many zombies you can kill, and also, how many ways you can do it. Maybe it does make some kind of warped sense, there is a lot of anger out there in this politically correct world. Young males are notorious for the pent up aggression they so often carry because of raging hormones, and the stresses of today's society. It helps release the pent up rage, having someone to annihilate

The concept of zombies originated from Haitian voodoo belief. A person who practiced such evil could raise the dead. The dead would be mindless killing machines at your command if you had the power to raise them. Hollywood's first movie about zombies was the 1968 film, Night of the Living Dead. Since this movie was released their have been countless zombie movies through the years. I myself can not watch them as they terrify me, but maybe they do serve a purpose in society for the young men who watch them.