From this week’s reading of The Undead by Cohen, I understand more about the monster culture that related to modern society. Personally, I watch a lot of zombie related movies. Most of them have a common storyline that zombies terrify people and the world is about to be ended. People who are bitten by the zombies all become undead and zombie-like. When I was watching these movies, it is more about entertainment rather than thinking through the meaning behind it.
However, after reading through the article, I have more idea about why people create zombie as a character to shows the social norms. From my understanding of the part of the article, Cohen uses zombie to symbolize people in modern day society. The idea that zombie “just want to eat our brain”(Cohen 399) reflects people’s belief in materialism nowadays. Zombie’s action shows they are desperate of eating people’s brain, and a lot of times people also have this zombie-like action. For instance, during Black Friday or other big sale days, people line up outside of mall or stores waiting for the opening and push each other to get in aggressively.
They are zombie-like in the sense that they lose their heart of taking care of each other and only shoot for what they desire. People show desperate attitudes and abusive manners under these circumstances. I agree with author’s metaphor that he connects the zombies to human beings. We all have a “zombie” inside of us that sometimes we disregard certain ethical issues and act as zombies with no emotions and careless. We all need to learn how to face the “Zombie” inside of us and learn how to defend the true self-identities.
Pic Cited
https://www.twice.com/retailing/amazon-walmart-first-place-black-friday-weekend-shoppers
https://notrumpnewsmoviereviews.com/2017/12/30/train-to-busan-not-your-typical-zombie-movie/