What do Zombies mean?

\I’m told that "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" drew on Cold War themes, in particular the fear of alien traitors among us who look just like friends. Or at any rate, this contributed to its popularity: it touched a nerve.

I’m not in close touch with pop culture, but it seems to me as though every few weeks there’s some new zombie-themed book or movie or game; and I frequently hear about "preparing for the zombie invasion."

We all know (I hope!) that zombies are fiction, but their popularity says something about what people are feeling. In this version zombies are living dead who reproduce by killing or infecting others. One zombie becomes many, and your only hope for survival is to physically isolate yourself, maybe with a few trusted allies, and kill everything outside that comes close, because they are probably zombies. All civilization disintegrates.

The coming of the zombies begins small, with only one or two, but avalanches into a complete breakdown of trust as those we thought were friends become poisoned and band together against us in mindless hatred. In some stories the zombie infection could have been contained at the start if the powers that be had acted wisely or decisively, but they never do.

I take it that zombies are a symbol of something many of us worry about. Not that we’re terrified, or we’d give over symbols and tell the stories straight out; but worried: something is happening, something is coming, and it is very bad. Perhaps the "end of civilization," just as in the stories, is what we see looming.

There seem to be a few parallels in modern society. I find less and less of a "we’re all in this together" feeling. Race relations are in some places better than ever with opportunities galore and a well-off black middle class; but with a third of blacks locked into a ghetto culture, and with demagogues hard at work, I can’t say that I find the black/white climate overall is very good. Hispanic/white and Hispanic/black relations are pretty uneven too.

But I don’t think race relations are the whole story, or even most of it. There’s a universality to the zombie invasion that doesn’t map onto "us vs them" racial splits. Even the intense political/philosophical divides don’t have that same universal threat. It doesn’t make artistic sense to equate them.

Despite the many electronic means of connecting with each other I see less interaction with neighbors than a few decades ago (I’m part of the problem myself here), and although we know more about people we don’t know them as well. By itself that’s hardly a thing to fear, but our inchoate sense of isolation magnifies other threats. Still, that doesn’t seem quite enough to justify the zombie myth.

But if we flip the order of events in the zombie story, the zombies start to make excellent sense. Suppose the economy collapses. Who can you trust? Nobody you don’t know (and in a city that is essentially everybody), and not even all of those you think you know. This isn’t an exaggeration: civilization can quickly break down: it did in Argentina.

Perhaps the zombie myth reflects the fear that we, already somewhat isolated, will be living in an "every man for himself" wilderness if the powers that be continue their feckless course.