FROM ZOMBIE TO ZOMBIES, OR HOW THE ATOMIC ERA CHANGED THE POST-APOCALYPTIC

Abstract

Zombies are an ancient representation of after life, and are built upon a rich philosophical substrate that seems to transcend time and cultural context, being easily translated into current readings. A paradigm shift would turn, progressively but visibly, the notion of singular zombie to pluralistic zombie - transforming the isolated mythical or folkloric 'draugr ', 'strigoi', 'jiangshi', etc. into a mass of nameless zombies. The paper investigates this transition and attempts to explain its implications for the American Post-Apocalyptic, a literary subgenre that seems to have a number of common points with zombies as an event.

Headnote

Abstract: Zombies are an ancient representation of after life, and are built upon a rich philosophical substrate that seems to transcend time and cultural context, being easily translated into current readings. A paradigm shift would turn, progressively but visibly, the notion of singular zombie to pluralistic zombie - transforming the isolated mythical or folkloric 'draugr ', 'strigoi', 'jiangshi', etc. into a mass of nameless zombies. The paper investigates this transition and attempts to explain its implications for the American Post-Apocalyptic, a literary subgenre that seems to have a number of common points with zombies as an event.

Keywords: American, apocalyptic, atomic, post-apocalyptic, zombies

1. Introduction

Your country is desolate,

Your cities are burned with fire;

Strangers devour your land in your presence;

And it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers. (Isaiah 1:7)

This particular exploration of the concept of zombies will indirectly, and perhaps analogously, reveal a set of features that can be considered an integral part of the American Post-Apocalyptic subgenre, especially through its "cousin-niche", the Zombie Apocalypse phenomenon. Therefore, the points of analysis, haphazard as they may seem, will be relevant in context, yet, in this paper, I will attempt to demonstrate the existence of a correlation between the notion of zombie in its various forms (Lauro and Embry (2008: passim), Bishop (2010: passim), Davis (2000: passim), Dendle (2007: passim), Brooks (2003: passim), etc.) and its transition towards an eventful state, possibly as a function of a broader paradigm shift throughout the Atomic Age (Neguţ 2020: passim).

For the purpose of this paper, only the narrative incarnations of zombies will be accounted for, but definitions from other areas will also be taken into account. A parallel will be drawn between the folkloric and mythical pancultural discourse of undeath and its shift to the fairly ubiquitous "mass" of undead, which, I will argue, coincided with the advent of the Atomic Age; most importantly, I will attempt to analyze what these zombies are and what they are not, and how their attributes translate directly into American post-apocalyptic narratives, possibly as part of a larger cultural discursive process. The attributes in question will be related to undeath/unlife, volition, identity, aesthetics (abjection - the anonymous body), and eschatology of zombies, among them.

2.Morphology of the "Living Dead" - origins, glorified Body

The definition of "zombie" is complex, and varies by source. There are, however, common elements between its various instantiations. It would first be in order to briefly explore the historical journey of the concept, and then term, to better evidentiate its evolution. If one simply accepted the "zombie" as "living dead" - which is very simply put - then the concept could be traced as far back as the ancient Mesopotamian myths, the oldest recorded writing of which is probably The Descent of Ishtar/Innana into the Underworld:

Gatekeeper, ho, open thy gate ...

If thou openest not the gate to let me enter.

I will bring up the dead to eat the living.

And the dead will outnumber the living. (Dalley 1998: 155)

This concept can be diachronically traced in Christian, Zoroastrian and Jewish eschatology; of these, the Christian manifestation comes in several forms - first pre- and then post-apocalyptic, both through anastasis: "... the tombs broke open... The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus' resurrection..." (Matthew 27: 50-54)", or in the case of post-apocalyptic, "...the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed..." (Corinthians 15: 51-53) and, - "But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished." (Revelation 20: 5). Comparable events can be found in Jewish eschatology, notably the Mishnah (Neusner 2009: 103), similarly positing that resurrection happens "through flesh" (2 Maccabees 7.11, 7.28).

Islamic belief, however, accentuates the bodily resurrection, as it is depicted in the Yawm al-Qiyāmah, in the al-Qiyama Surat (Quran 74: 38). Regarding the physicality of these revived dead, Christian eschatology notes: "Our earthly bodies which die and decay are different from the bodies we shall have when we come back to life again, for they will never die... they will be full of glory when we come back to life again... they will be full of strength...they will be superhuman bodies" (1 Corinthians 15: 42-44)

In addition to the biblical resources, St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae: 5102), significantly expands on the physicality of resurrected (or "glorified") bodies, noting that they possess three qualities - impassibility, agility, subtlety, and clarity, each referring to immunity from death and pain, obedience to spirit with relation to movement and space (the ability to move through space and time with the speed of thought), freedom from restraint by matter and resplendent beauty of the soul manifested in the body, respectively. To these, the Catechism of the Catholic Church adds: "1038 The resurrection of all the dead, of both the just and the unjust," (Acts 24:15) will precede the Last Judgment, and that an apocalyptic prerequisite, an "hour when all who are in the tombs will hear... and come forth...". Notably, a moral filter is established: "... those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment." (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2019)

The physicality of a revived body had encountered some resistance among the clergy, possibly denoting some reluctance against trespassing the boundaries of death. As St. Augustine of Hippo notes, the "resurrection of flesh" has been: "... attacked with... pertinacious, contentious contradiction, in the Christian faith... they doubt not indeed, but they most openly deny it, declaring it to be absolutely impossible that this earthly flesh can ascend to Heaven.". Whereas the soul appeared to have been accepted as a valid permeant of the veil of life: "... in many books they have left it written that the soul is immortal..." (Augustine of Hippo, Exposition on Psalm 89: 750).

3. The postcoloniality of the "Living Dead"

Having taken into account these ancient anastatic/eschatological formations of "life after death" and the reluctance to canonically consider them, it would now be in order to highlight the origin of the fairly neologistic term of "zombie". The earliest reference can be traced back to the form of „Zombi", recorded by Moreau de Saint-Méry (1798: 62), in his work Description topographique, physique, civile...de l'isle Saint-Domingue, a work on the then-French colony island named Saint-Domingue, now called Haiti. Davis (1988: passim) had found out that these "zombi" are thralls created by Vodoun (voodoo) priests (bokors), by using a poisonous powder as part of a magical ritual, that would later render the subjects mindless and fully obedient.

Moreman and Rushton (2011: passim) review these accounts and determine that the term is of West African origin, brought to Haiti by way of slavery. Furthermore, they claim that there is a cultural-political angle to the concept, linking it to the social death of slaves. In an article for the New York Times (2012), Amy Wilentz claims that zombies are, in fact, a "very logical offspring of New World slavery", as zombies are essentially slaves forever: "Suicide was the slave's only way to take control over his or her own body... And yet, the fear of becoming a zombie might stop them from doing so... This final rest... is unavailable to the zombie. To become a zombie was the slave's worst nightmare..."

Moreover, Moreman and Rushton claim that the term had made its way into the United States through slavery, the first time in a story named The Unknown Painter, in 1838, in which a slave claims to have seen a "zombi" working alongside himself. His claim is dismissed as peddling "African superstitions". While the aesthetic of the zombie had not yet been formed, there is an underlying element of determinism and human intervention, insofar as this zombie has no apparent volition, and its only purpose is to serve its master. It is, essentially, a slave, but this is not a usual incarnation, which will be explained shortly.

4. Death, undeath and the attributes of the glorified body

A zombie is not alive, but it is not dead either. A third space, a liminality between life and death, known as undeath, exists. According to the Christian/original conception, a glorified body is agile, impassable, clear and subtle, as explained before, yet a "zombi", in its earliest forms, only retains a limited form of agility and impassibility. Moreover, a zombi is a man-made creation, but a seemingly abject, unholy or "dishonored/vilified" body. This seems to be the opposite of the biblical conception and a perversion and perhaps reversal of the Christian post-apocalyptic eschatology, insofar as qualifying to be considered unholy. The unholy denomination can also be used to express the nondivine, but man made origin of this modern version of undeath, as opposed to the mythical version found in non-biblical but folkloric lore.

One of the first literary recordings of undeath can be found in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1997: 306): "... When they become such [Undead], there comes with the change the curse of immortality...". The undead also seem to have gained the characteristic of being akin to a plague, such that "All that die from the preying of the Undead become themselves Undead, and prey on their kind..." (ibid.). Interestingly, the body proper, in this case, acts as a disturbance, an obstacle in the passage of the soul, and remnants of the Christian eschatology can still be recognized, possibly suggesting continuity from the original depictions, with the retention of the Judgement, which is now aided by man - "... But of the most blessed of all, when this now UnDead be made to rest as true dead, then the soul... shall again be free... and she shall take her place with the other Angels." (ibid.).

Folkloric and mythical variants of the undead, such as ghouls, jiangshi, draugr (and many more) seem to have been isolated, singular incidents, as Paffenroth and Morehead (2012) note throughout their work. Moreover, they were usually identifiable, in the sense that an identity would be retained. Along with their identity, they would retain a certain amount of volition. Their transformation would be the consequence of a curse (wraiths, ghosts, phantoms), a disrespected tradition or sins (strigoi, draugr, jiangshi), or a link to the afterlife (banshees, revenants, wights). Their origin usually warranted a purpose, which would limit their autonomy, but some, such as vampires or, more recently liches, would act according to their whims, presenting a higher degree of free will. Even Shelley's Frankenstein's Monster, which is an implied proto-zombie, finds itself on a quest for identity (1998: xvii).

5.Contemporary undead - zombies as an event

Contemporary zombies, instead, seem to be governed by a different set of rules. This framework has been developed, I theorize, as an effect of the Second World War socio-cultural changes. As I have previously attempted to show, during the Atomic Age, a unique reversal of the apocalyptic paradigm would permanently mark the American (and soon thereafter global) consciousness. By witnessing the destructive potential of humanity, the apocalypse was no longer reserved for the divine, and this new model would no longer be followed by an afterlife, but by an aftermath. This paper's aim is to briefly analyze this transition based on previous research and briefly exemplify the process by analyzing the appearance of literature of this kind in a chronological fashion (cf. Neguţ 2020).

More modern definitions (Lauro and Embry 2008: passim, Bishop 2010: passim, Davis 1988: passim, Brooks 2003: passim, Dendle 2007: passim, etc.) of the undead generally expand on Bram Stoker's, with various differences - such that most forms have adhered to the "brain-eating, brainless zombie" archetype, like those in the horror films Night of the Living Dead or The Walking Dead, and are usually depicted as part of a horde. Most of them seem to be the result of a human error - either technological, biological, or otherwise, and seem to no longer possess a "soul" (in any sense), such that they are purely driven by instinct and no longer recognizable as persons (with some exceptions). Their quasi-infectious nature appears to have been canonized, now commonly depicted as turning their victims into zombies through wounds (biting, scratching, blood contact, etc.). Curiously, this predates the Christian version, hearkening back, instead, to the cannibalistic dead in Ishtar's threats.

This, I believe, has contributed to the transition from zombies as singular, personal, and identifiable cases into a brainless mass of enmity that seems to have captivated audiences worldwide. The new ruleset appears to be, thus, a mirrored negative of the original, such that contemporary zombies are unholy, unintentional, undead, mindless, devoid of free will and, arguably, not characters. When, referring to contemporary zombies, instances and depictions such as those in novels (the Resident Evil series, the Undead series, the The Walking Dead series, World War Z, etc.), cinematic productions (Night of the Living Dead, The Walking Dead, World War Z, etc.), as well as video games (Dying Light series, State of Decay series, The Last of Us series, etc.) are taken into account, where zombies are hollowed out, shallow obstacles of pure enmity, which usually serve as a plot device. Yet how did this template come into existence?

6.The World Wars, dehumanization and technological progress, and the anonymous body

Undeath and death have been briefly discussed in the previous paragraphs, especially their relevant conceptions. One of the less discussed components of the equational transformation from living to undead is represented, I think, by the acts of killing and dying, which are logically and symbolically precursors to death (and undeath). I believe one possible explanation for the contemporaneous concept of undeath can be found in a quote often misattributed to the J.V. Stalin, which was first recorded by a reporter and satirist known as Kurt Tucholsky, discussing the events of the World Wars: "Der Tod eines Menschen: das ist eine Katastrophe. Hunderttausend Tote: das ist eine Statistiku ('The death of a man: that's a catastrophe. A hundred thousand dead: that's statistics!') (Tucholsky 1932: 155). An earlier, similar, but still (I believe) oddly relevant quote can be found back in 1759, when a classics scholar named Beilby Porteus (1759: 12) published a prizewinning work titled Death: A Poetical Essay:

To sate the lust of power; more horrid still,

The foulest stain and scandal of our nature

Became its boast - One Murder made a Villain,

Millions a Hero. - Princes were privileg'd

To kill, and numbers sanctified the crime.

Ah! why will Kings forget that they are Men? (Porteus 1759: 12)

Together, these two may reflect a shift in the perception of dying as a function of large scale conflict, especially in the context of the upscaling of warfare through the process of industrialization, which came along with the World Wars, notably in the case of Tucholsky's quote. As Lifton (1965: 257-272), Winter (1992: passim), Zarlengo (1999: passim) and Mueller (1991: 1-28) point out, the two World Wars have had a significant impact on the cultural and social organization due to several factors, and from several angles - for instance, the gendered separation of war involvement in the first World War, combined with the postnuclear perception on death and the periods of peace prior to and following the spans of the two worldwide conflicts have created a cocktail of cultural shifts that would later result in changes to personal and social reflection on death and dying.

Boyer (2005: 58) relates a crescendo of communal angst that followed the Nuclear Event of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; it seemed to pervade the public knowledge of the happenings proper, but would appear even unexpectedly. He aptly sees it as part of a larger „nuclear consciousness", one apart from the „bomb's corrosive impact on the externals of life" (58), but a rather retrospective, gradual filter over memories past and perceptions future. There may be a link between this cultural shock and the transition from zombie to zombies - from the risen relative or the haunting neighbour to the mindless, nameless and accidental mass of danger. Furthermore, I believe there is a strong link between the former, the latter and the development of American Post-Apocalyptic fiction, which seems to share similarities with „zombie literature" and the contemporary zombie archetypes, as described by Brooks (2003: passim) and Christie and Lauro (2011: passim).

I believe the connection between the aforementioned transition and the apparition of zombies as a 'mass' might be, in part, due the innovations in the means of killing - especially since through the development of long-range warfare, killing seemed to have become less and less personal. Turning back to Tucholsky's quote, not only did the concept of casualty change, but the unmentioned reason for such high numbers of casualties is left undebated - indeed, weapons of mass destruction, combined with high populations and unprecedented levels of attrition appear to be a logical prerequisite to such aftermath, and would draw the biblical scale of seemingly worldwide change ever closer to the tumultuous realities of a global conflict.

It was perhaps then that some cultures foresaw the first signs of a biblical apocalypse, and the Seven Seals (the opening of the first four release the Four Horsemen) would become a reality: from famine, to calamities, to sickness and the great wars and their giant flames - a futurist reading (Pate 2009) of the Apocalypse would equate the breaking of the „seven seals" (thus heralding the End Times) to real-life events, such that the inter- and post-war attrition would be linked to the third and fourth seals, the fourth seal would be linked to technological marking of the population, the sixth seal would be seen as a result of nuclear warfare, the first seal would be a world leader of dictator vying for the reconstruction of an empire (U.S.S.R., Third Reich, possibly others), and so forth.

The religious horizon might have drastically changed to fit the paradigms of this new and unstable geopolitical landscape, in which the possibility of an apocalypse would no longer be relegated to divine, ineffable forces, but become increasingly real, palpable and human. Along with these, a general transformation in the ways of warfare would mark the transition from mass dying (such as the case with disease) to mass murder. While communal graves were not uncommon before, the new ones, paired with the monuments to the „Unknown Hero", would flag the erasure of identity (as conceptually expanded upon by Fulton 1965), as a consequence of mass murder, which can be interpreted as the historical analogue to the recently risen, but nameless dead found in zombie narratives.

Killing too has become impersonal. Recent research seems to suggest that remote killing „might be psychologically easier" than killing „face to face" (Rutchick et al. 2017: 1), and one could, perhaps, correlate the technological innovations in two offensive areas of warfare technology with a propensity to (and indifference in) killing, serving as dehumanizing factors. The conditions of trench warfare, as a result of the evolution of artillery (Ortner 2007, Kaiser 1931, Herr 1925), the spread of highly provocative propaganda that would morph and ridicule race and nationality, and the increased usage of biological weapons (Leitenberg 2001: 267-320) would have the potential to turn into the archetypal disease-ridden, rotting, dehumanized undead.

As for dehumanization, I propose that event bound zombies be viewed as dehumanized enemies. In Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, Smith (2011: passim) thoroughly explores humanity's propensity for killing, but proposes a novel way of approaching atrocious acts: through the aforementioned lens of dehumanizing the enemy. Recent research (Bruneau, Kteily 2017) suggests that dehumanization was used as a means for the advantaged groups to „morally disengage" from the oppressed ones, but that it works both ways, with the oppressed seeing the advantaged group as less than human, due to their behaviour and as a defensive measure. Dehumanizing, as the book describes, works by morphing the mental image of a person or group, ethnic or otherwise, to make them appear less than human, and even „less than animals".

In fact, Hitler, at one point, stated that "... international Jewry is the ferment of decomposition of peoples and states, just as it was in antiquity. It will remain that way as long as peoples do not find the strength to get rid of the virus" (Friedman n.d.), equating the ethnic group to a threat and comparing them to the lowest of forms of existence, and even suggesting they are contagious. This approach may be compared to that used in representing zombies - which are usually disfigured, lack any ability to communicate or possess a very limited one, and are even infectious - with the crucial exception of not being a minority, but usually a majority, compared to human characters. Perhaps ironically, if one were to replace "Jewry" with "Zombies", Hitler's statement could pass as a reply taken directly from a zombie narrative referencing Ishtar's dead. This trend of large-scale dehumanization continued throughout the Second World War and beyond, and it seemed to have been reflected in literature around the same time, concentrated around the Atomic Era (Nadel 1995: passim).

6. Conclusion

Returning to the claim of this paper - and with the purpose of reinforcing it - a summary of publication dates for zombie narratives will be included here.

One of the first narrative incarnations of the contemporary zombie archetype can be found in Herbert West - Reanimator, by H. P. Lovecraft (1931), as early as 1921. Later, in 1976 in Illuminatus! by Shea Robert and Wilson Anton (1984), zombies return as an event, not long after Romero's seminal film, the aforementioned Night of the Living Dead, which eventually became part of the Living Dead series. Re-Animator would be loosely a movie based on Lovecraft's story, produced in 1985. As for the continuity of novels, a gap could be observed around the seventies and eighties, but they would make a comeback with Joe Lansdale's On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks (1989), a novella, followed by the highly acclaimed Resident Evil series by S.D. Perry (1998). From then on, a transmedial revival of the genre would follow, with critically acclaimed series such as The Walking Dead TV series, various video game adaptations (Dying Light, The Last of Us, Dead Island, Day Z, etc.), and novels such as Maberry's Dead of Night (2011), McKay's Undead (2011), Shan's Zom-B (2012), Stenson's Fiend (2013), Carey's The Girl with All the Gifts (2014), Jessulat's The Decline (2016), etc. In them, most, if not all of the attributes described above can be found and work together to shape the eventful, anonymous zombie archetype, and, as I will further argue in future works, share the dystopian setting and conceptual landscape of the American Post-Apocalyptic subgenre, due to their common origins in the events leading up to, during, and shortly past the Atomic Era.

Sidebar

Andrei-Cristian Neguţ is a PhD student at the West University of Timişoara, Romania. His current main project is the American Anti-Apocalyptic, but has also worked on virtual narratives, performativity in video games, the narreme, wooden language, and cultural negotiation in Eastern Europe and beyond.

E-mail address: [email protected]

References

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