Zombies Love Big Girls Too (Zombie Affair)

Gun manufacturers are even pandering to this type of zombie fan, making "Zombie Hunter" versions of popular rifles such as the AR15, and that's pretty weird to me. I'm not suggesting that the types of people buying those are nuts, but I don't really like overly playful humor when it comes to real firearms. You can also by realistic ballistic dummies that look like zombies and bleed when they're shot. There's a scene early into the original Dawn of the Dead where people described as "rednecks" are enjoying shooting zombies wandering around the countryside.

They aren't portrayed exactly positively, and that's something that seems to be changing in the now broadening fandom. Romero's zombie films wrote the book and the rules that The Walking Dead borrows from, but Romero's work was usually subversive. It was understood that just getting a bunch of people with guns to hunt zombies wasn't going to work, but that's exactly what a lot of fans of The Walking Dead seem to enjoy seeing.

Munster also seems concerned by the trend. After all, it's acceptable to shoot a walking corpse in the head but there would be a huge backlash if a gun manufacturer sold anatomically accurate human ballistic dummies for people to use for target practice.

When asked about her thoughts on how zombie films and the fans have changed in recent years, Munster added this:. As somebody that runs a very popular zombie walk, I find it strange that the same people who identify with zombie hunters will also dress as zombies for the zombie walk. Sure, I see hunter types reading hunting magazines featuring beautiful deer, or television programs romanticizing fishing, but you don't seem to see hunters or anglers dressing up as deer, waterfowl, or giant fish in festival or play. All of a sudden the living are walking amongst the dead. One of the interesting things about the classic zombie, as portrayed in George Romero's films and there's not much debate about him being the filmmaker who established the zombie rules is that zombies were portrayed as being distinct characters with their own individual traits.

Yes, they were part of an ever growing and dangerous horde, but they retained those unique personalities. On the other hand, Romero's films generally portrayed the military and other groups as nearly faceless, and I think that's a powerful subtext in those films. It's sad to see zombies mostly shown as faceless members of the undead, briefly menacing, and then quickly dispatched with a Samurai sword or a quick bullet to the head.

In the recent film adaptation of World War Z, the zombies are nearly portrayed like a swarming hill of ants or a tidal wave, there's nothing individual about them. For longtime fans such as myself, seeing the fan interest shifting away from zombies and more towards fantasies of becoming a zombie killer can be kind of jarring. At an enormous event like a zombie walk, where the fandom comes out in force, that divide is readily evident. Munster has watched this new phenomenon develop over the years, and has this to say about it:.

It takes the unity out of the group mentality of the zombie. It is not that zombies are not all accepting creatures, part of the wonderful thing about them are that everyone from any and all walks of life can be a zombie and walk with the horde. It is just odd that people would fantasize about being a zombie AND killing a zombie, and has definitely weakened the undead pack. You have successfully signed up for your selected newsletter s - please keep an eye on your mailbox, we're movin' in!

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The Walking Dead is not the only zombie show or film in recent years with an emphasis on making the central monsters more of a target than a consistent threat, but its popularity can't be underestimated when looking at how the fandom is changing. My usual answer is that we are already in the zombie apocalypse. This is a trans-humanist world, as we experience life through technology; our bodies are just walking shells going through the motions of mundane quotidian existence while our minds are completely wired into online identities.

Of course, most people don't like this reply and would rather hear how I am planning to kill zombies. It usually ends with them accepting the response that I am joining the zombies! The fact that this has become a regular and common question in western society, akin to talking about the weather, hurts my undead heart. I suppose that many people will just point to the fact that The Walking Dead and other recent entries into the zombie world are just entertainment, and that monsters change over time to better reflect the current interests and fears of fans.

While there's truth to that, I feel that when you stray too far from a monster being scary -- and in the case of zombies turn them into easily dispatched cannon fodder -- something is lost along the way. I also wonder if zombie saturation in pop culture is reaching a critical point. Eventually The Walking Dead will end, and unless it has created enough new fans to spawn more of the same kind of material, then the zombie might fade back into the underground. Waiting until there's no more room in Hell, and the dead will walk the Earth again.

We use cookies to collect and analyze information on site performance and usage, and to enhance and customize content and advertisements. By clicking 'X' or continuing to use the site, you agree to allow cookies to be placed. To find out more, visit our cookies policy and our privacy policy. Or sign in with a social account: Photo by Gianluca Ramalho Misiti. Chris Lane January 23, 8: I think the people prepping for a zombie apocalypse would be among the first who get eaten.

Photo by Drew Stephens. Zombie nurses at the Toronto Zombie Walk. Photo by Peter Kudlacz. Thea Munster Far left and fellow ghouls prepare to feast on the living. If you like this story, consider signing up for our email newsletters. All-access pass to the top stories, events and offers around town.

And then, in the mids, a new terror emerged. The vampires of the s and '90s were sexy, wealthy and powerful. Just like the powerful "new rich". This was the age of flash, dazzle, conspicuous consumption, leopard skin, limousines and melon-sized new breasts. And it was frightening, if you stopped the dance to think about it, as that was also the era where the limits to growth were being propounded, too; the realisation that we couldn't keep increasing consumption forever.

Look at the newspapers back then and you'll see front page after page of our secret fears: Secretly, we knew they were our vampires. And they were out to get us. Not singly but in hordes, marching, individually weak, tattered, decaying almost to non-existence, but together they can destroy our world. They are our secret fear, the ones we try not to look at.

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Like the hordes of the newly unemployed, from industries that were deemed indestructible and eternal only years before, like the car industry, here and in the United States. Night after night, we see images of the vast tides of dispossessed: In America, whole communities were built on industries that are no longer there. They are inhabited by those who were once confident home owners, swimming-pool owners, three-car families with a TV in every room.

Suddenly, those comfortable lives no longer exist. They probably never will exist again, despite Donald Trump's promises. Industries rarely re-emerge once they vanish, either to other countries with cheaper labour or, even more commonly, are made redundant by new technologies and automation. New industries can and will emerge Could we become them?

Even those whose lives are still comfortable feel excluded from the knowledge class that runs the high-tech world we live in, and the power and wealth that comes from it. Night after night, too, we see images of the vast tides of dispossessed: We see refugees, desperate, hungry, frightened, needy.

They want what we have and to be where we are — in houses, in streets, away from bombs and shrapnel, going to school, lining up to catch buses and trains to go to work, coming home to the smell of cooking, the glow of electric lights and the reality of clean running water. And we really are frightened. And so we have zombies in our movies and our books.

They represent what our society is more scared of now. And we have reason to be, not just because the growing number of dispossessed may threaten us physically or politically. We should be scared. Because, by doing nothing, the problems spread.