Today, we are so obsessed
with zombies. But the question resolves around, why? Why are we so obsessed
with them and what do they mean to us now?
Zombies originally
originated from the Haitian Voodoo Culture. In the Haitian language, the word
zombie comes from nzambi or zonbi, which means 'spirit of the dead'. It is said
in folklore that there was a deadly
substance that came from
the fou-fou or porcupine fish called tetrodoxin. A zombie is one who has annoyed the people in their life to the extent where those people can no longer take the
presence of him or her, and with that, they turn them into a zombie with the
help of a Bokor (a priest or priestess who studies both dark and light magic). For
one to be turned into a zombie, their heart rate would come to a near stop,
their breathing suppresses, and their body temperature declines rapidly.
Believing that he or she was a dead corpse, they would bury his or her body.
And then, they would resurrect the body, resulting in their physical
character, their memory would be eliminated and they would become zombies.
In the end, zombies really do have no meaning on us or to us, but instead we just liked to twist our thoughts on them. Most of today's view of zombies are myths with very little truth. It was because of money that zombies became a motivation; facts were changed to please the people.
I don't think the history of zombies mean anything to our obsession with them. We are super intrigued with them probably because they deeply symbolize ourselves as a society of "consumers". In myth People are infected with a virus causing them to become insatiable man-eating zombies. In reality people are infected with a trend and become insatiable material consumers. Zombies are a pretty good representation of American consumerism.
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