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ZOMBIES - TRUTH OR NOT...
Definition
A zombie is a dead person that is brought back to life through a curse
(voodoo, necromancy) or a mutation and has recovered some vital functions
like movement.
They are near-mindless, possessing little reasoning power, though many can
perform "remembered behaviors" from their mortal existence.
Zombies are omnipresent in the folklore of Haïti, where they are created by
voodoo, an african type of black witchcraft. More recently, zombies films
have exposed new theories according to which man-made virus or genetical
experiments are held responsible for the creation of zombies. Such films put
a strong emphasis on flesh and blood : rotting bodies and their attendant
maggots, as well as the still-warm gore resulting from savage, often
cannibalistic attacks upon the living.
Description
Zombies have been confused with many other monstrous
creatures. Monstrous will try to make a clear distinction between the
different entities that proceed from death.
Some zombies have the appearance of the living but their lack of free will
and souls give them the appearance of mechanical robots.
Other display visible signs of desiccation, decay and emaciation on their
face and body. They have blank, expressionless faces that become more
animated when they get hungry and engage in a feeding frenzy.
They are incapable of speech, but often tend to make moaning and guttural
sounds. They are normally encountered wearing whatever clothing they wore in
their human life, prior to reanimation.
What is not a zombie
A ghost
In many films, the plot is centered around a ghost seeking revenge that may
be depicted as corporeal rather than ethereal. Some of these revenants look
like zombies, depicted with outrageous decayed bodies (13 Ghosts – 2001) but
they are not. The living dead are first and foremost corpses that continue
to move around, manipulated by an outside will or self-driven. They are
neither manifestations of ectoplasmic fury; nor undead spirits.
A mummy
Even if the mummy can be considered as an animated
corpse, the tradition that has developed from Karl Freund's The Mummy (1932)
through the Hammer films of the fifties and sixties gives the mummy a
conscious mind and the ability to regenerate its body. Another common trait
between both monsters is the mummy’s power to rise the deads. Interestingly
Anne Rice's novel The Mummy, Or Ramses the Damned combines the mummy and the
zombie tradition. Dawn of the Mummy (1981) combines the classic Mummy plot
(a mummy, whose tomb is violated, takes revenge on those responsible) with
the zombie tradition. Pharaoh Safiraman rises from his tomb, along with the
corpses of his retinue, who emerge zombie-like from the sands and proceed to
stumble about killing archaeologists, a film crew involved in filming a
fashion layout, and the locals. The Mummy rarely participates in the
bloodletting, decapitation and flesheating, but simply orchestrates the
slaughter.
A ghoul
Occasionally “post-Romero” zombies are referred to as
“ghouls”, a name suggested by their cannibalistic tendencies. This is a
common mistake as Ghouls are monsters or evil spirits that haunt cemeteries,
robbing graves as they prey on the flesh of the deads. Ghouls are neither
dead bodies, nor deprived of consciousness.
A nearly-dead
There are a number of movies in which characters
indulge in zombie-like behavior but are not really zombies as such. Most
generally these are possessed or sick; their rationality and usually their
wills have been suppressed, and, since they are inevitably going to die,
they can be considered as dead. They are zombie-like on a metaphorical
level, if not on a literal one.
A cannibal
Another close cousin of the zombie is the cannibal; a
subgenre popularized by Italian directors in particular. Cannibal Apocalypse
(1982) is very close to the zombie film. But if zombies are usually
cannibal, all cannibals are not zombies.
The term cannibalism comes from Canibales, the name given by the Spanish to
a reputedly man-eating tribe of Carib Indians who lived in the West Indies
when Christopher Columbus arrived.
The practice of cannibalism has been reported throughout history in many
parts of the world. Some evidence points to its practice as early as
Neolithic times. Herodutus and other ancient writers described cannibalistic
peoples. In medieval times the Italian traveler Marco Polo reported that
tribes from Tibet to Sumatra practiced cannibalism. It was practiced among
many North American Indians, especially the tribes of the western coast of
the Gulf of Mexico. Until recently cannibalism was believed to still exist
in central and western Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Melanesia, Sumatra,
New Guinea, Polynesia, and remote parts of South America. Several rationales
have been proposed for the practice of cannibalism. In some cultures, it was
believed that the person who ate the dead body of another would acquire the
desired qualities of the person eaten, something like gaining courage from
eating a brave enemy. In a few instances cannibalism may have been dictated
by no other motive than revenge since it was believed that an enemy's spirit
would be utterly destroyed if the body were eaten, thus leaving nothing in
which the ghost could live. Cannibalism was sometimes part of a religious
practice. The Binderwurs of central India ate their sick and aged in the
belief that the act was pleasing to their goddess Kali. In Mexico thousands
of human victims were sacrificed annually by the Aztecs to their deities.
After the ceremony of sacrifice, the priests and the populace ate the bodies
of the victims, believing that this would bring them closer to their gods.
A Frankenstein monster-like or other artificially created monsters
Albeit made up of dead bodies, such a monster is not a true zombie: he is a
new creation and has no personal past, he is usually not interested in flesh
(though there is some overlap at times).
Classification
Two kinds of zombies exists in modern popular culture:
one created by voodoo resulting in a spell-bound near dead state, and
creatures created by scientific experimentation of strange chemicals on
living humans (as popularized by a series of films on the "living dead"
theme).
Voodoo zombies.
Origin: Haïtian beliefs and supersitions
The word 'voodoo' (vodou, vaudou, vodoun or vodun) derives from the word 'vodu'
in the Fon language of Dahomey meaning 'spirit' or 'god’ and describes the
complex religious and belief system that exist in Haïti, an island of the
West Indies. The foundations of voodoo were established in the seventeenth
century by slaves captured primarily from the kingdom of Dahomey, which
occupied parts of today's Togo, Benin, and Nigeria in West Africa, it
combines features of African religion with the Roman Catholicism of the
European settlers. Today over 60 million people practice voodoo worldwide.
Religious similar to voodoo can be found in South America where they are
called Umbanda, Quimbanda or Candomble. It is widely practiced in Benin,
Haiti and within many black communities of the large cities in North
America.
Unfortunately, in popular literature and films voodoo has been reduced to
sorcery, black witchcraft, and in some cases cannibalistic practices,
generating many foreigners' prejudices not only about voodoo but about
Haitian culture in general.
The voodoo religion involves belief in a supreme god (bon dieu) and a host
of spirits called loa which are often identified with Catholic saints. These
spirits are closely related to African gods and may represent natural
phenomena — such as fire, water, or wind — or dead persons, including
eminent ancestors. They consist of two main groups: the rada, often mild and
helping, and the petro, which may be dangerous and harmful. There are two
sorts of priests in the traditional voodoo folklore: the houngan or mambo
who confine his activities to "white" magic i.e bring good fortune and
healing and the bokor or caplata who performs evil spells and black magic,
sometimes called "left-handed Vodun". Rarely, a houngan will engage in such
sorcery; a few alternate between white and dark magic.
One belief unique to voodoo is the zombie. The creole word “zombi” is
apparently derived from Nzambi, a West African deity but it only came into
general use in 1929, after the publication of William B. Seabrook's The
Magic Island. In this book, Seabrook recounts his experiences on Haiti,
including the walking dead. He describes the first 'zombie' he came across
in this way:
"The eyes were the worst. It was not my imagination. They were in truth like
the eyes of a dead man, not blind, but staring, unfocused, unseeing. The
whole face, for that matter, was bad enough. It was vacant, as if there was
nothing behind it. It seemed not only expressionless, but incapable of
expression."
Haitian zombies were once normal people, but underwent zombification by a "bokor"
or voodoo sorcerer, through spell or potion. The victim then dies and
becomes a mindless automaton, incapable of remembering the past, unable to
recognise loved ones and doomed to a life of miserable toil under the will
of the zombie master.
There have been some rare occasions of juju zombies temporarily regaining
part of their mental faculties. This rare occurrence has only been observed
when a zombie encounters situations that have heavy emotional connections to
their mortal lives.
There are many examples of zombies in modern day Haiti. Papa Doc Duvallier
the dictator of Haiti from 1957 to 1971 had a private army of thugs called
tonton macoutes. These people were said to be in trances and they followed
every command that Duvallier gave them. Duvallier had also his own voodoo
church with many followers and he promised to return after his death to rule
again. He did not come back but a guard was placed at his tomb, to insure
that he would not try to escape, or that nobody steal the body. There are
also many stories of people that die, then many years later return to the
shock and surprise of relatives. A man named Caesar returned 18 years after
he died to marry, have three children and die again, 30 years after he was
originally buried. Another case involved a student from a village
Port-au-Prince who had been shot in a robbery attempt. Six months later, the
student returned to his parent’s house as a zombie. At first it was possible
to talk with the man, and he related the story of his murder, a voodoo witch
doctor stealing his body from the ambulance before he reached hospital and
his transformation into a zombie. As time went on, he became unable to
communicate, he grew more and more lethargic and died.
A case reported a writer named Stephen Bonsal described a zombie he
witnessed in 1912 in this way: a man had at intervals a high fever, he
joined a foreign mission church and the head of the mission saw the him die.
He assisted at the funeral and saw the dead man buried. Some days later the
supposedly dead man was found dressed in grave clothes, tied to a tree,
moaning. The poor wretch soon recovered his voice but not his mind. He was
indentifed by his wife, by the physician who had pronounced him dead, and by
the clergyman. The victim did not recognized anybody, and spent his days
moaning inarticulate words.
Description: a non-conscious system physically different from but
functionally isomorphic to a normal human (absent quail). For example, a
system with silicon chips instead of neurons like the robot of Terminator
(1985). It turns out that quite a lot of human activity can be accomplished
unconsciously e.g. unconscious perception, memory, and learning so
consciousness might be considered as a burden for the new silicon man.
ZOMBIES Conspiracy
According to the tenets of
Vodun (voodoo), a dead person can be revived by a houngan or mambo. After
resurrection, it has no will of its own, but remains under the control of
the person who performed the ritual. Such resurrected dead are "zombies".
In 1937, while researching folklore in Haiti, Zora Neale Hurston encountered
the case of Felicia Felix-Mentor, who had died and been buried in 1907 at
the age of 29, yet was found wandering the streets in a daze thirty years
later. Hurston interviewed Felix-Mentor's husband and children, and met
Felix-Mentor.
Hurston pursued rumors that persons were given powerful drugs, but was
unable to locate anyone willing to offer much information. She wrote "What
is more, if science ever gets to the bottom of Voodoo in Haiti and Africa,
it will be found that some important medical secrets, still unknown to
medical science, give it its power, rather than gestures of ceremony."[
Several decades later, Wade Davis, an American botanist, was the main person
to present a pharmacological case for zombies in two books - The Serpent and
the Rainbow (1985) and Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian
Zombie (1988). Davis travelled to Haiti in 1982 and as a result of his
investigations claimed that zombies could be made by the ingestion of two
special powders. The first, coupe poudre, induced a 'death-like' state, the
key ingredient of which was the pufferfish (Tetraodontiformes) toxin
tetrodotoxin (TTX). The second powder of dissociative hallucinogens held the
person in a will-less zombie state. There was considerable skepticism to
Davis's claims; he was widely accused of fraud and opinons remain divided as
to the veracity of his work.
Others claim zombies are sufferers of various psychiatric disorders such as
catatonic schizophrenia whose symptoms are misinterpreted as a return from
the dead. Zombification is far
more than simply a superstition or subject for horror tales. The horror of a
zombies is not that it will harm you, but that those who violate the rules
of society face a horrible punishment. It is clear why Zombie is shown
amongst Warlock's monsters. They are not helpless victims, they are the
convicted.
List of zombie movies
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
28 Days Later
Army of Darkness
Bowery at Midnight
Braindead
Carnival of Souls
Cult of the Dead
Dawn of the Dead
Day of the Dead (movie)
The Evil Dead
The Ghoul
The Last Man on Earth (Vincent Price)Technically vampirish zombies, remade
as The Omega Man
Muñecos Infernales
Night of the Living Dead
The Omega Man (Charlton Heston)
Pet Sematary
Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)
ReAnimator
Resident Evil
The Serpent and the Rainbow
Santo contra los Zombis
Shaun of the Dead (2006)
White Zombie (1932)
Zombi Holocaust (1980)
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