Why the zombie boom is really about the economic fears of white-collar workers.
The second season of The Walking Dead premiered last week to ratings high enough to raise William Seabrook—the journalist who imported zombies to the United States with the 1929 novel The Magic Island—from the dead. More than 7 million tuned in to watch a show that is, honestly, not terribly compelling television. Bad-ass zombies aside, the plot is slow, the characters flat. And yet I and many others continue to clamor for zombies like zombies hunt for brains. Sensing our hunger, the studios and publishers keep the zombie pop culture coming: Colson Whitehead’s “literary zombie novel” Zone One has just hit bookshelves, a movie version of Max Brooks’ 2006 book World War Z will star Brad Pitt, and who could forget the tour de force that is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies?
What’s new about the current zombie craze is its white-collar shine.
In Slate via REALCLEARSCIENCE?
REALLY?
Perhaps writing about zombies is indicative of the fear of the media class in being unable to avoid otherwise writing of the manifest failures of their hero.
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