Vampires and Zombies Reflect Contemporary Situation

Siyue huang

Ling 12

Instructor: Jaala

Vampires and Zombies Reflect Contemporary Situation

The considerable success of two recent monster “masterpieces”， the Twilight Saga and The Walking Dead can hardly be ignored:. To be more specific, The Twilight Saga is a series of five romance fantasy films, which have grossed over $3.3 billion in worldwide receipts. Twilight became a success very quickly, sprouting movies and merchandise in just a couple of years after it was published and became a New York Times bestseller. The story’s popularity is comparable to that of a, somewhat similar, TV series, the Walking Dead. In the article “Why Vampires Never Die”, Guillermo del Toro and Chuckhogan mention that the number of people watching the TV series about Zombies is huge and getting bigger, “ Roughly 5.3 million people watched the first episode of ‘The Walking Dead’ on AMC.”(2009). From the data listed above, it is not hard to notice that those zombies, vampires and giant monsters are becoming more and more intriguing to modern people. The reason for this popularity is that people can find a connection between their daily lives and the lives of zombies and vampires. The relationships people create between themselves and these fictional characters are reflected in their routine lives.

 Living like a zombie precisely reflects the lives of some contemporary people. Klosterman mentioned a great conclusion of the relationship between zombies and modern life, “A lot of modern life is exactly like slaughtering zombies”(2010). In other word, “Zombies are like the Internet and the media and every conversation we do not want to have” wrote by Klosterman(2010). With the growing popularity of computers, a new mental disease - "problematic Internet use (PIU) " successfully draw the general public’s attention. The general symptom of such disease is excessive computer use that interferes with daily life. Killing zombies is not complicated but repetitive, just like how to ‘ kill ’ everyday over-loaded information that is relentless and tedious but also uncreative and stupid. “All of it comes at us endlessly (and thoughtlessly), and — if we surrender — we will be overtaken and absorbed”(Klosterman, 2010), and consequently , out of some certain reasons, we will become potential patients for the PIU. It is important to remember that killing unwarranted internet use is just like zombie killing. The situation faced by zombie killers and contemporary people is that those zombies and information will never stop coming, and the ‘ fighter ’ need to be cautious of the danger around you and adopt the most effective strategy to overcome it: this is also a blueprint of how contemporary people become excellent and extraordinary elites in a severe peer competitive society.

On the one hand, killing zombies represent how to kill relentless and tedious work in order to achieve success. On the other hand, living like a zombie correspondingly epitomizes wordless, uncreative and ‘brain-dead’ lifestyle for a great number of contemporary people. “All zombies lack cognitive control — there's no delaying the gratification of warm human flesh”(Lewis, 2013). In addition to that, “they are inherently violent, brain thirsty and destructive. They lack the capacity to reason. They will eat a child's brain without having a second thought about it”(Maxwell, 2009). If we choose to do things without thinking, being ruled by our instinct, not always correct and appropriate, we are living just like zombies. The development of Internet serves as a new medium and meanwhile offers us a faster way to accept information; however, most people blindly agree with some not well-identified rumors and become more likely to say ‘yes’, even without carefully verifying. For example, last month I read a tweet about the excessive amount sodium chloride in McDonald’s chips, and thousands of people left comment and said that was so terrible and they would never eat fast food again. Nonetheless, I realized that there must be something wrong and I noticed the harmful chemical element was the chemical term for salt. Those people who agree with the rumor were just acting like  ‘Internet Zombies’, mindless and uncreative. They do not have their own firm standpoints, do not have sufficient scientific background, and Internet marketers are effortlessly utilizing them for some commercial or political purpose.