Better Off Dead: The Evolution of the Zombie as Post-Human

by Deborah Christie (Editor), Sarah Juliet Lauro

The zombie is ubiquitous in popular from comic books to video games, to internet applications and homemade films, zombies are all around us. Investigating the zombie from an interdisciplinary perspective, with an emphasis on deep analytical engagement with diverse kinds of texts, Better Off Dead addresses some of the more unlikely venues where zombies are found while providing the reader with a classic overview of the zombie’s folkloric and cinematic history.

What has the zombie metaphor meant in the past? Why does it continue to be so prevalent in our culture? Where others have looked at the zombie as an allegory for humanity’s inner machinations or claimed the zombie as capitalist critique, this collection seeks to provide an archaeology of the zombie―tracing its lineage from Haiti, mapping its various cultural transformations, and suggesting the post-humanist direction in which the zombie is ultimately heading.

Approaching the zombie from many different points of view, the contributors look across history and across media. Though they represent various theoretical perspectives, the whole makes a cohesive The zombie has not just evolved within narratives; it has evolved in a way that transforms narrative. This collection
announces a new post-zombie, even before the boundaries of this rich and mysterious myth have been completely charted.

Genres: Nonfiction, Horror, Zombies, Essays, Pop Culture

304 pages, Hardcover

First published June 13, 2011

Reviews

[Merryn Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for dissertation part 2

[Michael Greer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Odd that a civilization that can produce relative abundance would have as its central fascination the Zombie. Odd, I say, but also revealing. The Zombie is our shadow, the host of all our dreaded desires. We pretend that things are fine and then "watch ourselves" knowing that we are far from fine. This is a plus for the cause of spiritual development.

Let's examine three sentences: "Contemporary American zombies are remarkably similar: They are born of infection, are the dead returned to life, and have a taste for human flesh." (author Chera Kee)

Let's decode this message: "They are born infected with sin, are returning to life in the flesh, and they hunger for the flesh because of that they are born."

Notice that introducing zombies inevitably leads to the issue of slavery: "The zombie is one of the few monsters that comes from outside Europe...Haiti as an independent black republic." (ditto)

Let's decode this message: Blacks are substitutes and deflections from slaves of sin, which includes all of us. There is no unredeemed human being who is not a slave to sin. Therefore, identifying zombies with blacks as an origin story is historically accurate but totally irrelevant.

One more for the road: "The zombie...is a soulless human corpse, still dead, but taken from the grave and endowed through sorcery with a mechanical semblance of life-it is a dead body which is made to walk and act and move as if it were alive." (ditto)

Let's decode: The unredeemed sinner is a soulless human corpse, still 'dead in the spirit,' but taken from the grave (the womb of any female) and endowed through sorcery (the control of Satan) with a semblance of life-it is dead (to the spirit) while walking, talking, and moving as a semblance of (eternal) life, which of course it is not.

This implosion exposes the pointlessness of zombies as entertainment. It does argue for the need to concentrate on our and everyone else's redemption.

[Kev Bickerdike · Rating 4 out of 5]

My rating is based on the chapters I read (about half of the book).

[Dominick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Better than Generation Zombie by virtue of a clearer focus and structure (rather than being a more or less random collection of essays) and generally by better writing--whether that's a function of editorial oversight or just luck of the draw in who happened to write the essays I don't know--this collection is still somewhat hit and miss. Several of the pieces are very good--on a one-on-one basis, better than the essays in Generation Zombie anyway--but several limitations reveal themselves. Factual errors crop up occasionally, not in ways that impact deeply on the arguments being made, admittedly, but such errors when one does spot them lead one to wonder how many other such errors one is not spotting, so the analyses overall become more suspect. Some of the later essays in the book, as well, as we proceed along the trajectory towards the evolution of the post-human zombie, tend to get caught up in dead-end (no pun intended) recursive iterations of the zombie as liminal creature, as indefinable, etc. In some ways the book has less range than GZ, but since one of the problems with that book was its over-eagerness to extend the zombie concept almost infinitely, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Indeed, this book's attempt (problematic as it is--being challenged even within the book) at a zombie taxonomy is very helpful; Kevin Boon's categorization of the different classes of zombies gives readers a good test case for their own limits on what constitutes a legitimate zombie. Of the two recent sets of zombie essays I've read, this is the one I'd recommend.

[Gina · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of academic essays. As such, it is the usual issues, with sometimes being too dry or too obtuse. Most of the papers are of a shorter length though, which helps prevent any of them from getting too horrible. In addition, the collection covers a really wide range of zombie issues, becoming pretty impressive in its scope.

One interesting point for me was a coincidence. I happened to attend a book event where David J Morris was reading from and answering questions about his book on post-traumatic stress disorder, The Evil Hours, and I was amazed by the correlations. There is some reference to PTSD in this book, but it is more that there are areas of overlap that I never thought of.

Good food for thought.

[Nikki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Due to time constraints and the purposes of my current research, I only read the first third of this book, but I look forward to reading the rest in the undefined future. ;) It's a collection of essays broken down into three sections examining the original, modern, and post-modern zombie. LOTS of historical and pop-culture goodies within!! Highly recommend!

[Emily Briano · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thought-provoking collection of academic essays that address a variety of issues related to our culture's understanding of zombies. I only wish it had addressed The Walking Dead more since it's the latest zombie incarnation sweeping the nation (and the one I'm most well-versed in)

[Tara Brabazon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a solid textualization of the zombie in popular culture, with particular attention to film. There is - as the name suggest - some postmodern theorization. The post-human is well presented, deploying the hyphen to build and understand the jarring movement between 'post' and 'human.'