One would be hard-pressed to find a more popular cultural phenomenon than George R.R Martin’s epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO’s derivative television series Game of Thrones. Between these two media sources, the fantasy epic has spawned a massive fan base. An estimate of 17 million books of the series have been sold around the world, while the most recent episode of the HBO series had 5.4 million TV views, in addition to the estimated one million people viewing it illicitly within twenty-four hours of the first airing11. With such immense popularity in the Western world, whatever emotional connection the fans of the phenomenon have to the epic must represent a wider collective social ethos. Noticeably, the books -with the first volumes being released by November 2000- only gained popularity in the post-9/11 era. The epic is known for its motifs of the application of valar morghulis and the White Walkers- the idea that “All men must die” and an impending zombie doomsday event, respectively. If one were to couple these two observations, one might propose an intrinsic link between post-9/11 emotional tensions and the reasons for the fantasy epic’s recent gain in popularity. One such proposal that will be examined is the idea that the people of the West are collectively suffering from Post-Tramautic Stress Disorder originating from witnessing the events of terrorism on 9/11 so much that they seek to connect with pop culture media that projects their fears and realizations. A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones are these projections, for the application of valar morghulis fulfills the people’s realization of their own mortality as well as the recognition of the mortality of everyone around them, and the constant...
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...bedient wights, reflect society’s collective PTSD from witnessing the events of 9/11. Respectively, one deals with recognizing our mortality and the mortality of those around us, and the other presents our fear of doomsday and a loss of order and structure. These ideas can be seen in other cultural objects. With songs like “YOLO”, by Drake, “Live like we’re dying”, by Kris Allen and others, music is definitely playing a role in our obsession with recognizing our mortality. Similarly, the re-popularization of the zombie and apocalypse genre also recognizes our fear of an end to society. Another object that could supplement this thesis would be The Hunger Games series, which encompasses both the yearly killing of children and a post-apocalyptic world. One should not omit pop-culture phenomena when investigating the collective social ethos of a period in human history.
Both White Zombie and “Dead Men Walking in the Cane Fields” represent the early zombie and both of them embody Cohen’s first thesis “The Monster is a Cultural Body” Both the story and the film have zombies and both of these works make their zombies appear scary with dead like characteristics, however the real reason why they are scary is that, at the time, they tried to change society and that scared people. The people that liked society the way it was didn’t want another group to gain power or righ...
The texts ‘I am legend’ and ‘Children of men’ are both set in post-apocalypse times where humans are on the brink of extinction. These texts explore how these post-apolitical environments can causes us as humans to sacrifice ourselves for the survival of society. In I am legend, Robert Neville a virologist, who is immune to a man-made virus originally created to cure cancer, works to create a remedy. Near the end of the film, Robert is forced to commit the ultimate price for the survival of society by sacrificing his own life. In the final scene, moments after Robert discovers “the cure is in the blood”, he realises “their not going to stop” as the zombies continue to attack. In order to protect the only other two living humans in New York, he hands over the newly found cure and takes his life along with the zombies’ with a grenade. Similarly in the film children of men society is also on the brink of collaps...
James Parker essay “Our Zombies, Ourselves,” informs readers that the zombie has almost outranked the vampire, and why they’re so popular. This undead monster originated from a Caribbean folk nightmare and was adapted over time by, the Halperin brothers, William Seabrook and George Romero and numerous others. Much like the vampire, zombies owe their fame to the progressiveness of technology, allowing them to consistently invade various media forms. The zombie has infested countless tv shows, movies, video games, and books, throughout the 21st century. Zombies themselves are soulless corpses who were regurgitated back into the world of the living. This making them rejects from the underworld, this presents the zombie as rejected yet inexpungable. What makes the zombie so popular, however, is that symbolizes everything that is rejected by humanity. “Much can be made of him, because he makes so little of himself. He comes back, He comes back, feebly but unstoppably” (Parker). The zombie represents humanity itself as well as what is rejected by humanity. Much like individuals today, the zombie is burdened by life’s demands, converting to nothing but a rotting, groaning human shell that stumbles through life without a purpose. The zombie is symbolizer of the real world, and all things irrepressible, whereas the vampire is a symbol of an alternate world and all things
...a reflect the beliefs of the era they come from, such as the ro-langs, the Vodou zombie of Haiti, and the modern zombies of today. Aside from zombies reflecting the beliefs of the era, they also have the ability to change the way people think and how they lived their lives. To some cultures, the zombie isn’t just a thought, but something that can truly hurt them. As said above, zombies now have influence over society and the using them properly can positively affect the way people think. They can broaden the mind and can teach society about diversity. In the end of it all, “despite being so terrifying, or perhaps because of it, zombies have become a useful communication tool. The argument is that most disasters, from an earthquake to a brain eating army of the un-dead, require the same tools—an escape plan, the need for calm and plenty of supplies.” (Seifert 68)
Love and hope, together are a timeless literary thematic duo, which continue to inspire countless variations and sub-genres of romance literature. For the last many centuries, romance as a genre, is arguably the most popular of all narratives. However, the theme of love often takes presentences and overarches other thematic interpretation of stories. So why then are people seeking romance in the literature they ready? Suzanne Collins wrote The Hunger Games with the intent to introduce her young adult readership to a number of politically charged themes. Although Collins's work is acknowledged for successfully presenting themes of sacrifice, versions of reality, and power, her audience conversely identifies with the debatable sub-them of love. Social forums, such as the Official Hunger Games Facebook Website exposes an insider's perspective of sort, which reveals public perceptions and interpretations of Collins's work. Even though the purpose for the fan-website built around The Hunger games is to provide a discussion space. Participant's discussions however, unintentionally reveal a...
"yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars" (Ginsberg 11). Like many authors of the modern literature movement, Allen Ginsberg explores the bomb's psychological affects on many Americans during the 1960s. Modern literature describes the chaos of the 1960s, caused by increasing societal problems and fear of the new atomic bomb. Writings such as The Basketball Diaries, "Howl" and Cat's Cradle express concepts of fear, power, governmental control, and death. Government uses society's fear of death and the end of the world to keep control and power over the people. The atomic bomb generates such universal fear and the corrupted government fails to respond to the chaotic behavior of society or the fears of the individuals. This fear that the government achieves not only maintains control, but also causes chaos and the false belief that the government is on the public's side. The chaotic environment is a result of people crying out for help and the conflicting lifestyles arise when people face the terror of death.
In this essay, I will be critiquing two articles “Monsters and Messiahs” by Mike Davis and “My Zombie, Myself: why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead” by Chuck Klosterman, to show the different fallacies along with the argumentized style that is being used. Both of this articles can be found in the book Monster A Bedford Spotlight Reader by Andrew J. Hoffman.
Zombies have become very popular due to their depictions of being easy to kill and being communal. Zombie apocalypses are also very relatable due to the fact that they are set in lives similar to our society and seem easy to overcome. Zombies, themselves, can be identified with because we see ourselves when we look at a zombie. Zombies drudge on through the same task of finding human flesh to consume every day just like we drag ourselves to either class or our job in order to sit through another boring lecture or perform the same menial task every day. Just like the zombie, R, in the book, Warm Bodies, said, “I am Dead, but it’s not so bad. I’ve learned to live with it,” we have learned to succumb to our daily routines and just live with
Torie Boschs “First eat all the lawyers” appeared in Slate october 2011. Her piece was to reach out to horror fans and to explain to them why zombies are a great monsters in current media. Zombie fanatics who read this short essay will love her vast knowledge of zombies while others who still do not understand why zombies are horribly terrifying can get behind her argument. Bosch explains that the current zombie craze has to do with our current society and how white-collar workers would be left defenceless in a world over run with a rampant horde of zombies. While blue-collar workers can flourish in this current state as they have more skills suited for survival. Boschs essay uses rhetorical devices such as ethos, foil and satire to make her
Most people view death as an evil force set out against all of humanity. In fact, in our present culture, the personification of death, the grim reaper, is one ...
Throughout the 1990s and into the 21st century, words such as jihad, suicide bomber, and al-Qaeda increasingly permeated the collective consciousness of Americans. These words were associated with fear, with terror, with the threat of death, and with the eastern ‘Other’. September 11, 2001 is a day on which most can recall the shaky words of broadcasters and the billowing plumes of smoke that were emitted from the towers of the World Trade Centre when members of the Islamic fundamentalist group al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial passenger airplanes and crashed them into targeted landmarks in the United States. Lawrence Wright’s novel, The Looming Tower, draws upon several years of first-hand research and investigative journalism that reveals the political and historical atmosphere that led to the events of that day. The author composes a rigorous, detailed, and poetic work of nonfiction that illustrates the complex and geographically dispersed histories of Islamic fundamentalism and gives life to the personalities of the men that shaped the ideas that guided al-Qaeda. In the book, the actions of these men are built around narratives of their pasts; narratives of sexual obsession and repulsion, humiliation, torture, and resentment. The novel is rich with detail and divulges the reader in the particularly emotional and personal nuances of men such as Sayyid Qutb, Ayman Zawahiri, and Osama bin Laden. In 1978, Edward Said wrote the groundbreaking book, Orientalism, which has since given clarity to the power dynamic between the East and the West, the Occident and the Orient. Orientalism is the pervasive and largely Western tradition of building stereotypical and negative archetypes of people of the Middle East and Asia. Or...
Game of Thrones is a book series written by George R.R. Martin, HBO has turned the books into one of the most widely followed television series on cable today. The book is set in a fantasy world that somewhat resembles what we know as the medieval era. The story follows around a vast cast of characters as they all fight to gain the “Iron Throne” in order to rule over the land. This paper will follow Daenerys Targaryen’s story during season one as she tries to get back her family’s throne. A she goes on her journey we will analyze how her story conforms and later on resists common themes of gender.
In the article, “A Zombie Manifesto: The Nonhuman Condition in the Era of Advanced Capitalism” by Sarah Juliet Lauro and Karen Embry, the authors’ evaluate the idea of the zombie and its connection to capitalism and post-humanism. According to the authors, the zombie represents much more than just a fear, it represents a loss of oneself to many different things, primarily to a capitalist society. The authors have come to the conclusion that humans have a fear of what they cannot control, and that is why the zombie is so big in entertainment. We see zombies everywhere, in movies, books, tv shows, fundraisers, marathons, and so much more. They have been around for decades, but recently they have become very popular. The authors believe this is
In White Noise Don DeLillo’s characters show a reflection of people living in the age of overwhelming media and television. All the characters in the book are products of this environment around them, but they are products in very different ways. Their actions and how they deal with things in their world show the audience a reflection of themselves in one way or another. Through these characters we can see how this era of media and consumerism affects the view of death and the natural world.
George A. Romero, the director of Night of the Living Dead accidently created the zombie genre that we are familiar with today. Night of the Living Dead reshaped the entire genre with its bitter realism. Romero established verisimilitude unintentionally by focusing on how people react to crisis. The first zombie movies relied on semi-terrifying dress codes (of their time) and the conventional diegetic scream of a female. Whereas Romero’s film is an interpretation of humankind’s collapse. Romero drew inspiration from the infamous Vietnam War spiralling at the time and the American civil war. The verisimilitude lies within the human condition in dire times, like war. Therefore, in the Night of the Living Dead the zombie/ghoul stands as a symbol for the enemy contriving those dire times. This consequently makes the genre actually terrifying because representations have altered. Zombies are no longer an otherworldly or scientific monster e.g. White Zombie but a