Among The Living Dead: The Zombie Narrative in a Post-9/11 Era >>> Zoë Princehorn Preface At the age of nine years old I saw my first zombie movie1, and it is one of the most vivid memories I have from my childhood. I remember sitting on the floor right up front, so close I could not even take in the whole television at once. My brother put the disk in the player and the next ninety minutes were some of the most exciting, yet horrifying minutes of my life. When the movie ended, my brother got up to retrieve the movie, but before he could, I turned to him and asked if we could watch it again. I remember his reaction; for a second he looked puzzled and then the biggest grin spread across his face. As he hit ‘play’ on the remote for another time, I inched up even further to the television, allowing myself to be closer to the terror that I knew awaited me. My brother may not have known it at the time (even though I like to think he did), but he had created his very own monster. From that day on I was obsessed with zombies. My obsession first started with movies; I watched every zombie movie I could get my hands on and there was never enough. At the time I had no idea why I kept watching these movies that were so horrifying to me; zombies scared me more than any other creature out there. I have realized now that it is because of this fear that I am so interested. Why do they scare me? The more I understand this creature, the more I understand myself. As years went on I found myself going deeper and deeper into this world of the undead. I surrounded myself with books, movies, and anything else I could find; priding myself on the collection I was making that continues to grow at every chance I get. When other teenagers claimed that their hero was their mom or dad, I, without hesitation, said George Romero and I meant it. My interest in the topic remained relatively casual until I got to Otterbein University. My very first class my freshman year was an honors class entirely devoted to monsters in literature. This was when I started to realize that studying zombies could be more than just a hobby; it could actually become academic work, something that seemed so bizarre and strange. This realization felt like a relief, what I loved was not a waste of time after all! When I decided to do research on zombies for my project, I had no idea where I would end up taking the expansive topic; I had limitless possibilities. I started to just do research on the metaphorical significance of zombies in literature and film, which is what led me to the article that gave me a more specific heading. Kyle Bishop’s2 article, “Dead Man Still Walking: Explaining the Zombie Renaissance,” begins to explore the connections between the attacks of September 11th and their link to the rise of the popularity of zombies in the early 21st Century. Bishop demonstrates that many zombie films’ opening sequences have a connection to the fears that arose from September 11th. As an example, he looks at Dawn of the Dead (2004) and, Ana, the main protagonist, as she
Aegis 2015
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