Mail of the Living Dead

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Comment by 1cgqtuoblpeqc on July 3, 2011 at 12:38pm

also, you have to consider the zombie as a stand-in for a punching bag - something we can turn our inward anger and aggression upon, without any remorse or guilt. the faceless enemy.

 

there is a book that was recommended to me by one of the teachers at my school called faces of the enemy by Sam Keen, which talks about the dehumanization of enemy soldiers during wartime through art, and has a ton of great historical wartime propaganda pictures. i think zombies encapsulate that sort of mentality extremely well!

 

@DK: shopping malls. zombies as portrayal of american consumerism. that is really powerful!

 

@DVS: apocalypse? religion? i think you're onto something!

Comment by 1cgqtuoblpeqc on July 3, 2011 at 11:17am

as brooks landon (who you may credit as the ultimate source of inspiration for my zombie projects) points out, zombies are the ultimate loss of control.

they only want one thing. BRAINS!

Comment by De Villo Sloan on July 3, 2011 at 4:00am

Oh geez DK - great, yes. In the zombie-related stuff you are in danger of having your body taken over - your soul destroyed - like Invasion of the Body Snatchers - this lifeless double replaces you - you but not you. So in IBS you get this fear of sleep phobia. Very strange - if you fall asleep, you will awaken as someone else.

Comment by De Villo Sloan on July 3, 2011 at 3:57am

Thanks DK - I thought about this before SH started this excellent group. And he mentioned popular culture, and then there is so-called high culture. Yeah, Eliot had the vision of legions of living dead walking over London Bridge in a world of monotony and regimentation where meaning and purpose were slowly fading away - which he associated with the loss of any kind of spiritual belief (death of God) - the zombies seem to me a part of the nightmare vision, strange as the connection might be

Comment by De Villo Sloan on July 3, 2011 at 3:52am

because they were an existing symbol of the living dead (probably coming out of folktales) that could be reworked into new forms? zombies are not unlike vampires - I think there's a connections there. Like DK pointed out, there is an exotic (Romanticism) connection to Voodoo (Santeria connection) and yes, source Haiti but Africa as well - so there are religious and supernatural overtones - racial overtones. I notice in the pics posted there seems to be a connection between sensual (and also white) women and threatened violation by the zombie. Of course, form mutates and there are zombie women as well - but there is a death and sexuality thing working - necrophilia as in EA Poe? Maybe as Trashpo - we sort through the dumpster of culture and pull out bits and pieces of things that might work for us, recombine them into something else.

Comment by DKeys on July 3, 2011 at 3:44am

That makes a lot of sense DVS. As society has become more and more souless, you have soul 'loss', which-if you believe in the supernatural- leaves

people vulnerable to disencarnate spirits looking for bodies to possess. Then you get 'zombies' I think people use horror to deal with their fear of death and the unknown. Shamans routinely performed soul retrievals on people to avoid having pieces of  their souls scattered about the omniverse.

Comment by 1cgqtuoblpeqc on July 3, 2011 at 3:40am

but the question that got us on them was simpler than the one i used for this,

just two words:

 

WHY ZOMBIES?

Comment by De Villo Sloan on July 3, 2011 at 3:07am

Yip SH, couldn't agree more. All the zombie art is great on its own. But there's all kinds of political and social commentary going - that's a great one - what I think about when I think about zombies.

Comment by 1cgqtuoblpeqc on July 3, 2011 at 2:53am

that is probably my favorite portrayal of zombies.

Comment by 1cgqtuoblpeqc on July 3, 2011 at 2:52am

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