Believe it or not, you can now study Zombie-ism at a university level.

The University of Columbia now offers a media studies unit about Zombies.

This is, of course, in response to not being as cool as the University of Florida, which asked many of its Bio students to create an emergency scenario plan based on one of two scenarios: an outbreak of H1N1 (aka Bird Flu)… or Zombie Outbreaks.

This was a real assignment!

Not to be outdone in the education stakes, University of Baltimore have their course in Zombies taught by professor Blumberg, who the book Zombiemania. And there are even Zombie acting classes, because being able to shamble about mindlessly, moaning and stinking requires several weeks of intensive training and study, rather than a night out on the town with $200 for cheap Jaegerbombs.

Of course, this is in comparison to the Zombie University website, which is clearly a parody meant to sell some rather cool merchandise… Or the poorly animated webtoon series of the same name.

So it’s clearly not enough that we already have shit tons of Zombie literature out there already, like innumerable Zombie survival guides, or Max Brook’s seminal work on a history that never actually happened: World War Z. Then let’s not forget the zombification of classic literature, with Pride & Prejudice & Zombies (which is not as entertaining as Jane Austen’s Fight Club).

Ok, we get it! There are shambling hordes of zombies that are coming to eat out our brains, and potentially sexual organs, and it’s all a giant euphemism for Communism / Capitalism / Male Sexuality  /The Overuse of Artificial Agents in Modern Confectionery / Dilution of Modern Rock via Sequencers & Autotune.

There are arguments for vampire fiction going into vogue every time we enter economically dark times. They’re sensual, sexual, control you in ways you hate, and suck the life blood out of you… just like most H.R. managers. And vampire fiction popularity also seems to coincide with downward trends in the stock market. But why are zombies so freaking popular at the moment?

Author S.G . Browne says it’s because they have become much more versatile in the role they can play, and has little to do with the social context, specifically stating that readers often place a psycho-social reading on a text that simply does not exist (like the gay/AIDS fear reading into Predator). Then again, as an author of zombie books, I think he’s got a vested interest here to say that they are about entertainment, and not all that intellectual. After all, if you try to cross the two, you end up with films as subtle as Zombie Strippers.

Of course, the other economic argument is that zombie films can be made on shoestring budgets and get sizable R.O.I.s. And if you want a crap one, then this is entirely true. Zombie flicks can be made on a very low budget, but pump some decent money into it, and they can actually become fantastic works of cinema. It takes a very cynical producer (of which there are dozens) to simply treat an entire genre this way. Then again, an audience stupid enough to accept a crap film simply because it has their favourite something in it, no matter how trite or cheap, fulfills this producer’s prophecy… I suppose it’s how Sarah Jessica Parker’s career has kept shambling on like… well, a zombie. But it doesn’t explain the popularity of the literature, which costs the same to make regardless of who makes it.

I put the popularity down to it being an apocalyptic scenario that people actually expect they’ll be able to survive. Being able to survive makes people happy, and they kind of want something like this. Earthquakes like Japan’s are entirely random, mass riots like France’s and the USA’s are indiscriminate and can realistically happen anywhere and spread out. Fires like Australia’s are just terrifying – you will not survive.

Zombies though… They’re slow, you have a car, you have power tools, you get to be a fucking hero if you want!

It’s the one apocalypse everyone reckons that they’ll survive, even though they know it can’t actually ever happen. Not really happen.

… damn

You might also like to read:

1. Being a zombie is a political choice

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