The film Night of the
Living Dead (1968) by George A. Romero played on the American cultural
anxieties at the time. These included, among others, fear of Communism, fear of
desegregation, and a fear of the “other” in general. Zombies, by definition,
used to be human so they were among regular humans but after infection pose a
grave danger. One of the fears with zombies is that they are among us, but we
don’t know who will be infected next.
In Isaac Marion’s Warm
Bodies the setting is much more modern and America has moved on to its fear
of extremist ideologies and the War on Terror. Just as before, threats could be
among us and we will never know who they are until it is too late. But, I think
that is just the connection to modern society. I think what Marion is trying to
get across is that humans even before the zombie apocalypse were “dead” in the
sense that they were not satisfied with life and were just going through the
motions. R even laments his death because his life as a zombie is so boring and
that he remembers his past life as filled with goals and aspirations. He makes
the apt comment that applies not just to him, but life before the infection: “Being
dead is easy” (9). Eventually R does change his life and becomes something else
other than just zombie, but perhaps not quite “human” as we think of it now. But
the idea that R brings up is important because he contrasts the way life
carries out now where the status quo is reinforced at every turn and trying to
deviate from the setting of modern life is frowned upon. Society’s fear of
becoming too barbaric leading to the end of the civilization has, perhaps,
ended everyone’s lives anyways by being too robotic. Marion’s ending appears to touch on this idea
by implying that change is the only constant and that oftentimes it is jarring
to society in its uncertainty or messiness. However, people can change as well
if they want to and our unwillingness to venture into the unknown is killing us
just as much as what we cannot see.
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