Zombies and Me

Or should that be "Zombies and I" or "I Zombie" (a show I will never watch)? I've always been a bit of a scaredy cat with horror films. I think this comes from my mom taking me to see an R-rated movie when I was too young---I can't remember exactly what it was, but there was a scene where a guy swallowed a bit of film and then another guy cut it out of him. I'll Google it later.  

My other earliest memory is seeing a horror movie on TV with Karen Black. I've since learned it's called The Trilogy of Terror (1975) and there were three stories, but the one I remember is this lady getting a wooden doll from another country, and it comes alive and chases her through the house and then inhabits her body. I distinctly remember that she gets it into the oven, but it pops out. The last scene is a possessed KB sitting waiting with a butcher knife, her teeth jagged like the doll's. In looking at that film now, it's clear that the entire thing is based on the fear of Other. This doll, called a Zuni Warrior doll, looks like a black savage. It's made out of wood, dressed only in and carrying a spear

It terrorizes this housewife dressed in her bathrobe who basically can't make it out of the house or get to a phone, and so she is eventually invaded by the doll. So, like, I was six when I saw that. Six years old and being freaked out by an evil doll that looks like a black warrior. A doll that is intent on killing a white woman. That's pretty early to be introduced to fear of the Other, and I'm sure this wasn't the only instance. 

Since then, it's not been vampires or ghosts or werewolves I was afraid of--the worst terror is the mindless zombie, not unlike this little wooden doll. They are creatures without reason; they have only blood lust and, on top of that, they turn you into them. You don't just lose your life, you lose your humanity, becoming a creature whose only desire is to feed. Vampires and ghosts you could (maybe) reason with, and you could still pass as human, at least in the night. Werewolves have 29 whole days where they are human. But zombies...Zombies are brainless forever people. It is so interesting to me that it never occured to me before this class that zombies are the Other--they are dehumanized, they want to repopulate in their likeness, and they are completely foreign to us. This characterization mirrors the xenophobic ideas widely perpetuated today and brought more into the light by our last president. 

We don't say "refugees." We say "illegal aliens" or "immigrants." This terminology serves to distance us from them, so that we don't see people from other countries as humans searching for a better life, but as invaders who do not belong here. Similarly, the creature from the black lagoon, the alien spawing in Riley, any of the other monsters who have no discernible human traits are meant to keep us afraid of difference, to be running from our lives from the demon doll from another country.