Jovanka Vuckovic Appears to Miss Zombie Forest for the Differently Animated Trees in New Illustrated Tome on the History of Zombies
The news is going around the web about a book that the former Editor-in-Chief of Rue Morgue magazine has coming out about Zombies:
The zombie phenomenon is unique in Western popular culture. From its origins in the voodoo beliefs of Haiti, it has become a key ingredient in today’s cinema, popular literature and comics. With one simple premise that the dead rise again to feast on the living and turn them into zombies, the undead have inspired a huge variety of artists to explore ideas of survival, morality, fear, humour and horror. ZOMBIES! is the first book to take a wide look at the whole phenomenon, from low budget cult movies to long-running comics and best-selling humour novels. With stunning imagery, and an authoritative and entertaining text from one of the worlds most distinguished experts on the genre, plus a foreword by master of horror George A. Romero, this tome will appall and delight the reader in equal measure.
See, the first part that bothers me is having George Romero do the foreword for a book on Zombies. True, no work dealing with the cultural interactions between the Differently Animated and the Living community over the last century would be complete without discussing his, ahem, work in movies like ‘Night of the Living Dead’. We can’t properly discuss the Civil War without talking about Nathan Bedford Forrest either.
But it’s another matter entirely to allow him to shape the entire work by presenting his own perverse views on the Differently Animated at the very front of the book! Talk about revisionist history.
I decided to look a bit further afield, and fortunately there was an extensive Dread Central interview with Vuckovic on this very subject to glean details from. They were not, hugely, encouraging:
DC: You cover the zombie genre from its true beginnings as part of the voodoo religion to its current inception as a part of pop culture. What do you think is the continuing appeal of the zombie? There are plenty of other monsters out there, but the zombiemania just keeps going and going (no pun intended).
JV: I think the key to the zombie’s longevity is its malleability. It can be hammered into other shapes without breaking. The creature has managed to evolve quite effortlessly mostly on the silver screen, with small pitstops on the printed page such as Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend. The zombie has served as a metaphor for a variety of things including slavery, industrialization, nuclear anxiety, war, xenophobia, disease and so on. In fact you can trace sociocultural evolution via the zombie in North American cinema – and to some degree in Europe and elsewhere, though the Italian zombie films are often less about what’s going on in society as they are about putting on a Grand Guignol feast for the senses.
This is simultaneously insightful and insulting, which is a neat trick. If you were to preface that explanation by noting that it is solely meant to describe the way that mean-spirited mainstream culture has *used* the Differently Animated, then it would be spot on, trenchant analysis. Unfortunately we see here the tendency, so common in horror journalists, to confuse the reality of the hardworking, average Zombie American with the grotesque stereotype that the movies, and comics, and books, and videogames often label as a ‘zombie’.
Much like documentarians who lose themselves in their own footage and begin to believe that what they shot defines and encompasses reality, Ms. Vuckovic seems to think that the twisted imagery that has emerged from the pop horror culture over the last century. She has looked out and seen a forest of Zombies, and never stopped to consider the individual Differently Animated trees, become enraptured by the zeitgeist and forgotten to wonder about the people who make up the culture.
That is of course a monumental misunderstanding, and a tragic mistake.
A possible reason for this mistake in judgment and error in focus comes up a bit later in the interview:
DC: To answer a becoming-age-old question, do you prefer the slow Romero zombies or the fast Snyder zombies?
JV: Definitely in the Romero camp here. I think zombies are better when they move slowly. For one, zombies wouldn’t actually be able to run in reality. Their muscle insertions, sinews and other connective tissues would putrefy and disconnect from the skeleton. Unless it was a really fresh zombie, I mean, just turned, they wouldn’t be getting around too quickly. That said, because we were so used to the Romero paradigm for so long, when the zombies did come tearing after us in 28 Days Later, it was pretty freaky. But then again, they aren’t technically zombies – they’re the “infected.” Zombie parlance is very particular. You have to be careful with these designations! [Laughs] You know, I just think zombies are scarier when they are more lifeless – less human.
Here we get to the crux of the matter; Ms. Vuckovic sees Zombies, see the Differently Animated, not as people, but as a source of amusement, as entertainment. She diminishes them and ignores their plight because, to her, it doesn’t actually exist – Zombies begin and end with what shows up on the page or on a screen, and only then when it’s scary or entertaining. If that is one’s perspective then it is hardly surprising that a lack of sympathy is the direct result. How much sympathy do people have for their fictitious enemies? Are there people out there who weep over the turtles that Mario stomps on his way to victory?
Should there be? I wonder.
At any rate, the ZRC is interested enough that I will probably pick up a copy to review eventually, but saddened enough that it can’t be a high priority. What we’ve seen so far may be broader in historical scope than the narrow post-Romero focus so common amongst Zombie ‘scholars’ or ‘academics’, but it is no kinder, and certainly no fairer, to the Differently Animated.
About The Author
Have you seen the new Monster High dolls from Mattel? They have a Zombie character: http://www.monsterhigh.com/bios/ghoulia
Instead of eating brains, she likes to eat fast food and likes to study, and is portrayed as a pretty normal teenager. I think it’s a pretty positive portrayal of a teenage girl who happens to be Differently Animated.
It still has a few problems, but overall I think it’s a step forward.
Interesting. I’m not sure what it means to only be able to speak Zombie though; if she can read other languages, surely she can write them. Is it sort of like being mute, or having limited vocalization ability? Still, overall, pretty positive. Odd coming from Mattel too.