Happy Monday, Missians!
Well, I must say with all the paranoia going on from this Covid-19 stuff, it sort of feels like we're in the middle of some low-budget science fiction/horror movie that today's monster might very well show up in, (and don't worry--I'm not going on a corona rant today, like last week). Today's monster is the Zombie.
Most of you who're too young to remember that creepy, black and white horror movie "Night of the Living Dead, probably get most of your zombie knowledge from "The Walking Dead." But my earliest television encounter with the un-dead came in the form of the 1968, George Romero classic, "Night of the Living Dead." Now when this first came out, I wasn't born yet, but when I did see it, it still had an impact on me, (not one as strong as "The Exorcist," thank goodness), leaving me with an eerie, hopeless, "something's-not-right-with-the-world feeling".
Despite the helpless, creepiness that that movie inspired in me, it was the ones released in the 80's that stuck with me far more; these included, "Return of the Living Dead," "Re-animator," (based on novellas by HP Lovecraft), "Pet Sematary," and "The Serpent and the Rainbow." The Serpent and the Rainbow is a different type of zombie movie that doesn't involve the typical rotten corpses walking around in search of brains. Some people might find it more disturbing, however because it touches on the voodoo or black magic side of turning someone into a zombie. In the movie, Dr. Dennis Allen goes to Haiti to investigate a man who had supposedly died in 1978, but is somehow brought back to life and was spotted alive and "well". Dr. Allen is in search of the voodoo drug that was used on the man to induce his "death." That kind of situation is much scarier in real life because supposedly that type of thing really goes on. More on that later...
Sidenote: If you want a lighter, comedic zombie movie from 1990, you should check out a B-movie gem called, "Frankenhooker".
Okay, now onto the topic at hand. Just what is a zombie? And surely it didn't originate from the prototype of the dead coming to life to eat the living's brains because of a virus or radiation, did it?
Let's find out.
Today's zombie information is courtesy of Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie
Pulliam and Fonseca (2014) and Walz (2006) trace the zombie lineage back to ancient Mesopotamia.[44][45] In the Descent of Ishtar, the goddess Ishtar threatens:[46]
Until then,
This is your host J,
signing off...
Well, I must say with all the paranoia going on from this Covid-19 stuff, it sort of feels like we're in the middle of some low-budget science fiction/horror movie that today's monster might very well show up in, (and don't worry--I'm not going on a corona rant today, like last week). Today's monster is the Zombie.
Most of you who're too young to remember that creepy, black and white horror movie "Night of the Living Dead, probably get most of your zombie knowledge from "The Walking Dead." But my earliest television encounter with the un-dead came in the form of the 1968, George Romero classic, "Night of the Living Dead." Now when this first came out, I wasn't born yet, but when I did see it, it still had an impact on me, (not one as strong as "The Exorcist," thank goodness), leaving me with an eerie, hopeless, "something's-not-right-with-the-world feeling".
Despite the helpless, creepiness that that movie inspired in me, it was the ones released in the 80's that stuck with me far more; these included, "Return of the Living Dead," "Re-animator," (based on novellas by HP Lovecraft), "Pet Sematary," and "The Serpent and the Rainbow." The Serpent and the Rainbow is a different type of zombie movie that doesn't involve the typical rotten corpses walking around in search of brains. Some people might find it more disturbing, however because it touches on the voodoo or black magic side of turning someone into a zombie. In the movie, Dr. Dennis Allen goes to Haiti to investigate a man who had supposedly died in 1978, but is somehow brought back to life and was spotted alive and "well". Dr. Allen is in search of the voodoo drug that was used on the man to induce his "death." That kind of situation is much scarier in real life because supposedly that type of thing really goes on. More on that later...
Sidenote: If you want a lighter, comedic zombie movie from 1990, you should check out a B-movie gem called, "Frankenhooker".
Okay, now onto the topic at hand. Just what is a zombie? And surely it didn't originate from the prototype of the dead coming to life to eat the living's brains because of a virus or radiation, did it?
Let's find out.
Today's zombie information is courtesy of Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie
Etymology
The English word "zombie" is first recorded in 1819, in a history of Brazil by the poet Robert Southey, in the form of "zombi", actually referring to the Afro-Brazilian rebel leader named Zumbi and the etymology of his name in "nzambi".[3] The Oxford English Dictionary gives the origin of the word as Central African and compares it to the Kongo words "nzambi" (god) and "zumbi" (fetish).
In Haitian folklore, a zombie (Haitian French: zombi, Haitian Creole: zonbi) is an animated corpse raised by magical means, such as witchcraft.[14]
The concept has been popularly associated with the religion of voodoo, but it plays no part in that faith's formal practices.
How the creatures in contemporary zombie films came to be called "zombies" is not fully clear. The film Night of the Living Dead made no spoken reference to its undead antagonists as "zombies", describing them instead as "ghouls" (though ghouls, which derive from Arabic folklore, are demons, not undead). Although George Romero used the term "ghoul" in his original scripts, in later interviews he used the term "zombie". The word "zombie" is used exclusively by Romero in his script for his sequel Dawn of the Dead (1978),[15] including once in dialog. According to George Romero, film critics were influential in associating the term "zombie" to his creatures, and especially the French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma. He eventually accepted this linkage, even though he remained convinced at the time that "zombies" corresponded to the undead slaves of Haitian voodoo as depicted in White Zombie with Bela Lugosi.[16]
Folk beliefs
Haitian tradition
Zombies are featured widely in Haitian rural folklore as dead persons physically revived by the act of necromancy of a bokor, a sorcerer or witch. The bokor is opposed by the houngan (priest) and the mambo (priestess) of the formal voodoo religion. A zombie remains under the control of the bokor as a personal slave, having no will of its own.
The Haitian tradition also includes an incorporeal type of zombie, the "zombie astral", which is a part of the human soul. A bokor can capture a zombie astral to enhance his spiritual power. A zombie astral can also be sealed inside a specially decorated bottle by a bokor and sold to a client to bring luck, healing, or business success. It is believed that God eventually will reclaim the zombie's soul, so the zombie is a temporary spiritual entity.[17]
The two types of zombie reflect soul dualism, a belief of Haitian voodoo. Each type of legendary zombie is therefore missing one half of its soul (the flesh or the spirit).[18]
The zombie belief has its roots in traditions brought to Haiti by enslaved Africans and their subsequent experiences in the New World. It was thought that the voodoo deity Baron Samedi would gather them from their grave to bring them to a heavenly afterlife in Africa ("Guinea"), unless they had offended him in some way, in which case they would be forever a slave after death, as a zombie.
A zombie could also be saved by feeding them salt. English professor Amy Wilentz has written that the modern concept of Zombies was strongly influenced by Haitian slavery. Slave drivers on the plantations, who were usually slaves themselves and sometimes voodoo priests, used the fear of zombification to discourage slaves from committing suicide.[19][20]
While most scholars have associated the Haitian zombie with African cultures, a connection has also been suggested to the island's indigenous TaÃno people, partly based on an early account of native shamanist practices written by the Hieronymite monk Ramón Pané, a companion of Christopher Columbus.[21][22][23]
The Haitian zombie phenomenon first attracted widespread international attention during the United States occupation of Haiti (1915–1934), when a number of case histories of purported "zombies" began to emerge. The first popular book covering the topic was William Seabrook's The Magic Island (1929). Seabrooke cited Article 246 of the Haitian criminal code, which was passed in 1864, asserting that it was an official recognition of zombies. This passage was later used in promotional materials for the 1932 film White Zombie.[24]
In 1937, while researching folklore in Haiti, Zora Neale Hurston encountered the case of a woman who appeared in a village. A family claimed that she was Felicia Felix-Mentor, a relative, who had died and been buried in 1907 at the age of 29. The woman was examined by a doctor; X-rays indicated that she did not have a leg fracture that Felix-Mentor was known to have had.[26] Hurston pursued rumors that affected persons were given a powerful psychoactive drug, but she was unable to locate individuals willing to offer much information. She wrote: "What is more, if science ever gets to the bottom of Vodou in Haiti and Africa, it will be found that some important medical secrets, still unknown to medical science, give it its power, rather than gestures of ceremony."[27]
African and related legends
A Central or West African origin for the Haitian zombie has been postulated based on two etymologies in the Kongo language, nzambi ("god") and zumbi ("fetish"). This root helps form the names of several deities, including the Kongo creator deity Nzambi a Mpungu and the Louisiana serpent deity Li Grand Zombi (a local version of the Haitian Damballa), but it is in fact a generic word for a divine spirit.[28] The common African conception of beings under these names is more similar to the incorporeal "zombie astral",[17] as in the Kongo Nkisi spirits.
A related, but also often incorporeal, undead being is the jumbee of the English-speaking Caribbean, considered to be of the same etymology;[29] in the French West Indies also, local "zombies" are recognized, but these are of a more general spirit nature.[30]
The idea of physical zombie-like creatures is present in some South African cultures, where they are called xidachane in Sotho/Tsonga and maduxwane in Venda. In some communities, it is believed that a dead person can be zombified by a small child.[31] It is said that the spell can be broken by a powerful enough sangoma.[32] It is also believed in some areas of South Africa that witches can zombify a person by killing and possessing the victim's body in order to force it into slave labor.[33] After rail lines were built to transport migrant workers, stories emerged about "witch trains". These trains appeared ordinary, but were staffed by zombified workers controlled by a witch. The trains would abduct a person boarding at night, and the person would then either be zombified or beaten and thrown from the train a distance away from the original location.[33]
Another antecedent is the Chinese jiangshi, a zombie-like creature dating back to Qing dynasty era jiangshi fiction of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Origins of zombie beliefs
Chemical hypothesis
Several decades after Hurston's work, Wade Davis, a Harvard ethnobotanist, presented a pharmacological case for zombies in a 1983 article in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology,[34] and later in two popular books: The Serpent and the Rainbow (1985) and Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie (1988).
Davis traveled to Haiti in 1982 and, as a result of his investigations, claimed that a living person can be turned into a zombie by two special powders being introduced into the blood stream (usually through a wound). The first, French: coup de poudre ("powder strike"), includes tetrodotoxin (TTX), a powerful and frequently fatal neurotoxin found in the flesh of the pufferfish (family Tetraodontidae). The second powder consists of deliriant drugs such as datura. Together these powders were said to induce a deathlike state, in which the will of the victim would be entirely subjected to that of the bokor. Davis also popularized the story of Clairvius Narcisse, who was claimed to have succumbed to this practice. The most ethically questioned and least scientifically explored ingredient of the powders is part of a recently buried child's brain.[35][36][37][verification needed]
The process described by Davis was an initial state of deathlike suspended animation, followed by re-awakening — typically after being buried — into a psychotic state. The psychosis induced by the drug and psychological trauma was hypothesised by Davis to reinforce culturally learned beliefs and to cause the individual to reconstruct their identity as that of a zombie, since they "knew" that they were dead and had no other role to play in the Haitian society. Societal reinforcement of the belief was hypothesized by Davis to confirm for the zombie individual the zombie state, and such individuals were known to hang around in graveyards, exhibiting attitudes of low affect.
Davis's claim has been criticized, particularly the suggestion that Haitian witch doctors can keep "zombies" in a state of pharmacologically induced trance for many years.[38] Symptoms of TTX poisoning range from numbness and nausea to paralysis — particularly of the muscles of the diaphragm — unconsciousness, and death, but do not include a stiffened gait or a deathlike trance. According to psychologist Terence Hines, the scientific community dismisses tetrodotoxin as the cause of this state, and Davis' assessment of the nature of the reports of Haitian zombies is viewed as overly credulous.[39]
Social hypothesis
Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing highlighted the link between social and cultural expectations and compulsion, in the context of schizophrenia and other mental illness, suggesting that schizogenesis may account for some of the psychological aspects of zombification.[40] Particularly, this suggests cases where schizophrenia manifests a state of catatonia.
Roland Littlewood, professor of anthropology and psychiatry, published a study supporting a social explanation of the zombie phenomenon in the medical journal The Lancet in 1997.[41] The social explanation sees observed cases of people identified as zombies as a culture-bound syndrome,[42] with a particular cultural form of adoption practiced in Haiti that unites the homeless and mentally ill with grieving families who see them as their "returned" lost loved ones, as Littlewood summarizes his findings in an article in Times Higher Education:[43]
Evolution of the modern zombie archetype
Pulliam and Fonseca (2014) and Walz (2006) trace the zombie lineage back to ancient Mesopotamia.[44][45] In the Descent of Ishtar, the goddess Ishtar threatens:[46]
She repeats this same threat in a slightly modified form in the Epic of Gilgamesh.[47]
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, while not a zombie novel in particular, prefigures many 20th-century ideas about zombies in that the resurrection of the dead is portrayed as a scientific process rather than a mystical one, and that the resurrected dead are degraded and more violent than their living selves. Frankenstein, published in 1818, has its roots in European folklore,[48] whose tales of vengeful dead also informed the evolution of the modern conception of the vampire. Later notable 19th-century stories about the avenging undead included Ambrose Bierce's "The Death of Halpin Frayser" and various Gothic Romanticism tales by Edgar Allan Poe. Though their works could not be properly considered zombie fiction, the supernatural tales of Bierce and Poe would prove influential on later writers such as H. P. Lovecraft, by Lovecraft's own admission.[49]
In the 1920s and early 1930s, the American horror author H. P. Lovecraft wrote several novellae that explored the undead theme. "Cool Air", "In the Vault", and "The Outsider" all deal with the undead, but Lovecraft's Herbert West–Reanimator (1921) "helped define zombies in popular culture".[50] This series of short stories featured Herbert West, a mad scientist who attempts to revive human corpses with mixed results. Notably, the resurrected dead are uncontrollable, mostly mute, primitive and extremely violent; though they are not referred to as zombies, their portrayal was prescient, anticipating the modern conception of zombies by several decades.[citation needed] Edgar Rice Burroughs similarly depicted animated corpses in the second book of his Venus series, again without ever using the terms "zombie" or "undead".
Avenging zombies would feature prominently in the early 1950s EC Comics, which George A. Romero would later claim as an influence. The comics, including Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horror and Weird Science, featured avenging undead in the Gothic tradition quite regularly, including adaptations of Lovecraft's stories, which included "In the Vault", "Cool Air" and Herbert West–Reanimator.[51]
Richard Matheson's 1954 novel I Am Legend, although classified as a vampire story, would nonetheless have a definitive impact on the zombie genre by way of George A. Romero. The novel and its 1964 film adaptation, The Last Man on Earth, which concern a lone human survivor waging war against a world of vampires, would by Romero's own admission greatly influence his 1968 low-budget film Night of the Living Dead,[52][53] a work that would prove to be more influential on the concept of zombies than any literary or cinematic work before it.
A popular evolution of the zombie is the "fast zombie" or running zombie. In contrast to Romero's classic slow zombies, "fast zombies" can run, are more aggressive, and often more intelligent. This type of zombie has origins in 1990s Japanese horror video games. In 1996, Capcom's survival horror video game Resident Evil featured zombie dogs that run towards the player. Later the same year, Sega's arcade shooter The House of the Dead introduced running human zombies, who run towards the player. The running human zombies introduced in The House of the Dead video games became the basis for the "fast zombies" that became popular in zombie films during the early 21st century, starting with 28 Days Later (2002), the Resident Evil and House of the Dead films, and the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake.[54]
You can read the rest of the article at the link above.
So, what do you guys think about zombies? For me, the biggest concern would be the type of situation like in The Serpent and the Rainbow. I don't think the living dead, brain-eating kind of zombie is possible, (or at least I hope not). Having people coming up out of their graves to terrorize the living is truly the horrific stuff of nightmares, and I pray that could never come to pass.
Also the kind of situation like The Walking Dead where as soon as you die, your corpse reanimates due to some kind of virus, or like the situation in the Resident Evil games and movies would also majorly suck. But I'm glad I don't live in a world where those situations are likely to happen. Or do I???
But another "zombie" threat that we didn't discuss, may be the most real of them all: and that is the drug-induced kind, who seemingly go out of their minds and start attacking and biting people--not because they're reanimated corpses, but because they're having a horrifically bad reaction to whatever drug (commonly bath salts) they've taken. You can read about some of those instances here:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/flakka-what-is-it-florida-face-eating-attack-zombie-drug-austin-harrouff-a7195871.html
https://www.highsnobiety.com/2017/04/24/what-is-spice-drug/
Okay, that's it for now. I'll see you guys back here next week for our last Monster of March. Until then, everyone stay safe. Pass the time with your social distancing by revisiting or getting caught up on past Missy Show episodes here:
https://www.blogtalkradio.com/shesatortie
So, what do you guys think about zombies? For me, the biggest concern would be the type of situation like in The Serpent and the Rainbow. I don't think the living dead, brain-eating kind of zombie is possible, (or at least I hope not). Having people coming up out of their graves to terrorize the living is truly the horrific stuff of nightmares, and I pray that could never come to pass.
Also the kind of situation like The Walking Dead where as soon as you die, your corpse reanimates due to some kind of virus, or like the situation in the Resident Evil games and movies would also majorly suck. But I'm glad I don't live in a world where those situations are likely to happen. Or do I???
But another "zombie" threat that we didn't discuss, may be the most real of them all: and that is the drug-induced kind, who seemingly go out of their minds and start attacking and biting people--not because they're reanimated corpses, but because they're having a horrifically bad reaction to whatever drug (commonly bath salts) they've taken. You can read about some of those instances here:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/flakka-what-is-it-florida-face-eating-attack-zombie-drug-austin-harrouff-a7195871.html
https://www.highsnobiety.com/2017/04/24/what-is-spice-drug/
Okay, that's it for now. I'll see you guys back here next week for our last Monster of March. Until then, everyone stay safe. Pass the time with your social distancing by revisiting or getting caught up on past Missy Show episodes here:
https://www.blogtalkradio.com/shesatortie
Until then,
This is your host J,
signing off...
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