ZNN is Undead

Welcome to ZNN: Zombie News Network. Our name is pronounced, "Znnnnnnn." Here you will find news about all things zombie with a particular focus on tracking news from other, possibly reputable, sources. For example, nytimes columnist Paul Krugman recently wrote an op-ed entitles, "Zombie Financial Ideas," about Treasury policy. Here's a link: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/zombie-financial-ideas/

Here is a version of Zombie Theory that I wrote:

What We Talk About When We Talk About Zombies:
An Introduction to Zombie Theory

Charlie Reis

“Hacked Road Signs Warn of Zombie Apocalypse.” Archive Nerdvana, February 15, 2009

“Why do I have to choose between heaven and hell… when there are so many others places I can to go?” The Imaginary Boys Chapter One: Crossroads

“Move Over, Jane Austin. Now Lincoln Meets the Vampires.” NYT, April 14, 2009

You Look Terrible

As a culture, even a global one, we have spent much time and energy telling one another zombie stories. One thing our stories do is to tell us about ourselves. So what’s with all the brain-devouring, blood-splattered fiends?

No one outside of philosophy classes and relationships actually gives any credence to the problem of other minds. It’s an artificial problem in the way that a robot is an artificial worker. Make that robot out of flesh and you have a zombie. In ‘reality’ a zombie is someone with reduced neurological function. It is a body without a mind.

The US Army labels those that score the lowest on intelligence tests as goons; the second lowest scorers are labeled zombies.

The nature of our experience of the world only reveals an intimacy with the thoughts that we each individually have. So the opposing world, that which isn’t us or I, is an aggregation of things, not minds. I’m writing this because I want it to be published and read. I believe in other minds; my act of writing (unless I’m a scribble zombie) presupposes that.

Writing and publishing, two things people do in the world, are hard. Doing anything in the world seems hard. The world isn’t you. It doesn’t care about you. Most jobs in the world rely on structures which keep bodies docile and minds inactive. The world, particularly the world of work, wants you to be a fleshy robot. It wants to bite and infect you, to eat your brain, to remorselessly consume your humanity. More, your humanity itself will consume you. The Ancient Greeks summed up the totality of life through their alphabet, that’s why we have the expression ‘the alpha to the omega.’

In English, this is ‘from a to z.’ The arc which is a human life begins at birth and ceaselessly, mindlessly, marches towards death. We all go from Point A to Point Zombie. I’m sorry to be so gloomy, but the nature of time is inescapable. No one has not died. No one will not die. (You too, Dick Cheney.) The metaphysical position we’re in dictates this. As the world churns up difference at an increasingly alarming rate, it is less of a home for us. It is a home for zombies. Are you late for work or has the virus of telecommuting invaded your home?

In literature or grammar, the world is an it, an other, something which is described in the third person. Zombies oppose humans, which is the main reason zombie stories are so useful to us today. They are stories of loss, loneliness and confusion. They describe our experience living with H1N1, AIDS, Kim Jung Il, Blackwater Security (now rebranded as Xe,) Facebook, twitter and the all idiots we all deal with all day, every day.

Enter Emily

Emily the Strange, like Betty Boop before her, doesn’t mind the darkness. She knows that strange is not a crime. She doesn’t care if she’s a zombie. Characters like Emily reject the logic foist upon them and do what they like. (Recall that hirsute, drooling men continually chased Betty, and that she often escaped by dancing away and disappearing into an inkwell.) Emily is a more modern iteration of the notion that young girls have inherent worth and dignity. You disagree, get lost.

William James famously said that the problem of free will and determinism is pointless because even if we’re always already determined, we have to act as if we had free will. To be or not to be all that you can be means you first have to enlist, then suffer the slings and arrows of basic training.

Emily and Betty are what I call first person zombies. They embrace a logic of darkness, rather than stand under the identificatory glare of the adult world. I myself feel empathy to these characters when I think about that which dehumanizes and controls: police, clergy, most bosses, homeland security, Dostoevskian clerks or my sister.

Security Regulations at Tol Sleng Prison, Phenom Phen, Cambodia

1. You must answer accordingly to my questions. Don’t turn them away.
2. Don’t try to hide facts by making pretexts, this and that, you are strictly prohibited to contest me.
3. Don’t be a fool, for you are a chap who dared to thwart the revolution.
4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.
5. Don’t tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.
6. While getting lashes or electrification you must no cry at all.
7. Do nothing sit still and wait for my orders if there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something you must do it right away without protesting.
8. Don’t make pretexts about Kampuchea in order to hide your jaw of traitor.
9. If you don’t follow all the above rules you will get many many lashes of electrical wire.
10. If you disobey any points of my regulations you must get either ten lashes or five shocks of electrical discharge.

They don’t say if you get to choose between lashes or shocks on menu number ten. I believe the question itself would get your order supersized. In any event, you’re not allowed to have any braaaains. Even if our ontological situation, that of living in time, dictates our experience is incomplete and that we will suffer, we can do something instead of nothing. In other words, even if you’re a zombie, be your own fiend.

The Incredible Hulk is slave to his rage. Bruce Banner doesn’t want to hurt anybody. It is only after some is warned, “Angry? You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry,” that most traces of rationality become engulfed by rage. He also turns green. You can’t really know yourself all that well anyway, so make sure your engulfment doesn’t turn you into a rage monster. Remember that charming scarecrow who hung out with Dorothy? He only wanted a brain.

You’re One of Us, You’re One of Us

If we have first and third person zombies, what about second? The essence of tribalism is belonging, us-being-together. People all over the world get together for zombiecons, flash-mob-like parties where the living, which is synonymous with undead, get together to have fun pretending they’re zombies. Other people watch traffic at NASCAR rallies, buy Kate Spade bags, or attend klan meetings. (Has anyone noticed that the klan can’t even spell clan.) Environmentalism and recycling are popular now. Composting is the recycling of organic material to grow something new. Are you a part of that tribe? Making zombies, like teaching about being green, is earth-friendly. Why poison the ground with people’s remains?

A second person zombie is a member of a tribe that rejects the living world for that of the undead, and they haven’t even been promised a specific number of virgins. Zombies are fun, profane and often sexy. Vampirella, call me; I’m full of blood.

Zombie stories are our stories and that’s why they’re human.