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Living Dread
In times of uncertainty, film zombies feed on our anxieties
By DUANE DUDEK
Journal Sentinel film critic
Posted: April 20, 2007

When Marlon Brando roared into town in “The Wild One” in 1953, it was as the sneering postwar poster boy for the looming seismic spasm in generational priorities and aspirations.

“What’re ya rebellin’ against, Johnny?” a sweet young thing asked him.

“Whaddya got?” he snarled.

He was the fear of the new, in leather and jeans astride a chrome mushroom cloud of his own making. Change doesn’t always announce itself so clearly, but fear of it is a subconscious constant in our lives. It pads on cat’s paws into the collective cultural imagination, and bats intent and perception around like a stunned mouse.

If the marketplace is in any way responsive to fear itself, then death is on our minds. And one way this has manifested itself lately is in the rebirth of the undead.

Let’s face it: The zeitgeist is crawling with zombies, just in time to address our post-Sept. 11 anxieties.

What’re ya rebellin’ against?

How about terrorism, disease, war, illegal immigration, gun violence, fear of the other and the so-called clash of civilizations?

“Whenever there is a time of upheaval and uncertainty, we turn on the zombie tap,” said Max Brooks, creator of “The Zombie Survival Guide,” a scientifically rigorous parody (in which “everything is real, except the zombies,” he said), and “World War Z,” an oral history of a zombie war that was inspired by Studs Terkel’s World War II chronicle “The Good War.”

Zombies, Brooks said, “are a way to explore our apocalyptic fears in a safe way.”

“If you had a bunch of movies coming out about real plagues or terrorists nuking America, that’s pretty scary stuff. You wouldn’t sleep at night. But if you’re watching a zombie movie, you can exorcise your demons in a way,” Brooks said.

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