We understand reality through stories. Humans are, at heart, storytellers, eking out a living in the setting of a chaotic and unpredictable (meaningless?) universe. Having it end in an apocalypse seems a fitting end to the story.
It’s not that we want destruction, but meaning. Something that says, “No, see, existence is not arbitrary.”
Every story has to have a beginning, a middle and an end – right? What is a narrative without an ending?
Does it seem disappointing if existence just keeps going on forever, in its current iteration?
… uncovered a startling truth about the human psyche: we secretly crave the apocalypse … Kermode argues that narratives of catastrophe are a form of comfort, an anesthetic against the pain of an arbitrary existence.
I have never thought of zombie/apocalypse stories as comfortable. I felt uneasy when I read them, honestly. They have something that rings a very bad feeling in me. They are not scary; rather, I am disappointed that we would behave in such a way if a catastrophe were to take place. The same happens when I read dystopian fiction. Weird!
Apart from my personal taste, I think that these kinds of stories are popular because folks enjoy imagining our extinction. It is fascinating because we are the only living beings capable of that.
I have always wondered whether this happens because we don’t like our reality so we flirt with the idea of being devoured by a zombie or running away to another planet because the Earth has come to its destruction.
Wanna confront our arbitrary existence? Read Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky or Sartre – no zombie stories!
I can only recall dishevelled, bearded men, wearing tunics, barefeet, with signs around their neck that read, The End is Near.
Some have gone on record, the belief in the final rapture and a culture of martyrdom is going to blow up sooner or later.
Popularity is not always an indication of preference. Ask someone who watches horror flicks if they would like to be with a poltergeist 24×7. I’m quite certain the answer will not be, “yes”.
I once wrote a story about a wonderful town with wonderful people who did wonderful things where nothing bad ever happened. Despite it not actually existing, several people somehow managed to track it down and burn it to the ground. True story.
Misery likes company, perhaps. If your glass is half empty, might as well explore that emptiness, I suppose. Nothing left to lose, logically speaking.
The oldest known apocalyptic story is the Sumerian flood story. It centers around the flood survivor, who passes knowledge from the pre-flood era to the post.
This might be a memory of catastrophic events that would have been major cultural set backs, except someone survived to allow a reset.
So maybe the Flood Survivor is a potent archetype because he’s at the foundation of our ability to accumulate skills instead of losing them with every disaster. He’s the reason for our success as a species.
You might be interested in the literary phenomenon identified by Brian Aldiss, called cozy catastrophe:
The following is mainly about post-apocalyptic stories, rather than apocalyptic stories per se, but I hope it’s not off-topic.
Aside from the coziness, post-apocalyptic stories are nostalgic fantasies of simplicity, control and physical competence. The apocalypse—which has usually happened before the events of the story—has the effect of simplifying life, sending us back to village or nomadic life, sweeping away the complexities of modernity. It might be more dangerous, but the dangers are clear, and your actions to defend yourself clearly justified. Problems are physical and immediate, ethical choices are easy to make and have clear consequences, and practical competence is supremely useful and rewarded with higher status.
And there’s the fantasy of starting over, the apocalypse as a destructive but necessary clearing away of the contaminated (in more than one sense) modern world to make space for a better one.
Less cynically, we can identify in post-apocalyptic stories a yearning for communities that feel real: networks of interdependency within small, manageable groups.
A world reduced to rubble is a playground for our alienated imaginations.
I believe that they are so popular because either the reader is concerned about their own mortality and the possible ending of the world or (more commonly perhaps) because the reader considers one’s own death and the world’s end as something remote and exotic. And the exotic fascinates…
This echoes part of what I was saying and ties it in with apocalyptic (as opposed to post-apocalyptic) stories:
Another kind of satisfaction these films supply is extreme moral simplification—that is to say, a morally acceptable fantasy where one can give outlet to cruel or at least amoral feelings. In this respect, science fiction films partly overlap with horror films. This is the undeniable pleasure we derive from looking at freaks, at beings excluded from the category of the human. The sense of superiority over the freak conjoined in varying proportions with the titillation of fear and aversion makes it possible for moral scruples to be lifted, for cruelty to be enjoyed. The same thing happens in science fiction films. In the figure of the monster from outer space, the freakish, the ugly, and the predatory all converge—and provide a fantasy target for righteous bellicosity to discharge itself, and for the aesthetic enjoyment of suffering and disaster. Science fiction films are one of the purest forms of spectacle; that is, we are rarely inside anyone’s feelings. (An exception to this is Jack Arnold’s The Incredible Shrinking Man [1957].) We are merely spectators; we watch.
yes, watching a horror movie brings you to a place of exhilaration, without impinging on your relative safety.
Above all else, humans want to feel. We want to experience emotion, and no emotion is stronger than fear.
maybe there is something in what Edmund Burke wrote in his chapter Of the Sublime -
Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime ; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling. I say the strongest emotion, because I am satisfied the ideas of pain are much more powerful than those which enter on the part of pleasure.
It’s living vicariously.
Or in real life. We can extend this idea to soldiers experiencing “the high of war” - the adrenaline rush, the euphoria, the intense focus
Nice. You’ve put into words what I have often thought. Many seem to be comforting bed time stories. I wonder too if zombies are simply stand ins for foreigners, and any minority you may hate to be dispatched guilt free.
We want (I think) to play at emotion. Of course really being afraid would not be fun – but pretending to be afraid while watching a horror movie allows us to play at fear. Tear jerkers employ the same technique. Nobody wants to feel real grief – but playing at grief in a movie (or at the death of Diana) evokes the emotion without the pain.
Of course we also like love stories, and we like real love, too.
I was thinking the same thing while I was writing that post.
But maybe it’s too easy. Do zombies represent foreigners and minorities any more than other monsters from horror and science fiction? Aliens can obviously stand in for foreigners as much as zombies can.
Zombies might represent something slightly different: any collective that threatens the self. There’s a fear of losing one’s individuality in the undifferentiated crowd.
Yes! I visited the island off the coast of Ireland that was, for a while, the intellectual center of Europe during the Dark Ages. I think that kind of operation has to be religious because of the abiding sense of purpose religion brings.
As we head into climate change, I think we’ll develop a new global religion to act as the ark of the next flood survivor.
I suppose we could read it that way, but just because it can be read as xyz doesn’t mean it is that. The same problem (pops up); very Gödelian in spirit.
Yes, it does have a vicarious tone to it. I know this chap who wanted to live vicariously as an Indian cum Scotsman. What do you think he did?
Anway, to get back on track, I really don’t see an answer to my question. If x loves horror films does it mean x wants to be with a poltergeist 24×7?
Henri Bergson thought humor was “something mechanical encrusted in something human”. Charlie Chaplin’s walk. Zombies are mechanical, moving like puppets. This makes them both scary, and funny. Every child loves the game “Zombie Chase” (so I’m an experienced zombie). The machine-like movements of the zombie both amuse and scare them.
Well, perhaps it’s simply a case of inserting one’s own bigotry. They might represent anything from foreigners to “godless” heathens, depending on one’s prejudice. What I find philosophically interesting is that zombies are usually portrayed as mindless, soulless beings, incapable of suffering or meaningful connection, making them the ultimate guilt-free targets. Zombie narratives echo old school propaganda, where dehumanizing language (such as comparing groups of people to cockroaches) is used to strip away empathy and justify violence. Or something like that.
