People love the Zombie scenario because they believe they can survive it. It has been presented to us in such a way that anyone can survive if that use their head, and when necessary their five axes and hunting rifles. It takes no special skill set, or preparation but instead; just an awareness of the indisputable fact that you are facing zombies and the willingness to start smacking them in the scull with baseball bats.
There are
many mainstream apocalyptic scenarios:
·
The
Plague Scenario – such as The Stand, Carries, where only 0.0025 of the
population can survive it
·
The
Post Oil Depression / Ecological Wasteland Scenario – such as Waterworld, where
the characters end up liking in desperation, off initiative rather than
anything else.
·
Nuclear
War Scenario – such as The Road, where living conditions are mission impossible
even if the initial eruption is survived.
One of the
attractions to such apocalypse is the irrationality of the situation. To many,
such circumstance would be their worst nightmare. However, to some viewers,
maybe with zombie apocalyptic experience (so to speak), such as modern warfare
games or other ‘shoot’em ups’, may take an interest in the genre because they
think they would be suited or able to function in such circumstance. Another aspect
which may be of interest to many viewers would be the methodical take in the ‘plotting
escape routes’, ‘preparing Go-Bags’, and ‘Planning booby traps’. The part of us
that gets excited by this isn’t the intelligent / well informed side of us, but
the exceedingly stupid side of us that that doesn’t look far enough into the
future to see that it would be tediously boring to be on the constant run from
zombies. Then again, maybe some people are enticed by the fact that there would
be no ‘annoying neighbours’, and ‘free stuff from supermarkets’.
- The protagonist, or
our favourite character as an audience always seems to get away!
- The zombie formula has
been borrowed from literature like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, it is a
tried and tested genre, and as a result the conventions are established
and adapted so the audience constantly get what they want, how they want
it.
- We have learned to
love warfare and to support the underdog. As the humans are almost always
on the underhand, this provides a tense visceral pleasure for the
audience.
- They are a metaphor
for technology - consuming and controlling us, and it shows what the world
could somehow result too in a distant future,
- We enjoy knowing that
we are safe afterwards and that it is all made up… for the time being!
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