Reactions to "Vampire Gentleman and Zombie Beasts"

            In the article “Vampire Gentleman and Zombie Beast” the author blew me away with the comparisons of these mere ghouls of the night to real world problems plaguing us today. I found it myself in the beginning of this article asking, “Where might this go?” “What can we actually learn from horror characters?”

           

           Quiet to my disbelief we can actually learn a lot from these ghouls and the ideals that they were founded from. It really interested me to see how the birth of the modern “Romanticized” Vampire rose from western cultures self absorbed nature, making the once ghoulish and equally horrifying Dracula a mere symbols of repressed sexual fantasy and wealth beyond belief. Essentially every common persons dream existence.

            Just as with the Vampire change in role, I had always wondered where the shift from mindless slow slave that once inhabited the role of zombie diverged into the modern day “28 days” or “The Walking dead” menacing fast super ultra zombie came from. Learning that it was a gap in horror that eventually led to this was quite intersecting. Along with socioeconomically laced background of both characters quite intrigued me. The author did a fantastic job citing an abundance of material really outlining how deep our natural fears of social breakdown could occur if we all become the next hoard of non-individuals driving mindless consumerism.

            But the underlying message I took from this article is its alright to be a consumer in today’s economy such as the crazy wealthy vampire, but don’t let it consume you so much so that you forget all that you are and fall into the horde and become just another faceless nameless being like the zombie just consuming with no end in sight.