First off, they aren’t actually zombies; as any student of folklore (or any D&D player, for that matter) could tell you, zombies are corpses animated by black magic and used as slaves. They’re neither fast nor clever, and most of the danger they present comes from the fact that since they’re already dead, they have to be completely hacked to pieces to stop them. They don’t eat people, and their condition isn’t contagious. So those aggressive dead people which became ubiquitous in fantasy fiction (written or acted) over the past few decades aren’t zombies, though everyone calls them that; actually, they’re a kind of “hungry dead”, more akin to ghouls (or even low-rent vampires) than the true zombies of folklore.
But why have they become so popular as a subject of horror and fantasy adventure, eclipsing ever other kind of undead and humanoid monster (with the possible exception of superhuman fantasy killers a la Jason Voorhees and evil ghosts a la Freddie Krueger)? The horror of true zombies derives from their origin in the folklore of enslaved Africans and their descendants in the Caribbean: it’s the idea that a slave might not be able to find rest from oppression even in the grave, because their bodies might be dug up and forced to continue toiling even after death. But what is it about hungry-type “zombies” which makes them so fascinating to modern people? I think the key to understanding that is to recognize that while traditional zombies are objects of horror to be feared, modern “zombies” are objects of loathing, to be exterminated. Modern zombie shows are full of heavily-armed characters blowing out the brains of creatures who look like other human beings, often even former friends, family, and neighbors. They roam a lawless post-apocalyptic landscape where might makes right, and the only rules the zombie hunters need follow are practical survival rules of their own making. Sad to say, most humans want there to be some group of people they can imagine as subhuman, creatures whose rights and dignity need not be respected. They want that group (slaves, outcasts, infidels, “illegals”, homeless, “criminals”, whores, “sex offenders”, “colonizers”, “terrorists”, “wingers”, “groomers”, “sinners”, “traffickers”, those whose skin is a different color, those who speak a different language, “people who disagree with me”, etc, etc) to not be protected by any laws, and to be fair game for abuse so they can inflict upon those pariahs the petty frustrations they feel from being abused by their rulers and bosses (“shit rolls downhill”). Fictional zombies are people it’s OK to hate and even kill without having to worry about their rights, a fantasy outlet for violent impulses. Alas, far too many of our species don’t restrict that kind of behavior to make-believe, and are more than willing to gang up with others of their ilk to inflict whatever evil they think they can get away with upon their fellow humans without even waiting for them to die first.
