Z is for Zombie
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Why are zombies so popular? Blame the recession, disease pandemic, terrorists, and general unhappiness:
Zombies thrive in popular culture during times of recession, epidemic and general unhappiness. Traditional threats to U.S. security may have waned, but nontraditional threats assault us constantly. Concerns about terrorism have not abated since 9/11, and cyberattacks have now emerged as a new anxiety. Drug-resistant pandemics have been a staple of local news hysteria since the H1N1 virus swept the globe in 2009. Scientists continue to warn about the dangers that climate change poses to our planet. And if the financial crisis taught us anything, it is that contagion is endemic to the global market system.
Zombies are the perfect metaphor for these threats. As with pandemics and financial crises, they are not open to negotiation. As with terrorism in all its forms, even a small outbreak has the potential to wreak massive carnage.
Daniel W. Drezner of The Wall Street Journal explains: Link
To me, the most powerful desire behind the fascination with zombieism is the desire to be free from the trappings of modern society: overcrowding, traffic jams, office jobs, apartment buildings, overreaching government, constant noise, and on and on... A zombiefied world is a world in which a person can cut loose and break stuff for a while and then find a sufficiently well defended fortress with a well-stocked kitchen and live out his days in relative simplicity.
So it's the multi-purpose nature of the genre that makes it so popular, I think. At least that's my two cents. :-)
This. There's a marketplace reason why the Red Dawn; remake poses North Korea as the invader. Even though it's a ridiculous premise, there's no loss of sales as a result.