Zombie Appeal
By Jessica Robinson
My obsession with zombies began when I was in junior high,
the first time I saw Night of the Living
Dead. I remember being scared, but not
cover-my-eyes-I’m-going-to-scream-my-lungs-out scared. I didn’t jump, but there
was this uneasiness that settled over me. I was afraid to look out my bedroom
window at night for fear that the same lifeless eyes that the creatures in the
film had would be looking right back at me. I glanced over my shoulder while
walking down the street to make sure some slow-moving corpse wasn’t following
me. For a while, I avoided cemeteries.
As time went on, and access to zombie media has grown, so
has my obsession. Zombies have overrun the population. They are in books,
movies, video games, and on TV. There is hardly a facet of life that zombies
haven’t overrun. The proliferation of zombie films inspired me to examine
society’s fears.
I had a professor in college who told me that every film has
a message, but if you really want to know what society is afraid of, watch
horror. Zombie films portray a lot of social fears, including religion, gender,
classism, and race, but what I wanted to focus on was science. The vast
majority of zombie films I have watched in my life had a scientist or science
in them in some way—usually in an unflattering role. Using film, literature,
and interviews with experts, Undead
Obsessed examines how zombies portray real human fears, including my own,
of scientific phenomenon such as epidemics, mind control, what may or may not
exist in space, and the repercussions of playing God.
The popularity of zombies has grown exponentially in the
last decade. Novels dealing with the undead have been published in droves, even
spurring the creation of independent zombie-specific publishers such as
Permuted Press. Weekly ratings ending on March 30, 2014, revealed that The Walking Dead was ranked number one
with 15.678 million viewers. World War Z
grossed $540,007,876 worldwide. There is a fascination with zombies. This book
will appeal to those love zombies. It will appeal to those who want to explore
public reactions to science, including fear, and if there is a way to alleviate
those fears. It will also appeal to science buffs who are interested in the
science behind the possibility of zombies.
Undead Obsessed: Finding Meaning in Zombies
Jessica Robinson
Genre: Nonfiction, pop culture
Publisher: Booktrope
Date of Publication: October 31, 2014
ISBN: ISBN-10: 1620155923
ISBN-13: 978-1620155929
Number of pages: 202
Cover Artist: Greg Simanson
Book Description:
Jessica Robinson's obsession with zombie films started when she was in junior high. Horror films are a great lens to examine concerns society has about modern science. Let’s face it, when it comes to horror movies, science has a bad reputation. Blind ambition, experimental serums, and genetic experiments are often blamed for the giant monster terrorizing the city or the reason aliens are taking human prisoners or the cause of the dead rising from the grave to consume living flesh.
Using film, literature, and interviews with experts, Robinson examines how zombies portray real-world fears such as epidemics, mind control, what may or may not exist in space, the repercussions of playing God, and the science behind the fears. Robinson's goal is to explore how zombies become a metaphor for our fears of science and what could happen if science gets out of hand.
Available at Amazon
About the Author:
Jessica Robinson is an editor by day and a zombie-killer by night (at least in her books). Since the first time she watched Night of the Living Dead, she has been obsessed with zombies and often thinks of ways to survive the uprising. In addition to her nonfiction book, under the pen name Pembroke Sinclair, she has written YA novels about zombies and the tough teens who survive the apocalyptic world. She has also written nonfiction stories for Serial Killer Magazine and published a book about slasher films called Life Lessons from Slasher Films.
You can learn more about Jessica by visiting her at http://pembrokesinclair.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pembroke.sinclair
Submit Your Zombie Survival Plan
You know you've thought about it. You know you've planned it out.
How would you survive the zombie apocalypse?
I’m un-dying to know!
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1 comment:
Thank your for having me on your blog!
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