THE LIVING OR THE LIVING DEAD?

This week, I saw the trailer for “Warm Bodies,” a zombie love story that will be released next month. If I’m going to be honest, I have to admit my initial reaction was one of disbelief. A zombie love story! Really? But then I thought about it and realized I should have expected this a long time ago. The zombie craze re-emerged in 2002 with “28 Days Later.” This movie’s success led to the remake of “Dawn of the Dead” and the more comedic “Shaun of the Dead” in 2004. “28 Weeks Later” would follow in 2007 and “Zombieland” in 2009. The “Resident Evil” franchise would also come to the big screen and “The Walking Dead” would find its way to the small screen. Zombie stories are the rage and if I had thought realistically about it, I should have known it would only be a matter of time before there was a zombie love story.

So, why are we fascinated with zombies? This question has been on my mind for quite some time. Last week, a potential answer occurred to me. In my screenwriting classes, I encourage my students to write from experience because the stories we create are simply analogies for real life. The protagonist, or the hero of any story, is really us. We watch or read these stories to see characters triumph over adversity. In essence, we are relating to these characters because we hope to be similar to them in the challenges of our own lives. When misfortunes occur, we wish to overcome them just as the heroes do in the stories we read or watch on the big or small screen.

AND THE REAL ZOMBIES ARE...
Then it occurred to me! Zombies are so popular because they are also analogies to real life. Zombies represent the majority of society – the masses of people who are stumbling through their lives in jobs they don’t like or relationships they don’t respect. How many of us have said, “I wish I could...” but instead continue to do things that don’t make us happy? We are in fact the zombies of today. Society has given us all a script regardless of whether or not we are truly right for the part. We are told when we finish high school that we should go to college, get jobs and then marry and have families. While this is a fantastic path that I support, there is no single direction in life that is tailored to fit everyone. For many of us, surrendering to this “script” transforms us into zombies, urging us to march blindly down a path that is not our own. As Shakespeare wrote so many years ago:

“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man...”

Today, I urge everyone, as long as it doesn’t infringe upon or lessen the experience of others; don’t wish you could, rather know you should do what you are passionate about. The Mayans predicted that the end of 2012 would mark the beginning of a great awakening. We must all take ownership of our own realities. We must know that we are the survivors and not the zombies of our own destinies.

To view a trailer for the next blockbuster zombie pic, "World War Z," please click here.

I WROTE A BOOK!
To learn more about Volume One
of my Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Action-adventure series, “The Unveiling,”
please visit the website at TheUnveilingSeries.com.