Zombie Week is here!
If there’s anything that scares yours truly, it’s zombies. And I’m really not kidding. If I have nightmares, they’re about zombies. They scare the crap out of me. So naturally, let’s ruin my fourth-least-favorite season by having an entire month devoted to horror movies and zombies in particular.
But zombies actually make for a really interesting historical discussion. They emerge in pop culture taken from Voodoo not coincidentally at the same time the United States is applying imperial power in Haiti in the early 20th century. And it’s easy to see why the idea of the undead is so gross to many Americans, with the mixing of familial bonds (zombies are often those closest to you) and Christianity gone amok.
So I invited Kelly Baker and Thomas Lecaque on to talk about 2004’s Dawn of the Dead, and we get into the origins of zombies in pop culture, the surprising way in which American gun culture is entwined with the undead, our favorite zombie films, and of course, our plans to survive the zombie apocalypse. This is really one of the more interesting conversation we’ve done on the pod, because we do some real historical analysis during the episode while at times laughing so hard we are crying. I hope you enjoy.
Read Kelly’s book on zombies:
HATM Watch Party
If that’s not enough of the undead, join in this Sunday, October 13 at 8pm eastern to live tweet Zombieland (available on Netflix), which will have you howling. See you there.