Zombie Apocalypse Anxiety in the Past
Whenever I find a new show on Netflix I tend to finish it in a few weeks. iZombie was
one of those shows, as soon as I saw the first episode I was hooked. For this day the show has four seasons, each is better than the one before it. For my project, I will be focusing on the last one. Every season has its own storyline, the one I chose talks about Seattle, which is the setting of the whole show, getting infected with a zombie virus. The main characters Liv Moore, Dr. Ravi and some of their friends trying to create a vaccine that can cure the virus. Of course, there are other obstacles in the storyline and much more to talk about but that would be saved for my adaptation project. I like everything about iZombie, i t has humor which is one of the most important components I look for in the shows. It is also about police investigations and solving crimes which I love. In my adaptation, I wouldn’t want to change the humor in the show, but I'm thinking about taking it back in time as my twist. I think it would be very interesting to talk about the zombie apocalypses anxiety in the old day and to see if anything like this has taken place back then. This will help me to show that the fears and social anxieties about something/someone, about zombies, in particular, don’t change over time they follow the generations.
Annotated Bibliography
“Why iZombie's big change of direction in season 4 is good for the show”
This article starts off with an overview of the first three seasons of iZombie saying that they were “consistently entertaining” and “offered a fresh take on the overpopulated zombie genre” (Sandwell). These seasons were mainly focused on the humor rather than anything else. The humor was provided by Liv Moore, who is the main character and the first zombie the viewer got introduced to. She would eat brains of dead people, whose murders had to be solved, by doing so she would get the personality of the person. The fourth season had completely changed the storyline where Liv Moore now not only a girl that works in a morgue and eats brains to solve murders but more than that. She has “become the underground leader Renegade after the previous leader was brutally executed, smuggling sick humans into New Seattle and scratching them to save them so they can start a new life as a zombie” (Sandwell). This “game-changing event” has raised the show to the new level and made it even more interesting (Sandwell). The article provided me with information on how to change the story into a new more complicated and entertaining. I would consider building my story up like the show, starting from a simple storyline and ending with a complicated finale.
“Zombies 'R' us!”*
This online article briefly talks about the famous zombie shows like The Walking Dead and says how America has been loving the zombie related shows. The main question of this article is “how do we explain our culture's fascination with zombies and our fear of becoming one of them?” (Rosenberg-Javors). It then begins to explain that the modern world is so well developed and almost everyone now days has a phone or some sort of device and is constantly using it. Rosenberg talks about people been so concerned about the virtual world that it concerns psychologists. Rosenberg-Javors says “we need to help our clients engage with life by finding productive and creative strategies for living”. The online article suggests that people now days are zombies, we are “zomb-ized” by our electronics. This would be helpful for me because I can see what is the fear of people nowadays and I could incorporate that in my project by adapting the fear into the time period I will be working with.
“TV Review: ‘iZombie’ ”
This online review of iZombie starts off talking about Liv Moore and how her life has changed overnight: “a frenzied zombie attack later, and she’s dead, or something like it, forced to wear cover-up to maintain the illusion of flesh tone, and becoming a source of confusion to her family, having significantly downgraded her career ambitions to take a job in the morgue” (Lowry). Lowry talks about iZombie been “another way to do a youth-oriented copshow, even if it’s garnished with flourishes like comicbook captions” (Lowry). The review also briefly summarizes the whole show but mostly focuses on talking about Liv’s Moore journey and her becoming a zombie in the first place. Taking my adaptation to the past will be a challenge because I would have to come up with an idea of how to make my story interesting for modern society. From this article, I have learned that the teenage population of the world likes to watch shows that have crime and zombies involved.
“WOW!”*
This article describes the scientific experiment that took place in Virginia Commonwealth University School of Pharmacy. The students in it were experiencing two-week long zombie apocalypses. The rules of this excitement included that “students were deprived of electricity and running water, and were given only makeshift tools, including plastic utensils and soda bottles”(p.17). As a disclaimer, the article has said even though it was supposed to be a zombie experience the brains were not consumed. Even though this article is short I think it is interesting because of what students are allowed to use and what is taken away from them. I could use this information to create the setting in my adaptation according to the information given in this article. It a great source to look at as it shows how people imagine the zombie apocalypse.
“Why Zombies Eat Brains?”
The father of zombies George Romero has never portrayed zombies as flesh-eating creatures. The author noted “it was not until the 1985 film Return of the Living Dead did zombies consumed brains” where the author Dan O’ Bannon said the consumption of brains for zombies is like a painkiller ( Jack Flacco). The historical evidence has shown that there were times when a human would eat each others flesh, but now daisy such thing happens only in the rituals of Papua New Guinea. Eating another human or cannibalism is in no way healthy or good, it will most commonly lead to extreme sickness. I think this article is interesting because zombies as a movie and TV show characters didn't start as brain-eating creatures but over the time they have become monsters. This source will help me to tie in the Haiti stories about zombies been clueless to zombies starting off as undead. I would talk about how modern society has impacted the zombie image.
“How Zombies Work”
Zombies had to come from somewhere, and this online history article talks about the Haitian folkways that provide evidence about zombies originating in Haiti. The article says “zombies are common in Haitian stories and folklore” and they are portrayed as “mindless slaves” (Wilson). It talks about zombies been a huge part of Haiti culture but small to nonevidence to prove that such a thing is true. One of the well-known stories in Haiti took place:
In 1980, a man appeared in a rural Haitian village. He claimed to be Clairvius Narcisse, who had died in Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Deschapelles, Haiti on May 2, 1962. Narcisse described being conscious but paralyzed during his presumed death -- he had even seen the doctor cover his face with a sheet. Narcisse claimed that a bokor had resurrected him and made him a zombie. (Wilson)
This story makes people really wonder if zombies are real and if they do they really originate in Haiti. The information provided is useful for my project, it talks about the past which is what I am doing with my adaptation. I might take Haiti as the origin where the zombie virus started many years ago and how it has traveled around the world to Seattle out time. I would also like to address how zombies had become so dangerous in the modern world because they started off as “mindless slaves” (Wilson).
Whenever I find a new show on Netflix I tend to finish it in a few weeks. iZombie was
one of those shows, as soon as I saw the first episode I was hooked. For this day the show has four seasons, each is better than the one before it. For my project, I will be focusing on the last one. Every season has its own storyline, the one I chose talks about Seattle, which is the setting of the whole show, getting infected with a zombie virus. The main characters Liv Moore, Dr. Ravi and some of their friends trying to create a vaccine that can cure the virus. Of course, there are other obstacles in the storyline and much more to talk about but that would be saved for my adaptation project. I like everything about iZombie, i t has humor which is one of the most important components I look for in the shows. It is also about police investigations and solving crimes which I love. In my adaptation, I wouldn’t want to change the humor in the show, but I'm thinking about taking it back in time as my twist. I think it would be very interesting to talk about the zombie apocalypses anxiety in the old day and to see if anything like this has taken place back then. This will help me to show that the fears and social anxieties about something/someone, about zombies, in particular, don’t change over time they follow the generations.
Annotated Bibliography
“Why iZombie's big change of direction in season 4 is good for the show”
This article starts off with an overview of the first three seasons of iZombie saying that they were “consistently entertaining” and “offered a fresh take on the overpopulated zombie genre” (Sandwell). These seasons were mainly focused on the humor rather than anything else. The humor was provided by Liv Moore, who is the main character and the first zombie the viewer got introduced to. She would eat brains of dead people, whose murders had to be solved, by doing so she would get the personality of the person. The fourth season had completely changed the storyline where Liv Moore now not only a girl that works in a morgue and eats brains to solve murders but more than that. She has “become the underground leader Renegade after the previous leader was brutally executed, smuggling sick humans into New Seattle and scratching them to save them so they can start a new life as a zombie” (Sandwell). This “game-changing event” has raised the show to the new level and made it even more interesting (Sandwell). The article provided me with information on how to change the story into a new more complicated and entertaining. I would consider building my story up like the show, starting from a simple storyline and ending with a complicated finale.
“Zombies 'R' us!”*
This online article briefly talks about the famous zombie shows like The Walking Dead and says how America has been loving the zombie related shows. The main question of this article is “how do we explain our culture's fascination with zombies and our fear of becoming one of them?” (Rosenberg-Javors). It then begins to explain that the modern world is so well developed and almost everyone now days has a phone or some sort of device and is constantly using it. Rosenberg talks about people been so concerned about the virtual world that it concerns psychologists. Rosenberg-Javors says “we need to help our clients engage with life by finding productive and creative strategies for living”. The online article suggests that people now days are zombies, we are “zomb-ized” by our electronics. This would be helpful for me because I can see what is the fear of people nowadays and I could incorporate that in my project by adapting the fear into the time period I will be working with.
“TV Review: ‘iZombie’ ”
This online review of iZombie starts off talking about Liv Moore and how her life has changed overnight: “a frenzied zombie attack later, and she’s dead, or something like it, forced to wear cover-up to maintain the illusion of flesh tone, and becoming a source of confusion to her family, having significantly downgraded her career ambitions to take a job in the morgue” (Lowry). Lowry talks about iZombie been “another way to do a youth-oriented copshow, even if it’s garnished with flourishes like comicbook captions” (Lowry). The review also briefly summarizes the whole show but mostly focuses on talking about Liv’s Moore journey and her becoming a zombie in the first place. Taking my adaptation to the past will be a challenge because I would have to come up with an idea of how to make my story interesting for modern society. From this article, I have learned that the teenage population of the world likes to watch shows that have crime and zombies involved.
“WOW!”*
This article describes the scientific experiment that took place in Virginia Commonwealth University School of Pharmacy. The students in it were experiencing two-week long zombie apocalypses. The rules of this excitement included that “students were deprived of electricity and running water, and were given only makeshift tools, including plastic utensils and soda bottles”(p.17). As a disclaimer, the article has said even though it was supposed to be a zombie experience the brains were not consumed. Even though this article is short I think it is interesting because of what students are allowed to use and what is taken away from them. I could use this information to create the setting in my adaptation according to the information given in this article. It a great source to look at as it shows how people imagine the zombie apocalypse.
“Why Zombies Eat Brains?”
The father of zombies George Romero has never portrayed zombies as flesh-eating creatures. The author noted “it was not until the 1985 film Return of the Living Dead did zombies consumed brains” where the author Dan O’ Bannon said the consumption of brains for zombies is like a painkiller ( Jack Flacco). The historical evidence has shown that there were times when a human would eat each others flesh, but now daisy such thing happens only in the rituals of Papua New Guinea. Eating another human or cannibalism is in no way healthy or good, it will most commonly lead to extreme sickness. I think this article is interesting because zombies as a movie and TV show characters didn't start as brain-eating creatures but over the time they have become monsters. This source will help me to tie in the Haiti stories about zombies been clueless to zombies starting off as undead. I would talk about how modern society has impacted the zombie image.
“How Zombies Work”
Zombies had to come from somewhere, and this online history article talks about the Haitian folkways that provide evidence about zombies originating in Haiti. The article says “zombies are common in Haitian stories and folklore” and they are portrayed as “mindless slaves” (Wilson). It talks about zombies been a huge part of Haiti culture but small to nonevidence to prove that such a thing is true. One of the well-known stories in Haiti took place:
In 1980, a man appeared in a rural Haitian village. He claimed to be Clairvius Narcisse, who had died in Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Deschapelles, Haiti on May 2, 1962. Narcisse described being conscious but paralyzed during his presumed death -- he had even seen the doctor cover his face with a sheet. Narcisse claimed that a bokor had resurrected him and made him a zombie. (Wilson)
This story makes people really wonder if zombies are real and if they do they really originate in Haiti. The information provided is useful for my project, it talks about the past which is what I am doing with my adaptation. I might take Haiti as the origin where the zombie virus started many years ago and how it has traveled around the world to Seattle out time. I would also like to address how zombies had become so dangerous in the modern world because they started off as “mindless slaves” (Wilson).
Works Cited
Bendici, Ray. "WOW!" University Business, Aug. 2018, p. 17. General OneFile,
https://link-galegroup-com.ursus-proxy-10.ursus.maine.edu/apps/doc/A550222433/GPS?
u=maine&sid=GPS&xid=961ec681. Accessed 9 Dec. 2018.
Flacco, Jack. “Why Zombies Eat Brains?” Zombiepedia, Fandom, 3 Nov. 2013,
zombie.wikia.com/wiki/Why_Zombies_Eat_Brains%3F. Lowry, Brian. “TV Review: 'IZombie'.” Variety, Variety, 12 Mar. 2015,
variety.com/2015/tv/reviews/tv-review-izombie-1201449663/
Rosenberg-Javors, Irene. "Zombies 'R' us!" Annals of Psychotherapy and Integrative Health,
Summer 2013, p. 91. General OneFile, https://link-galegroup-com.ursus-proxy-10.ursus.maine.edu/apps/doc/A344496759/GPS? u=maine&sid=GPS&xid=ce8a273c. Accessed 9 Dec. 2018.
Sandwell, Ian. “Why IZombie Season 4's Big Change Is Good for the Show.” Digital Spy, Digital Spy, 28 Nov. 2018,
www.digitalspy.com/tv/ustv/a857737/izombie-season-4-netflix-review-spoilers/. Wilson, Tracy V. “How Zombies Work.” HowStuffWorks Science, HowStuffWorks, 23 Oct.
2018, science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/strange-creatures/zombie.htm
https://link-galegroup-com.ursus-proxy-10.ursus.maine.edu/apps/doc/A550222433/GPS?
u=maine&sid=GPS&xid=961ec681. Accessed 9 Dec. 2018.
Flacco, Jack. “Why Zombies Eat Brains?” Zombiepedia, Fandom, 3 Nov. 2013,
zombie.wikia.com/wiki/Why_Zombies_Eat_Brains%3F. Lowry, Brian. “TV Review: 'IZombie'.” Variety, Variety, 12 Mar. 2015,
variety.com/2015/tv/reviews/tv-review-izombie-1201449663/
Rosenberg-Javors, Irene. "Zombies 'R' us!" Annals of Psychotherapy and Integrative Health,
Summer 2013, p. 91. General OneFile, https://link-galegroup-com.ursus-proxy-10.ursus.maine.edu/apps/doc/A344496759/GPS? u=maine&sid=GPS&xid=ce8a273c. Accessed 9 Dec. 2018.
Sandwell, Ian. “Why IZombie Season 4's Big Change Is Good for the Show.” Digital Spy, Digital Spy, 28 Nov. 2018,
www.digitalspy.com/tv/ustv/a857737/izombie-season-4-netflix-review-spoilers/. Wilson, Tracy V. “How Zombies Work.” HowStuffWorks Science, HowStuffWorks, 23 Oct.
2018, science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/strange-creatures/zombie.htm