History 2186A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Neil Smelser, Haitian Revolution, Natural Disaster
22 Feb 2016
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Document Summary
Condemned to live your life on slave plantations as undead spirit. Original idea was a projection of slave"s misery, reflection of their existence like an afterlife to be free. This voodoo/slavery/black magic zombie = form that comes to. Origin of zombie as we know it. First emergence: 1929 novel called magic island. 1932: white zombie film: brought zombies into popular consciousness in the west. Became a shorthand for any catastrophic event. In the 1990"s, used zombies as a way to get people interested: zombie preparedness week, way to get ppl interested to prepare for natural disaster, not that different from getting ready for earthquake. Diff things in history have stood as symbols for our greatest fears (aliens, communists) now it is zombies. All of these characteristics apply to the other things we are going to talk about. Sometimes panic is a good thing, but in most cases, humans panic for the wrong reasons.
