Question - Why are zombies and vampires and other sorts of grotesque un-death stuff so pervasive today on the screens and pages and bits of the American entertainment consumer? An answer follows:
My theory is that it is because around here in America Town, aging and illness and death are taboo, verboten, not on the agenda for the 'oh, I have yoga tights and a gigantic cup of coffee' crowd. Not just that crowd, but every crowd.
In sprawling ex-urbia and the sprawled from cities and out in the flatlands, fewer and fewer pay attention to what Nature says so clearly and honestly, to the inevitable cycles of de- and re-generation, to the flowers and trees and grass in their midst, to our feathered friends with their throw-back natural twittering eager to fill the space between your ears. Now, people are spending that indivisible human capital of attention and rapture on a substitute diet of virtual artifice.
In this increasing dearth of nature, these people are unbonded from death and are subliminally drawn to more and more extreme artificial representations of it as not natural, but as a weird cult of the otherworldly, the un-beings, they are coming at us, they must be stopped, oh the un-humanity, this can't be us!
Anyway, it's just a theory, like gravity and the thing about Sarah Palin being the luckiest redneck since the guy with the 'git er done' act. Speaking of zombies.