I went to Barnes and Noble the other day. Walking in, I noticed a slew of Zombie books... an entire display of zombie books. I'm not the one to shirk at zombie themed media, but has anyone else noticed an emergence of apocalyptic themes? NOT post apocalyptic as they did with the Mad Max movies in the 80s, but in the process of....a present day realization that the ish hit the fan. Even the Planet of the Apes took it back to present day to explain how primates took over the future with Rise of the Planet Apes released this year.
In a way Hollywood has given us an outlet to our current economic environmental problems. Can't make your mortgage payment today? Not to worry, bankers won't hound you anymore because they've been replaced by zombies. The price of gas went up another couple of dollars due to limited oil resources? Who cares! We are going to somehow figure out how to jump through a wormhole to live in another planet like in Fox's new show Nova Terra about a fugitive crossing planetary borders only to be hired as a sheriff - not much promise for this future society..
Of course zombies aren't walking around taking over our cities, but cannibalism has been a constant trend in wallstreet where executives are eating up people's livelihood. And with our brainless, insatiable consumer habits, who's to say we aren't zombies ourselves already.
Scientific discoveries have also fueled our hope that things will be solved and the human race will prevail. With the discovery of so many planets in the Goldilocks zone (not too hot and not too cold) eventually they'll find a planet we can designate as our new home. Along with the discovery of a sub-atomic particle faster than the speed of light, it won't be long until we're booking our vacation to Risa (the pleasure planet in Star Trek).
I would say if art imitates life, this is one of those cases. Except these stories resolve in a way that's comforting to allow us to continue on our destructive and wasteful ways.
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