Zombies are seen in multiple formats including video games, television shows, and movies. Some examples include, Call of Duty, The Walking Dead, and Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the recent season-four premiere of The Walking Dead drew 16.1 million viewers and an 8.3 rating among adults 18-49 in Live+Same Day viewing alone (Stark). Within just three days of DVR use, the episode became the biggest non-sports broadcast in cable history, with 20.2 million viewers, surpassing “Sunday Night Football” to be the top-rated program of the week across the board (Stark). Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” was a 13 minute music video and short film. The music video’s high quality filming, acting, singing, and dancing landed …show more content…
it in the Guinness World Records in 2006 for “most successful music video” (“Michael”). “Thriller” and The Walking Dead have set the standard for the zombie entertainment industry to match. They created the definition of zombies for all people. Violent media, including zombies, has not only spread to adults, but also to kids and adolescents.
In Gerard Jones’s “Violent Media Is Good for Kids,” Melanie Moore states that, “Children need violent entertainment in order to explore the inescapable feelings that they’ve been taught to deny, and to reintegrate those feelings into a more whole, more complex, more resilient selfhood.” Moore’s explanation may be a reason for an increase in zombie popularity among children. Adolescents, including some children, use violent media to see the other side of what has been taught to them. As a result, they develop their brains and learn how to survive in our modern day world. For example, they are told not to fight or kill anybody, but they play Call of Duty Black Ops: Zombies. Although playing this game may have poor effects on them, it also has numerous benefits as well. Adolescents and children control the person on the screen through a controller teaching them hand eye coordination. In order to kill the zombies, they must plan where to go, which weapon to use, and when to kill, teaching them to strategize. Call of Duty also gives the children the feeling of the fight or flight response, a mechanism in the body that enables humans and animals to mobilize a lot of energy rapidly in order to cope with threats to survival (“Fight”). The fight or flight response teaches the children how to make decisions at any instant. Violent media’s positive impact on children may be a cause for …show more content…
the increase in zombie popularity. Zombie media makes us confront our deepest fears, introducing an idea of the zombie apocalypse.
But could a zombie apocalypse actually happen? According to Matt Mogk - the world's leading expert on the undead, and founder of the Zombie Research Society - believes it's not so far-fetched (Stark). Mogk says, “There are too many weird diseases out there mutating in ways we don’t understand to say that this couldn’t be a possibility” (Stark). One disease includes the ebola virus. According to dictionary.com, ebola is a highly lethal virus that causes massive internal hemorrhaging. The ebola crisis reached the United States from West Africa when a Dallas patient was diagnosed with the virus. The latest figures from the World Health Organization puts the death toll from the disease at more than 3,430, with more than 7,470 infected as of Oct. 3 (Westcott). This leaves us with the idea of the reality of a zombie apocalypse, however, we do not know if and when this could happen. Could the increase in natural disasters, conflicts, climate change, and deadly diseases be a sign that the zombie apocalypse is near? We do not know how to prepare for the zombie apocalypse. We cope with our confusion by watching zombie movies and television shows. Although zombie entertainment is only a depiction of zombies, we choose to believe it will show us survival methods for the zombie apocalypse. This idea of the zombie apocalypse has made us find the solution, increasing zombie
popularity. Zombies resemble our everyday lives. According to Klosterman, “A lot of modern life is exactly like slaughtering zombies.” Zombies also resemble “our collective fear projection: that we will be consumed” (Klosterman). Modern life can be compared to slaughtering zombies in that they both involve an endless amount of responsibilities and zombies. Our collective fear of being consumed comes from these unlimited responsibilities. In modern life, once we finish a certain responsibility we receive another. However, if we do not finish these responsibilities, more responsibilities pile up and we will be consumed by a mountain of unfinished responsibilities. We see this in people of all ages. An example may be a college student procrastinating on multiple assignments due on the same day. The different assignments pile up and the student is not able to finish all of them. The college student is eaten up by all of the assignments resulting in multiple low grades. In the our world, children always have chores and homework and adults always have work and family responsibilities needed to be done. Fighting zombies is equal to tackling our daily routines. In another sense, we have become zombies. Tyler Gilden of Elite Daily says, “Attached to our smartphones, computers and other devices, we pretty much walk around in a trance, half the time with our eyes glued to what’s in our hands instead of what’s in front of us.” We are blinded by technology and become mindless of our surroundings and our priorities. We only care for ourselves and everything we see on the internet. The internet take away our consciousness. Once we go on the internet, we feel as if time does not advance. Surfing the internet is a distraction and uses no critical thinking. For example, I easily get distracted when I do homework online. I start to do my homework, but eventually I start to drift away and surf the internet. We have become zombies wandering throughout our daily routines. The correlation between zombies, modern day life, and technology has ultimately led to zombie popularity.
We crave horror movies simply for “the fun of it” in agreeing with Stephen King Why We Crave Horror movies. King gave multiple examples in his story as to why we crave horror movies and I can agree with just about each and every one of them. After watching a few horror movies for yourself, you will understand why it is easy to agree with King. If you have watched movies such as the 2004 movie Dawn of the Dead, The Purge, or The Conjuring you will also be able to relate to Chuck Klosterman My Zombie, Myself “Zombies are just so easy to kill.” Klostermans theory of zombies are extremely useful because it sheds insight on the difficult yet exciting problem of zombies in the real world. Klosterman’s argument that the repetition of modern life is
Children today are exposed to more graphic violence in video games compared to any past generations. This is because the media finds that making a profit, surpasses the lives of the adolescents that play these games. However, over time two sets of views formed from the violence in video games. James D. Sauer, is a graduate of the School of Physiology. In his article, “Violent Video Games: The Effects of Narrative Context and Reward Structure on In-Game and Postgame Aggression,” Sauer, describes how adolescents gain forms of aggression and violence after playing certain games.
Media plays a vital role in the behavior of people. Many boys, teens, and adults play video games for hours everyday. This has an evident effect on the way they act. In The Mask You Live In, Dr. Philip Zimbardo explains, “The ones that are most addictive are the most violent where your job is to destroy the enemy. To dominate.” From the start of boyhood, boys are taught that it is acceptable to be violent. They think that aggression and domination are a normal way of life. No wonder why men can be so violent. This is normal to them. The media is extremely influential on the demeanor of people, especially young kids. Even more, Ashly Burch describes in the documentary that the typical character in a game is extremely violent. This influences the players in that they want to be like the character. This character is their role model and therefore influences boys to use force. For this reason, young boys should be taught be understanding and show kindness in place of violence and
But, as far as any real zombie outbreak was concerned, it never happened. It was just an internet hoax backed by a bunch of fake videos produced by pranksters over the years since the birth of the original tale. There was no patient zero, no widespread infection that had taken over
Max Brooks touches on the fact that zombies were a joke a couple years ago when the reigning monsters were vampires and werewolves but now they have risen to the top of the horror industry. Zombies are taking over movies, television shows, video games and practically any other media form you can think of. Brooks believes the rising fascination of zombies is related to watching the fictional destruction of our society and knowing it is not real and being able to turn it off rather than realizing the downfall that is actually occurring. He believes that zombies have been so popular because it allows people to have a feeling of control because they know the dead cannot rise so watching different scenarios of the world almost ending due to an epidemic
A zombie apocalypse is absolutely a possibility. When take a closer look there are many possibilities to which an apocalypse could happen. All though it may not be as Hollywood or video games have led us all to believe. The whole lumbering, brain-dead corpse thing has become a little overrated now-a-days, at least for me anyway. Today when we think about a zombie apocalypse we think of popular video games or movies released by some truly sick and demented people, who by the way probably have way too much time on their hands. There are many possibilities to where a human can be turned into a “zombie”. Disease, disease has been with humans as long as humans have lived in this Earth. When we look all throughout history we can see the evolution of disease. In England during the Middle Ages the Bubonic Plague is a perfect example. It hit the British pretty hard, took them absolutely by surprise. They had never seen anything like that in the past, there was never any way to treat the disease, you just avoided it, and as soon as you were infected, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, you were already dead. Egypt, another good example, there has been recently discovered hieroglyphs revealing a depiction of what appeared to be a horde of zombies. The scribes wrote it describing them as possessed and ferocious. Some people say zombies, while others say the product of an overactive imagination. Let’s take a look at today’s possible “zombie” diseases.
video games often warp their sense of reality. The kids think that if they shoot a person in a game and nothing really happens then nothing will really happen if they shoot a person in real life. When video games first became popular, people may not have seen this as much of a problem because games were not very realistic. With the advancement of technology, however, video games are becoming more and more realistic. If video games become more realistic, children will forget what is real and what is simulated; a child seeing somebody violently murder another human being in a video game will have the same effects as seeing somebody murder another human being in real life. Witnessing these brutal acts of violence either will traumatize or desensitize them to violence. However, this is contradictory to the “Play is labile” theory (Schroeder 4), which will be discussed, in further detail.
Violent media, no matter the form, is largely viewed in a negative light among the general population, especially among parents and the political class. Politicians, showing their contempt for violent content, have conducted congressional hearings on violent video games and their supposed negative effects on America’s youth (Kohler, Chris). Going beyond theatrics, they have also proposed making the selling of ‘M’ rated games to minors a criminal offense; however, this proposal would later be struck down by the Supreme Court as being in violation of the First Amendment (Biskupic, Joan, and Mike Snider). Simply put, these actions show that politicians view violent media as serving no legitimate function, especially for children. Gerard Jones, a comic book writer and author of the essay, “Violent Media Is Good for Kids,” disavows such a belief and states that violent media can serve as a necessary emotional outlet for children to express common, but nonetheless suppressed emotions such as rage, fear, and loneliness (Jones, Gerard). In his essay, the author is mostly effective in arguing his claim because of the relatable, clear examples that he provides; however, what makes the essay less persuasive than it would be otherwise is the lack of credible scientific evidence.
Zombies have a virus that can be transmitted through blood and bites. Later in season two, they go even farther and discover that everyone is already infected, alive or dead. Everyone (alive or dead) carries this virus and its in a matter of time that they will become a walker. If you die, or even get bit by a zombie you will become a zombie. It goes back to reservoirs. “When an animal is a reservoir for an infection, they don’t present the disease. The macaques that carry the deadly herpes B virus don’t die horribly from herpes B. Similarly, following what we know about viruses, a human that already carries the zombie virus would not die instantly from another injection of it. If everyone in The Walking Dead already carries the virus, getting bit would be just a bite. You can’t infect the infected. But you could envenomate
There have been many big controversies over videogames but the biggest controversy is violence in video games. Many parents believe that video games will corrupt their children's minds. Thats not always true because many kids can play a game knowing the difference between reality and imagination. Children learn a lot from their parents so if parents tell the kids before they buy them a game that it is reality and that they should never do it. In recent studies by American Psychological Association (APA) and Brown University that violent video games like shooters can boost children's learning, health, and social skills (washingtonpost). Many parents tell their kids “playing video games will rot your brain.” This is not true because APA researched and tested out kids playing violent video games and found that kids who play violent video games can improve a range of cognitive skills in their abilities ( Washington Post). A Category that is considered the most violent video games are shooter games. Parents think that children are just learning how to kill people and sometimes beli...
Violent media influence on the attitudes and behaviour of young people has been a hot topic of debate for decades. Critics say that violence in television, movies, and video games, desensitizes children to real effects that violence has on society and themselves. The problem is that teenagers tend to act on the behaviour seen in the television shows they watch and the video games they play every day. They shoot someone in a video game and not be able to distinguish that it is morally wrong to kill someone but to influence every day it does not affect them and they will grow up and be a savage. This subject is debated because of the profound effect that violence can in the future of society. The introduction of television violence has led many to theorize that chronic exposure to the act will desensitize some teenagers and cause them to develop the characteristics of a more aggressive.
The question is, “Do violent video games influence children to act aggressively?” and “Can repetitive killing train a person to be violent himself?” Although the violence in these video games is fictional, research has proven the violence to lead to more aggressive behavior in children. Violent acts depicted in these games allow young children to believe that killing and fighting is acceptable and fun.
The American homes every year increasingly besieged by menacing of zombies and killing of aliens. It is the fact that these characters in popular violent video games being exist just on screen. Maybe parents are worried about limiting their children’s exposure to violence. The October issue of the Harvard Mental Health Letter reports that worries about violence of video games, but also gives advice how parents save their children’s health.
Are video games a negative or positive influence on children’s behavior and actions? Several studies have been pointing out that exposure to violence on television, movies, video games, cell phones and the Internet increases the risk of violent behavior in the viewer, like to grow in an environment filled with real violence increases the risk of violent behavior. Plentiful of the research on current media have focused on the violence spread by TV for experts in developmental psychology and John Murray of Kansas State University, United States, it is difficult to conclude otherwise than that violence on television has increased levels of violence and aggression in the society, and that video games have an effect even more powerful. Violent video games are more distress, than the films of the same sign and that the images of violence shown on television because they are interactive, because they use a technology environment that allows the user total immersion in the situation, while producing new objects cultural. The reason is that video games are not limited to violence to show a passive spectator, but require the person to connect with the character and act for him, while violence in film and television images whose exposure is limited only to visual perception. The video game violence has long-term real effects. Children exposed to high levels of violent entertainment can become more aggressive and develop a tremendous face the suffering of others, also increases the likelihood they interact and respond to violence in their social environment. In violent video games as success is clearly defined as killing or take, and failure as die or loses the good and evil as the wicked: they, different from us, it is just revenged, I mate,...
Video games have a large foothold in present American culture. Todays children and adolescence are immersed in a world of electronics and technology that is rapidly changing and evolving. A vast majority of video games contain a violence component. One could see that the exposure to violent video games can be correlated to increased aggression in adolescence but, it’s more complex then that. We live in a culture that has an insatiable appetite for destruction. From watching a action movie to watching news broadcasts of a disaster to riding a rollercoaster there is an evident thrill seeking component as well as a general fascination with anything that pertains to death and disaster. If a child or adolescent is not exposed to