Zombies In Pop Culture

It seems as though zombies are coming increasingly more popular in pop culture as time goes on. Countless movies, books, video games, and even TV shows based on zombies have dated back to 1932 when the first feature length zombie film, White Zombie, came out. But many people wonder where the images and ideas of the reanimation of dead people came from: rising from the grave; rotting, pasty, green skin; an uncanny taste for human flesh and brains that can all be ended with a blow to the head. As far as how exactly the people came to be zombies varies, but the characteristics described usually stay pretty constant. Most cultures believe that zombies are not real; however, there is evidence to prove that the idea originated on the island of Haiti. A “zombie” can be defined as fictional undead creatures, typically depicted as mindless, reanimated human corpses with a hunger for human flesh. Zombies are most commonly found in horror and fantasy genre works. The term comes from Haitian folklore where a zombie is a dead body animated by magic.

The word ‘zombie’ is said to have come from nzambi, which in Kongo means ‘spirit of a dead person’, or zonbi, used in the Louisiana Creole or the Haitian Creole that represents a person who died and was then brought to life without speech or free will. Voodoo folklore contends that Bokors, Voodoo priests that were concerned with the study and application of black magic, possessed the ability to resurrect the deceased through the administration of coup padre–coup padre is a powder that is issued orally, the primary ingredient of which is tetro-doxin, the deadly substance of the notoriously poisonous fou-fou, or “porcupine fish.” According to legend, “a zombi(e) is someone who has annoyed his or her family and community to the degree that they can no longer stand to live with this person. They respond by hiring a Bokor to turn them into a