Representation of the Zombie in Post-Modern Media Sakshi Kanase College

Postmodernism is a contemporary theory introduced by Fredric Jameson that aims to explain the culture of the novel world we currently live in. Perhaps the most defining feature of Postmodernism is the lack of distinction between high culture and mass culture. Post-modernism has created a free flow of ideas between both forms of culture that has given birth to multiple new genres in art, literature, and cinema. Most notably, one of these genres is that of horror movies, and in this genre, Postmodernism has brought around the popularization of zombies.

Zombies have existed long before Postmodern artforms have, yet they are more relevant than ever in the world of Postmodernism. Throughout history, the zombies in media have acted as a metaphor for a deeper representation of human fear, particularly what man feared in that contemporary time period. As we have learnt, from Frankenstein to ‘Night of the Living Dead’, the fear of zombies has equated to a concurrent fear in the contemporary society. As such, the movie I chose to analyze for this assignment, represents themes of Postmodernism and represents zombies as inherent human fear in a similar manner.

The movie ‘Zombieland’ takes place in a society that is identical to the one we...