Guest wrote:
I feel that everyone has missed the point here. In horror, it isn't what you're made of that defines you, it's what you stand for. More than any other genre, horror is the realm of metaphor.
A Zombie isn't just a reanimated corpse eating brains or a person under the control of an evil Bokor, it is a metaphor for a loss of humanity - a devolution of the soul. Zombies are what we fear we may become, a mindless soulless memeber of a herd, which is so poignantly captured in Romero's Dead mythos. The dead do not think or appreciate the food (brains) upon which they feast, they are simply physicality without meaning, body without mind - like and endless pantomime (and similar to a Golem in that respect.)
Frankenstein's Creature, however is a completely different animal. He is far from soulless, as a matter of fact he may be the single most sympathetic monster ever created. He is not undead, he is fully alive. He is a metaphor for the disaffected and the outcast, for the man searching for meaning and on a spiritual quest for his god. He is "born" knowing nothing and is immediately discarded, like a baby in a dumpster. He seeks shelter and food and soon finds himself hiding out in the woods near a farming family from whom - through simple observation of this surrogate family - he learns language, relationships and humanity. He learns to read and devours books. He comes to question who he is, why he is so different from the rest of the world and who could have made him. He remebers the one gift he was given (had stolen from) from his creator, Frankensteins journal which told indetail how he formed the creature - a Bible, if you will. His destructive nature only comes into play once he realizes he has been created out of arrogance and discarded without any concern for his well-being. His violent rage is a war against god.
Yes the Creature and the Zombie start off dead, but the Creature lives, grows and thrives while the Zombie simple destroys and decays.
Hey Keller,
While I agree with your general concept, your specifics don't work. Particularly the comment about them not enjoying their food. Your example, brains, references specifically
The Return of the Living Dead, which didn't feature mindless, soulless members of the herd, but individual intelligent beings that that did enjoy their food because it halted the pain of being dead. Romero's zombies were definitely a metaphor for forced conversion/herd mentality but the zombie genre has remained strong for so long because the zombie as a metaphor is broad enough to encompass a multitude of concepts. In fact the zombies in
Return are basically the oppose side of the coin to Romero's zombies. Instead of being soulless members of the herd they are the angry multitude of mob rule.
