One of my bemusment moments... VAMPIRES...zombies. Capital letters, I understand and small case letters, I don't get it.
As we approach Hallowe'en, the bookstores have been hot selling the books about vampires and zombies, as well as ghosts. As a middle-aged lady with salt and pepper colored hair, I am having a little difficulty comprehending the meaning of zombies. I did ask my children about it and they did not really care about it; they understood vampires.
VAMPIRES... I dig them. When I was in preteens, I got hooked on Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire and other books written by her. Oh, mysterious, brooding, aloof, gentile vampires who blended with the shadows, with a promise of kiss of everlasting love. Of course, as a preteen and a teen, I was a sucker for the idea of everlasting love... that came with a price of embracing and becoming one with undead. Even watching the vampire movies, I'd logically cheer for the vanquishment of the vampires, but in my heart, I'd mourn a little for the squashing the promise of everlasting love, because the vampires were the lonely beings desiring for permanent partners who they never got. They somehow made death beautiful in a strange way.
Two decades later, in my thirties, I watched the TV series, "Buffy the Slayer"... I rooted for Angel and Spike. I irritately thought why Buffy could not stop slaying the vampires and just embrace either Angel or Spike? It was a good, old-fashioned fast-paced TV series while it lasted. It was so teenage-ish, peer pressure, jealously, etc... that was a good distraction for me.
Then, the Twilight novels and movies came along...in my 40's. Ahhh... they brought me back to my memories of teenage stirrings and longings for the idea of permanent love that went beyond death. Instead of dreaming wide-eyed, innocently believing that there was such thing as undead love as a teenager, I just regretfully look back at my memories with a bemused smile, realizing that it was my budding hormones which made me think that way.
Then this year, I started noticing more books about zombies and I went like... huh? Zombies? Then I started to see the increase in the numbers of zombie books on the displays. Hm. I read the back covers and flyleaves and hmm... okay. I decided not to buy any... but why would the teenagers would want to read them? Zombies make death so ... UNattractive. There's no promise of love. Zombies' limbs just decay and fall apart, they are very clumsy, and... wet and smelly, eww! Given a choice, I'd rather accept a vampire's kiss than have my brain eaten by any zombies. If there's anything that I am missing, be my guest and leave a comment... I am very interested in understanding why zombies appear to be the rave nowadays...
Happy Hallowe'en, folks ;-)
10/29... came across the article about zombie being the rage this year:
http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/pop-vox/2010/10/27/when-the-zombies-come-i-ll-be-ready.html
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