Intriguing article 
If I had any nitpicking rants to add, they would be these:
I feel the conclusion that Vampires actually are more dangerous than Zombies, and that Zombie stories thus are just about patting the survivor's (as which we imagine ourselves) backs, is a bit short-fetched. The patting-the-back thing surely is part of it, but claiming Zombies are less of a threat ignores some factors. For instance, the threat they pose results from their sheer numbers; so whatever you do, in the end you'll run out of ammunition, or they will overrun your barricades, etc. The question of how many rounds one has left thus may prove to be a much more threatening one than any problem Vampires could pose. If not anything else, survivors will have to rest eventually; Vampires need to rest, too, usually, while Zombies don't. Up aganist Zombies, you'll screw up sooner or later just because of mental or physical exhaustion (unless you find a global cure, which usually fails); opposite to Vampires, you're under attack almost permanently. So I feel it's not true that because Zombies are less dangerous, stories involving them are rather patting-back stories about the living than stories dealing with the monsters.
It is true, however, that Zombie flicks deal with the survivors (their colflicts among each other, for instance) much more than Vampire stories nowadays deal with the humans; I guess this goes to show that in the end, one of the horrifying aspects of the Zombie is that he is a (although distorted) mirror image of ourselves, which I feel is a subtext of most Zombie flicks (something to which Freud, whose article about "The taboo of the dead" I only can recommend, would agree). This at least is true for anything which is not just a cheap attempt to exploit the genre. Zombie stories are about the living all right, but not just in a patting-their-backs way.
Another thing (which rather goes for some comments than the article) is that I guess it's idle to discuss whether Zombies sometimes are rather like Ghouls, or Vampires in the olden days were more like Zombies, or Zombies with ties are like Victorian Vampires etc. Literature and movies have moved the undead of any kind so far away from the original myths (I could go into a long rant about how the original meaning of the staking, or how and why it works, was lost, forcing contemporary authors to either awkwardly explain or ignore it, but I'll spare you this - and of course we all know that the "Zombies" in the movies aren't Zombies in the Voodoo sense of the word, and rather resemble the Undead in the Gilgamesh Epos or the scandinavian Draugr), and created so many different versions of them, that the distinctions seem useless. There aren't "the" Zombies or Vampires anymore, just Joss Whedon's (nice pun btw. , Bram Stoker's, George Romero's etc.
(Notice btw. how the skeleton-like Terminator robots actually are just technically advanced undead in a way?
One last thing - I'd really like to see a nice Ghoul movie one day (btw. here we go again - the Arabian ghul have nothing in common with the corpse-eating creatures to which Lovecraft slapped that label). It's a hard topic, though, I guess. One trouble with Ghouls may be that eating corpses (and darker stuff the idea suggests) still seems a bigger taboo than sexuality or gore (the contemporary Vampires have lost all signs of being "dead", which takes any hint at necrophilia out of vampirism); another is that the classic "Lovecraftian" ghoul, since eating corpses only, hardly makes a good monster. He poses no threat to the living - he's just a bit "eee-yuck". You'd have to change him, thus, and would just end up with the same discussion - is it still a Ghoul, or rather a Zombie?
If I had any nitpicking rants to add, they would be these:
I feel the conclusion that Vampires actually are more dangerous than Zombies, and that Zombie stories thus are just about patting the survivor's (as which we imagine ourselves) backs, is a bit short-fetched. The patting-the-back thing surely is part of it, but claiming Zombies are less of a threat ignores some factors. For instance, the threat they pose results from their sheer numbers; so whatever you do, in the end you'll run out of ammunition, or they will overrun your barricades, etc. The question of how many rounds one has left thus may prove to be a much more threatening one than any problem Vampires could pose. If not anything else, survivors will have to rest eventually; Vampires need to rest, too, usually, while Zombies don't. Up aganist Zombies, you'll screw up sooner or later just because of mental or physical exhaustion (unless you find a global cure, which usually fails); opposite to Vampires, you're under attack almost permanently. So I feel it's not true that because Zombies are less dangerous, stories involving them are rather patting-back stories about the living than stories dealing with the monsters.
It is true, however, that Zombie flicks deal with the survivors (their colflicts among each other, for instance) much more than Vampire stories nowadays deal with the humans; I guess this goes to show that in the end, one of the horrifying aspects of the Zombie is that he is a (although distorted) mirror image of ourselves, which I feel is a subtext of most Zombie flicks (something to which Freud, whose article about "The taboo of the dead" I only can recommend, would agree). This at least is true for anything which is not just a cheap attempt to exploit the genre. Zombie stories are about the living all right, but not just in a patting-their-backs way.
Another thing (which rather goes for some comments than the article) is that I guess it's idle to discuss whether Zombies sometimes are rather like Ghouls, or Vampires in the olden days were more like Zombies, or Zombies with ties are like Victorian Vampires etc. Literature and movies have moved the undead of any kind so far away from the original myths (I could go into a long rant about how the original meaning of the staking, or how and why it works, was lost, forcing contemporary authors to either awkwardly explain or ignore it, but I'll spare you this
- and of course we all know that the "Zombies" in the movies aren't Zombies in the Voodoo sense of the word, and rather resemble the Undead in the Gilgamesh Epos or the scandinavian Draugr), and created so many different versions of them, that the distinctions seem useless. There aren't "the" Zombies or Vampires anymore, just Joss Whedon's (nice pun btw. , Bram Stoker's, George Romero's etc.(Notice btw. how the skeleton-like Terminator robots actually are just technically advanced undead in a way?
One last thing - I'd really like to see a nice Ghoul movie one day (btw. here we go again - the Arabian ghul have nothing in common with the corpse-eating creatures to which Lovecraft slapped that label). It's a hard topic, though, I guess. One trouble with Ghouls may be that eating corpses (and darker stuff the idea suggests) still seems a bigger taboo than sexuality or gore (the contemporary Vampires have lost all signs of being "dead", which takes any hint at necrophilia out of vampirism); another is that the classic "Lovecraftian" ghoul, since eating corpses only, hardly makes a good monster. He poses no threat to the living - he's just a bit "eee-yuck". You'd have to change him, thus, and would just end up with the same discussion - is it still a Ghoul, or rather a Zombie?
