The apocalypse is coming, and it’s coming soon! But probably not, though. We survived Y2K as we survived Mad Cow Disease, as we survived 2012, as we survived ISIS and Ebola, as we survived the Rapture, the Cuban Missile Crisis and a million other things that probably weren’t catchy enough to make headlines (nothing is as catchy as ISIS and Ebola).
But that doesn’t mean that the end of the world hasn’t informed our media. The post-apocalyptic genre has had a huge bump in recent years, and I doubt that that’s purely coincidental. We come from a generation in which we are constantly informed of our fast-approaching demise. It’s no wonder that films such as "2012" have become staples of entertainment culture since the turn of the millennium. What is the fascination with the apocalypse, but a generational (and perhaps society-wide) death wish? And we’re not totally off base. The sorry state of the environment is probably going to come to a head in the next few decades, but does that, on it’s own, really excuse our morbid curiosity of the end of everything?
To be honest, the human race has been obsessed with its own extinction since the very beginning. Every creation myth and religion widely and prominently features the end of the world. In the three Abrahamic religions (those being Judaism, Christianity and Islam) all portray an eerily similar Judgement Day. Norse Mythology alludes to Ragnarok, the darkening of the world, brought upon by a celestial rooster crow. Greek Mythology assures us that the world most definitely will end, and soon. Each and every individual human is marked for death, as is our entire species. And we’re right – in the grand scheme of things, humans aren’t even a blip on the cosmic radar. So, the fascination with our own demise can be considered healthy in a way; at least we acknowledge our own impermanence, and we do that through the best mediums possible: movies and TV.
In recent years, the apocalypse has taken on a few certain defining qualities. This includes forewarning by scientists who are ignored and ridiculed (2012), the event in question being our own fault ( "Mad Max," "The Road," "Fallout") and of course, zombies ("World War Z," "The Walking Dead," "28 Days Later," "Zombieland," "The Last of Us," "Left 4 Dead," "dead or Alive") and hundreds of other media phenomenon that I'm sure I’m forgetting). The zombie thing captures my interest like nothing else. Not fast zombies particularly, as those bore me and I think we should develop some sort of new nomenclature for them, but the Romero-esque zombies that are featured prominently in "Night of the Living Dead," and are reminiscent of the mummy myth. These zombies appear everywhere and are terrifying for three reasons: first, they are undead; second, they are relentless, they never stop; third, they are overwhelming and their numbers seemingly infinite, and they will keep coming long after you’re tired of running or fighting. This slow, unstoppable force, I believe, speaks a great deal to the current mindset of humanity. A power that will eventually overwhelm us, and sap our will to fight back. No big boom, just the flicker of the dying light. Of course some of the other apocalyptic scenarios – nuclear holocaust and the mass depletion of resources – are not much more charming. The fact that zombies are ever-present in our popular culture, so much so that I would consider them the monster of a generation (outpacing even vampires), says a lot. Zombies are not like other monsters. They are realistic in a way. Nine times out of ten zombifications is the result of some man-made disease and not some mystical force or the work of a spiteful god. No, just as in the case of nuclear war or resource depletion, zombies are brought about by humans for humans. We don’t have a lot of faith in ourselves as a species anymore. A feeling tells me that future historians will look back at this time and characterize us, through our media, as the pessimistic generation. If we survive that long.
