Transformation Of Zombies And Vampires: Mass Entertainment Essay Examples

In ‘The Un-History of the Undead: From Superstition to Celluloid’, Tim Kane assesses the existence of Vampires and Zombies and the changes of their definition over the years. Some of the critical assessments that the author uses is analyzing the fact that people assume that Zombies and Vampires are purely fictional characters. According to him, the possibility of such beings existed has been cited, but still does not believe in their existence. His perception of vampires and zombies is entirely different from those who have known of the existence of such concepts from movies and television programs that have altered the truth about such beings. This paper seeks to establish the influence of mass media on changing the perspectives that most people hold.
Arguably, from folkloric definitions, Vampires did once be presumed to exist. The term was apparently coined in 1974, but a media frenzy that sparked around the issue back then led to the result of confusion as to what was the perfect definition of a vampire (Kane 3). The media not only led to the changes in the way people perceived such ideas, skewing it to the current definition, anyone would give you of a vampire: pale, with fangs, and a cape around his neck. The definition of vampires by media also changed with the emergence of new and better ways of portraying vampires.
Initially, the assumed vampire would walk in daylight, but since the introduction of the 1943 film ‘Son of Dracula’, the perception about vampires shifted from beings that probably would exist in daylight to vampires with absolutely no capacity to survive in daylight. Since the coining of the term vampire in the early 1700s to 1943, people envisioned vampires that would walk into the daylight. However, a single movie transformed the way in which people viewed or imagined vampires to be. The author still does not indicate the truth about vampires, citing their true existence as he too is unsure of their existence.
As such, if Seabrook did see a zombie in real life, what he saw and what we currently know are two different and diverse perspectives. Arguably, most of the definitions of zombies in movies and suchlike media forums are immensely hyperbolized. Zombies in one of the latest movies presented, World War Z, might change the utter definition of zombies for the rest of our lives. In most cases, zombies are lifeless corpses that are lazily moving around (Brooks 120). Zombies are assumed to be dead people walking. However, when the Voodoo spirit that has been used to enslave a zombie is defeated, suing salt or after the death of the master, life returns to zombies making them alive once again. It is a concept about zombies that was lost through media representations.
Mass media is one of the most easily believed forms of communication despite the fact that it might be the most unreliable. For instance, it is evident that most people assume that zombies can bite and infect people with their disease causing them to die as well. However, if Seabrook’s version, which is relatively more believable as he argues that he saw it with his own eyes, is true, then zombies are docile creatures that will forever slave for their masters with no capacity to harm humans in any way. The media has been used to depict zombies as terrifying creatures that infect other people, an untrue belief that has led to the coining of extreme situations such as a Zombie Apocalypse.
The media is a house of lies. One lie perpetrated by another person who had the capacity to make a movie of it becomes a universal truth to a majority of other people. The media is best known for spreading propaganda, which was one of the strategies used by former dictators such as Hitler to control the thinking of the people. Mass media can be used to sway the public into believing things that do not inherently exist. As such, it is arguable that mass media hold the capacity to spread lies and unreal facts making them appear real. Mass entertainment is a very strong and influential field that can alter people’s imaginations and definitions of terms. It skews the majority from reality in that they are more susceptible to belief in fictional creatures and the characters they are given in movies as compared to believing in the true definition of such creatures that can be found in the historical books.

Work Cited

Brooks, Max. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. New York: Broadway Paperbacks, 2013. Print.
Kane, Tim. The Un-History of the Undead: From Superstition to Celluloid. Verbatim, 31.4 (Winter 2006): p. 5. From literature resource center.