RH - Zombies: Why we love them

 

A Psychologist called Stephanie Lay at the Open University studied around 3,000 people who expressed fear in "near-human" faces. During the study she found out that blank faces and eyes are used to inflict fear. The research was used to find out about the "uncanny valley" phenomenon which looks into how people react to robots.

The "uncanny valley" effect was first researched in the 1970's where it was thought that giving robots human features would may make humans feel reassured to working with them.however instead of being reassured , the fact the robots where so close to resembling a human was seen a 'sinister'.

The research shows how a human like figure with empty eyes such as a Zombie or dolls, clowns or dummies are all used regularly to frighten audiences since they are considered disconcerting.

this uneasy reaction to human like faces may be caused by how the human brain processes human faces, when people begin to interpret something as a human face and then when it doesn't quiet match their expectations they are left with a sense of fear. The truth is people really don’t love the idea of a zombie apocalypse.  They only think they do, and largely because of the way the Zombie Scenario is presented to us; people tend to see the zombie apocalypse as something they can survive if they were to think about what they are doing. This is different to other apocalypse scenarios where no one seems to have a chance, but in the zombie apocalypse we have been shown it doesn't require any predetermined skills or background. Because of this idea the famous 'George Romero' style of zombies that are slow, stupid and hungry are the most loved zombies since these are the zombies people believe they would be able to beat since no-one wants to be in a situation they can't win especially against fast, strong and agile zombies.  Zombie films make the audience plot what they would do in that situation for example planning escape routes, prepping Go-Bags, planning booby traps and so on.

Zombie films also happen to appeal to the sense that everyone has but would never like to admit it, that on occasion you may just really want to hit someone over the head and this is where the idea that zombies are human like comes in and thinking about the scenario gives people some relief; but human nature clearly shows a natural tendency towards splitting peoples’ heads open with pick axes and rocks and bullets

The video below goes into detail on why we do love zombies and comes to a conclusion on how many possibilities there are in the zombie genre which leaves producers to be creative and imaginative and also lets the viewers mind wander and create their own scenarios and think how they would act in the situation; the video also mentions how different to other horror genres zombies don't provide a major threat and this fear has to be earned an developed by the story and backgrounds but there is something is intriguing fascinating and frighting about zombies.