There are tons of zombie and vampire shows on TV and in the Movies-True Blood, World War Z, Priest, The Walking Dead, 28 Days Later, Being Human, I Am Legend, My Babysitter’s a Vampire, and Valemont just to name a few. Applying a libertarian social lens, I suggest that zombies and vampires represent the unproductive and destructive elements in society. Zombies are unthinking and must eat normal humans, especially the brains. These are the tax eaters in society – welfare bums, long term disability scammers, and the government drones at the DMV and Post Office. Like all parasites, they destroy more and more of their hosts as their number grows.
Vampires represent another dangerous element, and that is the 1% power elites of the political class. While they are fewer in number than the zombie hordes, individually they are more dangerous. Cold and calculating, unlike the mindless zombie, vampires know what they do is ultimately destructive – they just don’t care. While it’s just a theory, I find it interesting that the number of such films and TV shows seems to have increased across all media. Perhaps this is a reflection of the increasing threat ordinary people feel during their interaction with the massive parasitic government system that confronts us at every turn.
Hat tip to Paul Cantor’s recent article on the zombie apocalypse, and the excellent book The Fourth Turning, and especially its references to pop-culture reflections of the broader zeitgeist.
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1:05 pm on September 24, 2013
