Zombies and Cannibalism

Leon and Helena

As we draw closer to Halloween, I find that I'm still thinking about zombies. Last week my roommate bought Resident Evil 6 and started playing through the first campaign. So far I have really enjoyed it, and I'm looking forward to playing through all the campaigns and learning the story. I also find the game absolutely terrifying. For me, video games are scarier than movies because I can immerse myself into the situations more, as I control one of the characters. When zombies sneak up on my character from behind, I will jump, squeak or even scream, and yell for my partner to shoot my attacker. I don't want to give anything away for anyone who might play this game, so I'll just describe one scene that happens towards the beginning of one campaign.
 Helena and Leon, the playable characters, have helped a man find his daughter, Liz, after a zombie outbreak has infected a college campus. Now the four of us are in an elevator, making our way down to a parking garage in hopes of escaping in the man's car. Liz, who has been coughing and had to be carried to the elevator has just collapsed. She is barely coherent, and the man tries to revive her. Her eyes close and she goes limp, while her father cries over her body. Suddenly the lights go out, flooding the elevator in darkness. A strange, sort of sucking sound interrupts the silence. 
 "Leon?" I ask, fear apparent in my voice. 
 His flashlight switches on and reveals the man lying on his back, while his daughter chews on his neck. Blood from his arteries is spreading across the elevator carpet like a lake. 
 What was Liz leaps at Leon, who knocks her away, but she spins and comes right for me, knocking me down onto the blood soaked carpet. Her face is inches from mine, when I lift my gun and blast her in the face. I push her limp body away and climb to my feet. 
 
There is something disturbing about the idea of being eaten alive, particularly by other human beings, that serves as the driving force behind zombies. Even ignoring the fact that being eaten alive would be a longer form of pain than quickly being shot in the head, for instance, there's something about cannibalism that both disgusts and fascinates at once. Serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy are intriguing to our morbid curiousity. Perhaps this is because the idea of eating another person is so foreign to most of us that it is exotic, in a grotesque sort of way, just like the idea of eating snails both horrified and intrigued myself and my other American friends when we were in elementary school.
 
Cannibalism is an interesting thing to think about. Why is it that we find cannibalism disgusting? Many other species in nature engage in cannibalism, and in certain societies cannibalism has been a part of ceremony, either to disgrace enemy warriors or to honor relatives who have past on by taking a part of them within the body. Why is eating the flesh of another either a disrespectful or reverent act at all? Eating the flesh of animals is just a part of life for most people, and when it comes down to it, aren't humans just animals as well?


As a bonus, watch this cute music video called "If I were a zombie," about love in a post-apocalyptic world.