The Zombie Autopsies

Next Wednesday, I have the honor of being at Kings College in London for a conference on a very cool way of both looking at and teaching medicine called “Narrative Medicine.” The essential idea is that clinicians and patients engage in their own narrative every day; that’s why every doctor-patient encounter ought to be different.  I’ll be joining collegues in a section called “Brain, Mind and Text,” and I’m going to try and use the construct of the zombie as a teaching device to help us understand how we distinguish (or don’t) self and other in the medical setting.  Kinda high brow for zombies, but central as well to why I love the zombie genre. Who knew zombies would take me here?

And, more importantly, thanks to the good people of the United Kingdom who continue to write to me about The Zombie Autopsies.  I’m grateful for the interest and honored by your comments.

Max Brooks and I were both interviewed for this piece, as well as others in the small but growing pond of zombie-er’s (is that a word?). 

OK - I need to issue a few caveats as I just learned that the Discovery Channel is gonna air this week the program they first showed last December about the “impending zombie apocalypse.”  It was a lot of fun to take part in this project, and I think the show sets out to do what a good deal of apocalyptic writers do - that is, create a scenario that feels just a tad too possible.  With this mind frame, the program is thought provoking and creepy (which are both good things if you’re into this genre!).  However, I ain’t so excited about all the preppers.  I don’t actually know any preppers for much of anything other than making the soccer schedule work for their kids, but I do worry about taking fear of societal collapse too far.  There will not be a zombie outbreak.  Zombies aren’t gonna happen.  (Can’t believe I’m writing this…). There will be nasty things in the world that, by virtue of our great big brains, we can either make better or royally screw up.  

Enjoy the show, but watch it with a heap of proverbial salt! Good zombies stories, like all scary stories worth that salt, are about what NOT to do.

And thanks to all of you for your comments.

Best, 

Steve Schlozman

So, The Guardian, one of the coolest papers in the UK, asked me to ponder the potential special appeal of zombies to American Culture.  I did what I could, but what I wrote brought about quite a lot of comments that were not entirely positive.  Remember, I’m just kicking around ideas with this piece.  Do I buy the ideas?  Well, yeah, but I could probably be argued out of some of the points.  Still, it feels hard to ignore ties between a good Western and a good Zombie movie.  Debate is always welcome.

So, we’re talking vampires here…not zombies.  The zombies won’t care.  Zombies can take or leave vampires.  But I really like vampires…not the sparkling kind, but all the other varieties.  Also, this webcast gave me the chance to talk about one of the very best of Romero’s movies - Martin - that is in fact about the blood sucking brood rather than the shambling undead.  Plus, Veronica Belmont is way cool.

When I was a kid, Mr. Nimoy (i.e. the guy who played Spock) hosted this totally creepy and really fun show called “In Search Of.”  At the end of every episode, I was just a tiny bit convinced that what I was sure did not exist just might happen to exist.  This included Bigfoot, Vampires, Aliens, and The Bermuda Triangle.  It was like a primer for Fox Moulder’s interests. I may have endured more sleepless nights from this program than I ever did from watching the Creature Features on Saturday morning UHF.  Well, the Art Department at Rhodes College is doing a retrospective of this show, and I get to deliver a zombie lecture to add to the event.  If you live in Memphis, please come join us.  It is September 20th.  But be prepared to believe….