In 1968, American director George A. Romero set a milestone in the history of horror cinema with the release of Night of the Living Dead. This low-budget film with unknown actors marked a paradigm shift in the canon of the genre and, over time, became a true cult film. Indeed, that the Library of Congress chose it to be part of the National Film Registry, a film archive dedicated to preserving “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” films.
The film was a success, and it gave rise to the archetype of the zombie: an animated corpse that seeks only to satiate its irrepressible hunger for human flesh. The living dead are animated not by means of black magic or voodoo, but for reasons that are not very clear—and yet, the premise is “rational” or at least plausible, for when it attacks, its victim also turns into a zombie, thus reproducing to infinity the most abject horror, like an infection that cannot be cured.
Romero’s version of zombies is the current one in the collective imagination. It is the one we all know, the frightful cannibalistic corpse that, from a distance, looks like a living being, because it is standing, walking, and in figure resembles a human. But when we approach it, we perceive that it stinks because it is decomposing and, above all, that it is a dangerous, dead organism, highly contagious and soulless.
There is a certain similarity between Spain’s Sánchez government and Romero’s zombie, since, like the latter, it is a decomposing body that is still standing, that corrupts everything around it, and—worst of all—has no one to face it with enough courage and determination to put an end to it. The fact that the zombie is dead not only defines him, it is also the characteristic that gives him an advantage: because he has no life to lose, he plays by rules very different from those of the living.
The zombie government is the same. It has no life, it refuses to accept its condition, it is logically amoral, and it lacks a soul. Nevertheless, it walks like the living, among the living, infecting and rotting everything around it. In Spain, we have gone from a Frankenstein government—made up of members of different corpses—to a zombie government, which is even more unholy: the zombie government of Sánchez.
To better understand the figure and the parallelism used, it is worth remembering that in the gallery of monsters, the vampiric Count Dracula is a nobleman; Frankenstein’s creature, although ethically questionable, is the fruit of science; the werewolf suffers from a curse with roots in tradition and folklore; but the zombie is the most plebeian, shabby, disgusting, and repulsive of all. Its only task is to eat and infect, nothing more.
There is another parallel to complete the picture, and it is the one posed by Mira Milosevich, the Serbian political scientist and sociologist who now resides in Spain. A researcher at the Real Instituto Elcano, she states in her book, The Zombie Empire. Russia and the World Order, that
Both the USSR and Vladimir Putin’s Russia must be seen as revolutionary and revisionist powers with the unrenounceable goal of changing the established international order. The Tsarist Empire, which was built between the 15th and 19th centuries, disintegrated in 1917. The Soviet Empire, which succeeded it in 1922, disappeared seventy years later, after the collapse of communism. Today’s Russia is a zombie empire, a deceased that, in one way or another, is trying to come back to life.
According to Milosevich, today’s Russia does not accept that its empire is over, and it has never assimilated the idea of the end of an imperial era. For that reason, it also does not accept the idea of being a nation state integrated into the world order. Hence its attempt, however it can, to come back to life—like a zombie—and to become an empire again. Its re-imperialization is the basis of its revisionism and messianism, which acts as a geopolitical justification at present. Russia also has no clear idea of national borders, and that fits with this return to empire—to the life of the zombie—in spite of its death. It is a standing corpse, a very dangerous living dead.
In today’s Spain, with the zombie government of Sánchez, we can draw some political parallels with the Russian zombie empire analyzed by Milosevich. The Spanish government has some pretensions similar to the Russian one, but logically to a much lesser degree. Sánchez, like Putin, also has an unrenounceable objective, because he sees himself as revolutionary and revisionist, and he intends to change the established order at the local and at most regional level. And he is achieving these goals with the sanction of the state; i.e., with the ongoing process of unrestrained advancement of the executive power over the legislative and the judiciary, and with institutional instrumentation as a tool of this process of decomposition of principles including the rule of law, citizens’ liberties, equality before the law, and national unity. If we add to this the hegemony of the official narrative in the mass media and in the culture, the apathy of the citizens, and the lack of an alternative political project from a confused and confrontational opposition, the end of this process of control of the government is the zombification of the nation.
As Michael Bloom observes in his article, “Reanimating the Living Dead,” Romero’s film changed the idea of zombies. They went from being servile beings, dominated by a superior intelligence and lacking will or the ability to communicate, to being shown as uncontrollable, cannibalistic, and endowed with a survival instinct that moves them to attack living human beings. The current political process once again has similarities with cinematic fiction and the horror genre. In Spain, as in Romero’s film, the danger is not only outside but also inside the house. Outside, there is the unstoppable mob of the undead; inside, there are the uninfected survivors who, out of cowardice, fear, or desperation, confront each other and, in this way, only succeed in helping the zombies achieve their final goal.
If, in reality as in fiction, there are still living beings who refuse to succumb to this political zombie apocalypse, then they must first become aware of the danger, gather their courage, form alliances (even if only for convenience), and confront once and for all the living dead that have surrounded them. Otherwise, as in Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, the end of the story will be a true horror-show.
Spain: The Zombie Nation
Screenshot from The Night of the Living Dead
In 1968, American director George A. Romero set a milestone in the history of horror cinema with the release of Night of the Living Dead. This low-budget film with unknown actors marked a paradigm shift in the canon of the genre and, over time, became a true cult film. Indeed, that the Library of Congress chose it to be part of the National Film Registry, a film archive dedicated to preserving “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” films.
The film was a success, and it gave rise to the archetype of the zombie: an animated corpse that seeks only to satiate its irrepressible hunger for human flesh. The living dead are animated not by means of black magic or voodoo, but for reasons that are not very clear—and yet, the premise is “rational” or at least plausible, for when it attacks, its victim also turns into a zombie, thus reproducing to infinity the most abject horror, like an infection that cannot be cured.
Romero’s version of zombies is the current one in the collective imagination. It is the one we all know, the frightful cannibalistic corpse that, from a distance, looks like a living being, because it is standing, walking, and in figure resembles a human. But when we approach it, we perceive that it stinks because it is decomposing and, above all, that it is a dangerous, dead organism, highly contagious and soulless.
There is a certain similarity between Spain’s Sánchez government and Romero’s zombie, since, like the latter, it is a decomposing body that is still standing, that corrupts everything around it, and—worst of all—has no one to face it with enough courage and determination to put an end to it. The fact that the zombie is dead not only defines him, it is also the characteristic that gives him an advantage: because he has no life to lose, he plays by rules very different from those of the living.
The zombie government is the same. It has no life, it refuses to accept its condition, it is logically amoral, and it lacks a soul. Nevertheless, it walks like the living, among the living, infecting and rotting everything around it. In Spain, we have gone from a Frankenstein government—made up of members of different corpses—to a zombie government, which is even more unholy: the zombie government of Sánchez.
To better understand the figure and the parallelism used, it is worth remembering that in the gallery of monsters, the vampiric Count Dracula is a nobleman; Frankenstein’s creature, although ethically questionable, is the fruit of science; the werewolf suffers from a curse with roots in tradition and folklore; but the zombie is the most plebeian, shabby, disgusting, and repulsive of all. Its only task is to eat and infect, nothing more.
There is another parallel to complete the picture, and it is the one posed by Mira Milosevich, the Serbian political scientist and sociologist who now resides in Spain. A researcher at the Real Instituto Elcano, she states in her book, The Zombie Empire. Russia and the World Order, that
According to Milosevich, today’s Russia does not accept that its empire is over, and it has never assimilated the idea of the end of an imperial era. For that reason, it also does not accept the idea of being a nation state integrated into the world order. Hence its attempt, however it can, to come back to life—like a zombie—and to become an empire again. Its re-imperialization is the basis of its revisionism and messianism, which acts as a geopolitical justification at present. Russia also has no clear idea of national borders, and that fits with this return to empire—to the life of the zombie—in spite of its death. It is a standing corpse, a very dangerous living dead.
In today’s Spain, with the zombie government of Sánchez, we can draw some political parallels with the Russian zombie empire analyzed by Milosevich. The Spanish government has some pretensions similar to the Russian one, but logically to a much lesser degree. Sánchez, like Putin, also has an unrenounceable objective, because he sees himself as revolutionary and revisionist, and he intends to change the established order at the local and at most regional level. And he is achieving these goals with the sanction of the state; i.e., with the ongoing process of unrestrained advancement of the executive power over the legislative and the judiciary, and with institutional instrumentation as a tool of this process of decomposition of principles including the rule of law, citizens’ liberties, equality before the law, and national unity. If we add to this the hegemony of the official narrative in the mass media and in the culture, the apathy of the citizens, and the lack of an alternative political project from a confused and confrontational opposition, the end of this process of control of the government is the zombification of the nation.
As Michael Bloom observes in his article, “Reanimating the Living Dead,” Romero’s film changed the idea of zombies. They went from being servile beings, dominated by a superior intelligence and lacking will or the ability to communicate, to being shown as uncontrollable, cannibalistic, and endowed with a survival instinct that moves them to attack living human beings. The current political process once again has similarities with cinematic fiction and the horror genre. In Spain, as in Romero’s film, the danger is not only outside but also inside the house. Outside, there is the unstoppable mob of the undead; inside, there are the uninfected survivors who, out of cowardice, fear, or desperation, confront each other and, in this way, only succeed in helping the zombies achieve their final goal.
If, in reality as in fiction, there are still living beings who refuse to succumb to this political zombie apocalypse, then they must first become aware of the danger, gather their courage, form alliances (even if only for convenience), and confront once and for all the living dead that have surrounded them. Otherwise, as in Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, the end of the story will be a true horror-show.
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