Zombies: fun until you become one.
In a recent article cited on Slashdot, the author argues that zombies, like godzilla, adapt depending on the prevailing technological fear of the day.
a) I don’t think this applies just to tech fears – all sorts of unexplained phenomena find themselves rewritten into each age – ghosts, golems, aliens (always topical) and such. X-Files is great at doing this. b) Fun things also have changed their tunes. Spiderman was in one incarnation bitten by a radioactive spider, reflecting the Cold War era into which he was created; later on, Spidey was bitten by a genetically modified spider. Purist that I am, I preferred radioactive Spiderman.
One of the interesting trends in bringing characters like Iron Man to screen is having to do away with the references to Soviet arch nemeses such as the Crimson Dynamo, and in choosing whether to offend Muslims in employing Muslim fanatical terrorists in the plot. A number of movies and TV shows have had the bad guys re-written, out of fear of alienating Muslim viewers, the majority of whom, understandably, are sick and tired of seeing themselves portrayed in this one-dimensional, negative light. Fact remains however that they (the terrorists) ARE the bad guys of the age – so are the moviemakers really doing justice to their overall audience when they make up some mumbo-jumbo fanatical environmental terrorists instead? In 24, there were normal Muslims loyal to their adopted country, and there were Muslim fanatics. That’s more like it.
