Zombies, Witches and Vampires, Oh My!

It's been one week since you looked at me...Oops, sorry. That's the Barenaked Ladies, not me. Seriously, it's been one week since I started blogging and I've managed to keep to my goal of blogging every day. The results have been quite surprising. I never expected it to be so therapeutic. Who knew that it would feel go good to get some of the things rolling around in my head, out of my head? Sure as shit wasn't me :)

I had a very relaxing day today. I didn't do much of anything. Slept in until after 10, got up had breakfast. I did attempt to do a load of laundry 3 times. Some jackass was hogging our laundry room. Personally, if I have more than 2 loads of laundry to do, I do them on different days our of respect to my fellow tenants. We only have 1 washer and 1 dryer so tying them up for 5 hours isn't very nice.

Anyhow, I spent most of my day reading and watching episode of "Charmed". Netflix is evil. One of the things I read today was a friend's blog. She mentioned zombies in it. I've mentioned zombies in one of my earlier blogs to. So that got me to thinking about tonight's blog topic. And asking myself: What's the draw?

Seems like pop culture loves the supernatural and undead. We had Teen Wolf with Michael J Fox back in the 80s, got our Vampire and Witch fill with Buffy, Angel, Interview with a Vampire and Charmed in the 90s, Witches and Wizards made a roaring come back thanks to Harry Potter and of course the kinds and queens of the undead are back with Twilight. Somewhere alone the way we have some zombies tossed in too. Shaun of the Dead is one of my favourite movies.

The supernatural aren't exactly new. They've been around for a very long time. The opening scene of Shakespeare's Macbeth starts with three witches. They're the ones who tell Macbeth that he will be king. That was written somewhere around 1606. Then we've Mary Shelley who introduced us to her monster, Frankenstein in 1818 and then good ol' Bram Stoker gave us Dracula in 1897. I'm not sure why, but Frankenstein never seems to be quite as popular as the others. Maybe he doesn't have any real street cred. Or maybe it's because Shelley was way ahead of her time and she created something that seems just a little too real. Think about up. Doctors have been able to successfully do a face transplant... so the idea of building someone from spare body parts really isn't all that far fetched.

Our new pals, the zombies, have been part of African and Haitian culture for centuries. It's only been since the late 19th century or so that they really entered our culture and now they're pop culture darlings.

But where do all these things come from? Take Dracula for instance. It's long been believe that the character created by Stoker was based on a real man: Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia who was later known as Vlad the Impaler - guess what he used to do to his victims? Rumour has it that he used to drink the blood of his enemies in order to make him stronger. Eww is all I have to say.

Witches are a newer form of the old Pagan religions which have been around since well, before Christ. It can be argued that several of our holidays are just converted pagan holidays or perhaps that's just a happy coincidence.

Most myths are based on some sort of truth. Something strange happens that scares the shit out of everyone and no one can explain it, so a story is made up to make sense out of the stuff we can't make sense of. The stories get passed along from village to village, generation to generation. Someone eventually writes them down and just like that, a myth becomes part of our culture.

I'm not going to say whether or not I believe in any of it. That's a discussion for another day. But you have to admit, the unknown and the unexplained do make for some very enjoyable entertainment.

Oh, and if we're ever being chased by zombies, I'd totally trip the person beside me, but I'd feel bad about it later.

Sweet dreams!

Sarah

(Had a heck of a time finding a photo to go with this blog...this one is from Hallowe'en 2009)