Zombies, Vampires, and Philosophy

Death is bad, on this view, because it is a state that involves unfulfilled desires that have not been cancelled or replaced. Undeath, on the other hand, is a state in which one’s desires have been replaced. A desire for scotch has been replaced with a desire for blood. A desire for pork roast has been replaced by a desire for raw human flesh. So Undeath does not lead to desire-frustration; rather, it leads to changed desire, which, as we’ve seen, is not necessarily a bad thing

So life is preferable to death, because when one is alive, one’s desires can be satisfied, but when one is dead, one’s desires are necessarily thwarted. Of course, if one desires death, then this argument doesn’t work, but, in such cases, it’s not clear that death is a bad thing. Typically people don’t desire death, unless life is bad (or at minimum, life seems bad).

Undeath is bad because one misses out on whatever rewards one has coming in the afterlife

Since death and Undeath have something in common—they can both be contrasted with being alive

Being Undead is generally regarded as a worse state than being dead

the supreme irony is that zombies have become yet one more desired consumer object—fantastical distractions from the Real that they reflect

For the vampire, knowledge that one is doing evil still remains as a concept, and with this knowledge comes the erotic charge of unheeded guilt

Zombies are purely creatures of the id, dedicated to mindless self-gratification and nothing else. They don’t care that they look like crap. Being a zombie means never having to say you’re sorry—or anything else, for that matter.

There’s something about zombies per se that uniquely excites the contemporary imagination. It seems that these Undead creatures answer to some deeply-felt collective cultural fantasy on a visceral level

Zombie walks are organized activities in which persons dress up like zombies and walk—or lumber—around town. These walks often involve several thousand people. What’s the point, you ask? Basically, it’s just fun to walk around looking like a zombie. Our obsession with zombies drives us so far as to spend time acting like them just for the hell of it