I always wondered at the popularity of zombies in popular fiction. They have no skill and no intelligence, and they move very slowly, their only truly horrifying trait (other than their dire need of cosmetics) is that they won’t stop so long as they can move even a single digit in your direction. It requires no intelligence to stop them, just lots of firepower and the willingness to use it.

(Hm… mindless hordes coming after you relentlessly, with big guns and endless ammunition your only defense, and intelligence completely unnecessary… that seems to be the way that today’s Republican voters view things. 😉 Or at least how the party thinks they do. But I digress.)

Anyway, the point to this post is to highlight this article. To give you the executive summary, here’s a quote from near the end:

Zombies may well be popular today because they speak to a similar feeling of powerlessness shared by many members of our society. […] The key question is why, like today’s portrayal of zombies, are we unwilling to take a stand against the powers-that-be and overwhelmed by a lack of political interest? It seems the time is right to reclaim the original zombie concept of a controlling sorcerer but one that can successfully be resisted. Today’s zombie phenomenon is a really good opportunity to get people thinking about who may be wishing to control our brains and what resources we have to resist.

In the past, zombies wandered around consuming brains, but today’s zombies are encouraged to wander around consuming the latest, heavily advertised, branded goods.

He just might be on to something.