Everything's All You Can Eat for Zombies

A horde of them at the doors to the department store, moaning, gnashing their teeth, pounding with enraged fists. More of them, attracted by the noise, shuffle up and join the throng. The glass starts to crack, metal door frames bending, until finally, with the a crash, they’re through. The Christmas shopping melee has begun. Hungry shoppers, looking for the best deals.
There’s this idea that the zombie is a good symbol for consumerism, but I just don’t buy it (pun intended). I don’t agree with this idea of a mindless, monstrous crowd eating up everything before them with no more motivation than the simple need to feed on pretty plastic products, like the ones they read about in the magazines and online.

It seems to me to be too elitist an attitude. Zombieness is the constant mindless eating, but it’s also the infectious nature of a zombie bite, and the irreversible state of being a zombie. In order for me to believe these vicious consumers are zombie-like, I have to believe that it’s catching, that that catching it against the will of the new consumer means he’ll never not be able to spend all of is money as fast as possible.

Zombie stories are about survival, essentially, and for me to cotton to this idea of zombie-like consumerism, I have to agree that there are consumerism survivors, fighting each other over the last few precious resources. What are those supposed to be: art, culture, education? What are the elites spending their money on if not iPads and Tickle Me Elmos? Am I to understand that so long as consumers are going to Best Buy, they’re not creating the culture the elites want to wallow in, and this is why those resources are scarce? That sounds like slavery.

Calling some aspect of society zombie-like is to do nothing more than to dehumanize them. To other them, to establish an sense of self predicated on the idea that there are those who are different. It’s a bad use of Derrida, if you ask me. Unless we’re talking about Keeping Up With the Joneses, or Conspicuous Consumption, we’re not talking about people who identify with buying, or with what they buy.

Zombie is not an identity, it’s a label, and its abuse by those who turn up their nose at wanting the latest Nikes gives zombiedom a bad name. So stop it. If you want to feel superior to people who’d rather go to Starbucks than Cat Fiend’s Koffee Shoppe, just call yourself a hipster and be done with it.