The Zombie as a Mirror of Modern Mass Culture

Zombies were and still are one of the most important symbols of modern mass culture. The zombie discourse originated among African slaves brought to the sugar plantations in the Caribbean. In many ways, the narratives of the “living dead” were a reaction to the crisis phenomena of plantation life. This is evidenced by the rich comparative material presented on many peoples of the world. Such notions of invulnerability after formal death proved to be an important tool of resistance to new conditions caused by external threats. Termed “revitalization,” they were an important element of the Millennialist movements. While initially the sorcerers who could bring themselves back to life were central to these beliefs, in the following period the focus shifted to the victims of various manipulations, transformed into soulless beings. Leaving the environment of their original “habitat,” zombies took on a new life, occupying a firm place in modern mass culture. Having become a symbol of ruthless exploitation of man, relegated to the level of a machine appendage, zombies proved to be one of the most “productive” symbols. They reflected the main trends in the development of society and even began to function as instruments of philosophical reflection. All this allows us to consider zombies as an indicator of altered society, producing new “walking dead”. The metaphors associated with zombies allows us to conclude that the comprehension of zombies makes modern man begin to perceive them constructively, creating a new image, demonstrating the movement towards humanization.

Modernity as Crisis: Goeng Si and Vampires in Hong Kong Cinema (translation into Russian)

This article is a translation of a chapter from the collective monograph Draculas, vampires, and other undead forms: essays on gender, race, and culture, edited by John Edgar Browning and Caroline Joan (Kay) Picart (2009, Scarecrow Press). The author analyzes the question of how Hong Kong cinema responds to the complex situation of Hong Kong's transition from its status as a British territory on loan to a special territory with extended autonomy within the PRC. As a marker pointing to the crisis development of this process, the Chinese people's particular ideas about the so-called “goeng si” (“jumping corpses”) were chosen. These revived corpses move in a peculiar jumping way, due to which they received this name. According to the author, in the images of these creatures, as well as in the cinematic vampires that have become an integral part of films made by Hong Kong studios, all the contradictions of the cultural and political situation in Hong Kong are manifested as in a mirror. Despite the fact that Hong Kong was able to actively oppose the global cinema represented by Hollywood, it had to adjust to the global cinematic trends in which vampires played an important role. All of this led to a certain hybridity of images that combined both Western and Chinese traits.

The New Zombie Apocalypse and Social Crisis in South Korean Cinema (translation into Russian)

The popular culture version of the zombie, developed over the latter half of the twentieth century, made only sporadic appearances in South Korean film, which may in part be attributed to the restrictions on the distribution of American and Japanese films before 1988. Thus the first zombie film Monstrous Corpse (Goeshi 1980, directed by Gang Beom-Gu), was a loose remake of the Spanish-Italian Non si deve profanare il sonno dei morti (1974). Monstrous Corpse was largely forgotten until given a screening by KBS in 2011. Zombies don’t appear again for a quarter of a century. This article examines four zombie films released between 2012 and 2018: “Ambulance”, the fourth film in Horror Stories (2012), a popular horror portmanteau film; Train to Busan (2016) (directed by Yeon Sang-Ho), the first South Korean blockbuster film in the “zombie apocalypse” sub-genre; Seoul Station (2016), an animation prequel to Train to Busan (also directed by Yeon Sang-Ho); and Rampant (2018, directed by Kim Seong-Hun ), a costume drama set in Korea’s Joseon era. Based on a cognitive studies approach, this article examines two conceptual metaphors which underlie these films: the very common metaphor, LIFE IS A JOURNEY, and the endemically Korean metaphor THE NATION IS A FAMILY.

Zombies in the German-Speaking Space. Review of the Collective Monograph “The Undead – Zombie Film Theory” Edited by M. Fürst, F. Krautkrämer and S. Wiemer

This article reviews a collection of scholarly works edited by Michael Fürst, Florian Krautkrämer, and Serjoscha Wiemer “The Undead - Zombie Film Theory” (original title “Untot – Zombie Film Theorie”), Munich, Belleville Publishers, 2010, 301 pages, ISBN 978-3-933510-55-6. The reviewer lists the main ideas discussed by the researchers who have contributed to the monograph, briefly summarizes the content and evaluates the scientific significance of the analyzed edition. Three representative essays of the monograph (by W. Fuhrmann, A. Grilli and M. Benecke) receive a closer inspection, as they demonstrate the scope of ideas and methodological approach characteristic of the volume.

The Hopping Dead. Zombies in the Chinese Culture

The article examines the image of zombies in Chinese culture, the traditional perception of their appearance and internal characteristics. A wide scope of written sources served as the basis of the study: inscriptions on oracle bones, ancient fortune-telling calendars, historical treatises, chronicles and commentaries on chronicles, essays on geography and medicine, fiction of old and modern China, as well as entries and comments from the Chinese blogosphere. The authors examine how the idea of evil spirits (with a body or bodiless ones) first appeared in the religious worldview of the ancient Chinese, and trace its origin to the doctrine of existence of multiple souls in one person. The article also details the formation of the pictorial image of Chinese zombies: animated corpses covered with hair or dressed as government officials, with their arms extended forward, hopping on straight legs unable to bend their knees. As for the functional characteristics of zombies, the authors discuss not only their well-known features (e.g., cannibalism), but also their deep inner connection with water and drought. In conclusion, the authors explore the evolution of zombies in modern urban legends and demonstrate the continuity of traditional demonology that develops into modern narrative. Apart from that, the article contains a number of analogies and comparisons of the Chinese image of zombies with other nations’ mythological tradition.

Embodying Charismatic Affect(If): the Example of Bruce Lee (Translation into Russian)

While the concept of charisma is widely used in the social sciences, its embodied nature is less thoroughly explored and theorised. This paper revisits the key embodied characteristics of Weber's sociology of charisma and re-interprets these using Shilling's (2005, 2013) umbrella notions of the body as a source and location of and means for society as a way of analysing the idea of the charismatic body as a force for social change. It then draws on a range of embodied concepts to illuminate how charisma is significant channel of infra and inter-corporeal affective interaction between “leaders” and their followers. In particular, Freund's (2009) social synaesthesia and bio-agency, Massumi's (2002) perspective of affect and the moving body, Thrift's (2010) charismatic celebrity, allure and glamour, Mellor and Shilling's (1997) sensual solidarities, and Seyfert's (2012) conception of affectif. To develop and illustrate this perspective of the charismatically affective body in action, the life of film star and martial artist Bruce Lee (1940–1973) is utilised.

Uncles’ Generation: Adult Male Fans and Alternative Masculinities in South Korean Popular Music (Translation into Russian)

This article discusses the recent emergence of adult male fans of Korean pop (K-pop) music who openly engage themselves in fan activities typically associated with teenagers (particularly teenage girls) and the significance of their adoration of young female celebrities. The recent appearance of the ‘samchon/uncle fans’ in the K-pop culture discourse marks the first instance since the early 1990s, when teenagers became the primary target audience of South Korea’s entertainment industry, in which male adults reclaimed a significant position as a demographic group of fans. The samchon fans differ from the traditional ajossi (middle-aged, patriarchal men) listeners of adult contemporary music in the kinds of singers and musical genres to which they listen, as well as in their self-identification as fans, participation in fan activities and mass media portrayals. I investigate the implications of the men’s consumption pattern and their representation in South Korean mass media within the contexts of the history of the construction of hegemonic masculinity in South Korea and of recent developments in East Asian popular culture. I also explore possible ways to apply, complicate and question existing theoretical and conceptual frameworks to explain the phenomenon and argue for the possibility of politically potent, alternative masculinities constructed and manifested through the men’s conspicuous consumption of cultural commodities.

Femine Body in the Mass Culture of Iran: between Nudity and Marginalization

The author analyses the problems of visualisation and marginalisation of female corporeality in developments of Iranian political and cultural identity from the early modernisation project of the 19th century and the radical modernisation of the 1920s – 1970s to the Islamic Revolution of 1979, which changed significantly the vectors and trajectories of the visualisation of the female body in public spaces and the discourse of Iranian culture. The author believes that Iran / Persia in the 19th century belonged to the number of Muslim countries that were under stable European influences. Russia and Great Britain became the main sources of cultural changes. Cultural exchange with these countries stimulated changes in Persian identity. The author analyses the features of corporeality in the visual art of Iran from the Qajars to the Islamic revolution and its mutations during the process of radical Islamisation of the social life inspired by it. The author believes that the early modern project of the Qajars was the first attempt to visualise female corporeality and map in the centre of cultural coordinates which in fact simulated European discourse. The identity project of the Pahlavi period became an attempt to transform and adopt Western concepts to the Iranian national canon. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 marginalised the visual and visible forms of female corporeality, presented earlier in public and cultural spaces. The project of Islamisation inspired subordination of the female body, marginalising attempts to visualise in ways Western intellectuals did it. Modern feminine corporeality in Iranian culture develops as a dichotomy of official religious identity and its secular alternative, represented by the “high” cultural segments of the consumer society. The author analyses how and why Western strategies of visualisation of female corporeality coexist with its religious rejection. It is assumed that the Iranian mass culture assimilated Western practices of visualising femininity, although the official cultural discourse continues to reproduce the canon of the body imagined as predominantly religious construct.

Dark Corporeality: Blood, Vampires and Erotics in the British TV Series “Dracula” 2020. Part 1.

The article analyzes the plot tropes of the British mini-series “Dracula”, produced by screenwriters S. Moffat and M. Gatiss, creators of the even more popular TV series “Sherlock”. The new “Dracula”, a mixture of black comedy and body horror, was produced by the BBC and shown on the streaming platform NETFLIX in 2020. The mini-series received the most controversial appraisals from viewers and art critics: from very enthusiastic to sharply negative. The author of this article examines the plot of the series “Dracula” and offers her own version of decoding its meanings. The article sequentially examines the artistic techniques used by famous British screenwriters to create visual and emotional effects, such as black humor, hypertext, queerbaiting, sexual seduction, the “defeated expectancy” trop etc.

«Huge, Disgusting, Corpulent, A-Hundred-Throats»: a Philosophical Study of the Fence and Other Monsters (Review of the book Savchuk V.V. Fence as a Balance of Forces. St. Petersburg: Publishing house Academy of Culture Research, 2021. – 249 p.).

The text is a contemplation review of the new book by V.V. Savchuk. Fence as a balance of power. (St. Petersburg: Publishing House “Academy of Culture Research”, 2021. - 249 p.). The book raises a wide range of problems: the world as an extension of the skin, cultural rhythms of the collective body, principles of building trust and openness, mechanisms of psychological isolation and social distancing, current forms of environmental reflection and art practice. The fence turns out to be one of those limiting things, after the invention of which it is not clear how to think of culture without it. An excursion into the author's thought is given, the logic of the narrative being built is commented to reflect on the embarrassing omnipresence and inevitability of the fence. How did culture end up crucified on the fence? When is the fence not a source of comfort, but of excess discipline and increasing anxiety? What is intimidation fraught with? All these questions are outlined and deeply investigated by the author, while the task of this text is to maximize attention both to the book and to the problem. In other words, start a productive dialogue about fences - which, paradoxically, has hardly been noticed in humanistic research.