On Zombies and Vampires

I subscribe to Time Magazine. When I was in high school, it was the one magazine I read religiously (let's forget I ever got Seventeen, shall we?). Leading up the last fall's election, I decided I wanted to be in the loop again, and took to ever so adult-feeling step of purchasing my first ever magazine subscription. And now every week, I get a dose of generally well-written commentary on everything from politics and economy to...zombies? Yes, dear readers, zombies are making a comeback! As the article points out, "for the past few years, vampires have been the It monster," and mentions Twilight as an example (but not Buffy or any other, better constructed vampire stories). The author, Lev Grossman, says "It's not easy to put your finger on what's appealing about zombies. [Vampires] are good looking and sophisticated and well dressed...You can imagine wanting to be a vampire, or at least wanting to sleep with one." I'm not ashamed to admit harboring some latent desire to live forever and change into a bat, although I like sunlight a little too much to make that dream a reality. The sexiness often inherent in vampire mythology, despite their brutal and predatory natures (or perhaps because of them), just really doesn't apply to zombies. As Grossman astutely points out, "Nobody wants to sleep with zombies."
He then proceeds with a lengthy and rather labored discussion of zombie-popularity as somehow representative of various themes in today's society. In fact, this discussion is pretty creative! And obviously tongue in cheek, of course. But the zombie as personifying American resilience ("You can cut off his limbs and he'll keep on coming atcha"), or as "biodegradable, locally sourced and sustainable" avoids answering the tantalizing question the author brings up in passing. If vampires are, as he claims, obviously appealing, what is it about zombies that piques our interest? As I'm sure you guessed, dear reader, I have a theory. I think that the appeal of vampires is personal and individual. We dream of placing ourselves within the story of someone who can see the changing ages of humanity, of someone with nearly infinite power and no need to fear the (metaphorical or actual) darkness. Or we dream of being a lowly human who is stronger even than those monsters, the lone hunter who can single-handedly save humanity. With zombies, though, individual acts of heroism exist, but at least as I see it, are played down in comparison. Sure, if you can kill 100 zombies with a single machete, I want you in my mall and on my side. I would consider you a hero, etc etc. But while the vampire myth's appeal lies in the sudden conferral of super-human abilities on the few, the zombie myth in fact removes normal human abilities from the many. We don't identify with the monsters, but with the ordinary people who are suddenly their own last, best hopes. The zombie apocalypse empowers us to imagine how we ourselves would perform under the ultimate pressure. Faced with success or extinction, we see in the thought experiments of zombie stories how humanity, and by extension our individual selves, thrive or perish by fighting and fleeing, allying and abandoning. In this way, it's almost unfair to compare vampires and zombies, since zombies are often just a vehicle for the personal and societal commentary of any good post-apocalyptic tale. Still, I've got to agree with Grossman on the point that zombies are pretty prevalent these days. I say, bring 'em on! Just let me go get my machete.