Zombie Accessories

I don’t understand zombies, or the appeal of zombies.  I don’t understand how they work.  They’re dead but they want to eat brains?  Clearly, they don’t need food to survive – they’re dead.  Oh, I’m sorry – undead.  I can sort of go along with the idea of a spreading virus causing its victims to act in a zombie-esque way or become delirious and violent.  Personally, when I'm sick in bed with a virus and feeling miserable, I’m more of a saltines and ginger-ale kind of guy.  True, that wouldn’t make for a very exciting movie.  So, to believe in the more traditional idea of a zombie is to believe in magic.  Seems flimsy. 

Now, I know that people don’t really think that these creatures exist in real life and understand that filmmakers and authors use them to represent an idea or concept.  The zombies can be a stand-in for technology (literally eating away at our brains), or the mindless, unquestioning need to be carried along with the crowd, maybe even the fear of an unstoppable, spreading disease.  It could represent any number of things.  Even using them without any message at all can be effective.  It’s easy to get away from a (usually) slow-moving monster, but what if it never stops and always seems to know where you are?  That’s where the freaky appeal comes from.  That’s also what makes Robert Mitchum’s Reverend Powell so terrifying in “The Night Of The Hunter”, and the reason why Steve McQueen frantically tries to escape “The Blob” and warn the town about the unrelenting monster.  Sure, you can get away, but for how long?

As a cinematic device, they can be very useful.  What really bothers me, however, are the zombies who are still wearing their accessories from when they were alive.  Jewelry I’ll give a pass, I suppose those items could remain on a dead person, but hats and glasses?  No.  I wear glasses and I continually have to push them up or they will fall off my face.  I’m kind of guessing they might slide off a dude’s nose while he’s tearing into another human’s body.  Now, in the Walking Dead graphic novel, they will sometimes show a zombie with his glasses askew as a concession that, yes, while killing others, or being killed himself originally, his glasses got jostled.  And the hats, same thing – how do they stay on during a feeding frenzy?  How about a stiff breeze?  They wouldn't.  

I’ll grant you these undead creatures have an appeal, I think I’ve talked myself into that, but zombie accessories, that I cannot abide.