In today's society, teenage girls (including myself!) scream and obsess over the hottie in Twilight, Edward Cullen, and rave over shows such as The Walking Dead and The Vampire Diaries. Every movie theatre in the country is sold out at every midnight premier of Twilight (as a movie theatre employee, I dread these nights), full of people of all ages obsessing and excited over seeing the dreamy vampire and wearwolf-changing characters (excuse me while I go google images of Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner). So, the real question is, why are we so fascinated with vampires and zombies? Why do we think every unexplained event MUST be the "zombie apocalypse"? Well, because, vampires are sexy, that's why. Just kidding. Kind of. The real answer to this question can be explained by the culture and historical context of the society that we live in today.
As we all know, there are many negative and depressing things going on in the world such as 9/11, loss of jobs, economic issues, etc. Not only are there world-wide issues, but everyone has their own personal, emotional issues, unfortunately. Having fictional characters such as vampires and zombies (you mean Edward Cullen isnt real :(? ), serve as a distraction from issues going on that could cause sadness, stress, or anger. Saying that the zombie apocalypse is coming, instead of thinking rationally about the situation, also serves as a distraction from realizing that the issue may actually be a serious one. Although we use vampires and zombies as humor, to rid of our actual feelings, we should not let this completely distract us from the situation.
But, why do we use this distraction at this point in time? Throughout history, vampires and zombies have made appearances in different years, like a fad. For example, styles that were popular back in the 80s are starting to make an appearance in today's fashion. This is just like vampires and zombies- they "come back" after a certain amount of time. The only difference in these fictional characters in their current re-appearance, is that they represent different things. They serve as a representation of different dangers in the world, so depending on the era, they can represent various things. As of what they represent now, that is up to your opinion as to what "danger" in the world means to you.
An example of a distraction that has been used in the past, is the Blackface Minstrelsy. Although this obviously is not the same as zombies or vampires, their purpose serves the same. They were representations of black people/slaves, a purpose of white supremacy. In our class, a girl made a comment about how this is similar to Family Guy in our society today- that they both take sensitive topics and turned them into humor. This relates to vampires and zombies, in the sense that many people find humor in these shows. Also, Blackface was popular during the time of slavery, but was very adaptive, which kept it popular. For example, after the Civil War, blacks were allowed to join in the show, as well as watch in. Vampires and zombies, in comparison, are also very adaptive, keeping them popular. So, why was Blackface Minstrelsy popular during this certain time? Just like vampires and zombies, people needed distraction and humor to rid of the feelings that came with stressful issues, such as slavery. It served as the most popular form of entertainment in the US at this time, and stayed very popular.
So, now when you get made fun of for actually enjoying Twilight, you now have a logical explanation (or you can at least pretend) for why it is "ok" for you to watch it. You're welcome.
This is really nicely written, and interesting. And I think you may be onto something about various pop culture fixations as distractions (distractions that interestingly somehow play out the cultural anxieties people are trying to distract themselves from). This would _almost_ work as a discussion of minstrel shows, except that nobody but black people were really all that stressed about slavery. Remember from the reading, minstrel shows made the whole thing look fun. Which certainly you could view as a distraction from the real misery of the institution, but you didn't quite take this very good angle of thought far enough.
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