After being immersed in a zombie world these past couple of weeks, I started to think a bit about zombies in popular culture, that is outside of movies obviously. Honestly, I never really paid much attention to zombies in television, books, art, music; but then I remembered this Cranberries song from the 90’s

The song is about the Troubles in northern Ireland ( as the band is Irish) that existed from the 60’s to the late 90’s, which was basically a political and military conflict between the country’s Protestants and Christians. The song was one of the band’s most popular, topping the charts, and it’s message resonated with their native Ireland.

I think this music video is very telling of both the influence of zombies into modern popular culture and on the principles that zombies represent. The band decided to name their hit song after the famed ghouls because they portray the militants in Ireland, being told to patrol violently and following orders without regard for humanity. In this way, zombies often come to mind when thinking of people blindly doing things, whether violent, like Nazis, or whether innocently, like following the trends of consumer culture (such as the representation of the mall in Romero’s Dawn of the Dead). I thought this was really interesting to see how zombies in America have evolved from being simply flesh-eating monsters to entire symbols of mindless following.