io9's Charlie Jane Anders (of whom I am a big fan) has a provocative argument up at that blog that the profusion of movies, television shows, and comics about memory loss and zombies is a reflection of America's anxiety about the coming massive wave of Alzheimer's and dementia the country faces. I'm intrigued by this, in part because I like watching for big patterns, and this was one I hadn't noticed.
I've also been fascinated by my own ability to watch zombie movies over the past couple of years. This may sound like solipsism, but I have extremely vivid, upsetting nightmares, and handle horror, especially visceral horror, extremely poorly. I suppose I thought in part that I could watch the lighter brand of zombie movies because I was getting a bit braver (Which is certainly true: I sat through my first big-screen horror movie, Drag Me to Hell, this summer. I laughed. I buried my head in my buddy Alex's shoulder only a couple of times. And I only knocked over my Milk Duds in terror once!) But I also think it's because zombies have become rather cuddly, whether they're the metaphors (and video game opponents) of Shaun of the Dead, the pets of Fido, or the canvass for Woody Harrelson to wreak creative destruction against in Zombieland. Perhaps that's our attempt to humanize something we find disgusting or frightening. But it also minimizes our fear instead of acknowledging--and reflecting it--it. Maybe it's all just one coping mechanism, a psychological and artistic funhouse mirror. But I'd be curious in seeing a analysis: does the takeoff of memory-loss and zombie plotlines correlate with a rise in Alzheimer's and similar diseases? Is there an argument for why they'd be more attributable to medical phenomena than political phenomena? I'm not invested either way: just exercising my brains before someone decides to eat 'em.