Originally released as a motion picture by Warner Bros., 1985.

Inclou referències bibliogràfiques i índex.

"They are not men ... they are dead bodies": from cannibal to zombie and back again / Chera Kee -- "We are the mirror of your fears": Haitian identity and zombification / Franck Degoul (translated by Elisabeth M. Lore) -- Undead radio: zombies and the living dead on 1930s and 1940s radio drama / Richard Hand -- The zombie as other: mortality and the monstrous in the post-nuclear age / Kevin Boon -- A dead new world: Richard Matheson and the modern zombie / Deborah Christie -- Nuclear death and radical hope in Dawn of the dead and On the beach / Nick Muntean -- Lucio Fulci and the decaying definition of zombie narratives / Steven Zani and Kevin Meaux -- Imitations of life: zombies and the suburban Gothic / Bernice Murphy -- All dark inside: dehumanization and zombification in postmodern cinema / Sorcha Ni Fhlainn -- Slacker bites back: Shaun of the dead finds new life for deadbeats / Lynn Pifer -- Zombie movies and the "millennial generation" / Peter Dendle -- "Off the page and into your brains!": new millennium zombies and the scourge of hopeful apocalypses / Margo Collins and Elson Bond -- Playing dead: zombies invade performance art, and your neighborhood / Sarah Juliet Lauro.

The zombie is ubiquitous in popular culture: from comic books to video games, to internet applications and homemade films, zombies are all around us. Investigating the zombie from an interdisciplinary perspective, with an emphasis on deep analytical engagement with diverse kinds of texts, Better Off Dead addresses some of the more unlikely venues where zombies are found while providing the reader with a classic overview of the zombie’s folkloric and cinematic history. What has the zombie metaphor meant in the past? Why does it continue to be so prevalent in our culture? Where others have looked at the zombie as an allegory for humanity’s inner machinations or claimed the zombie as capitalist critique, this collection seeks to provide an archaeology of the zombie―tracing its lineage from Haiti, mapping its various cultural transformations, and suggesting the post-humanist direction in which the zombie is ultimately heading. Approaching the zombie from many different points of view, the contributors look across history and across media. Though they represent various theoretical perspectives, the whole makes a cohesive argument: The zombie has not just evolved within narratives; it has evolved in a way that transforms narrative. This collection announces a new post-zombie, even before the boundaries of this rich and mysterious myth have been completely charted.

Contingut en anglès.