Dr. Emily Zarka
I do think that monster history is human history, and part of that is we're going to keep making monsters. And we always have because we always feel like we are living in horrible situations in the worst time.
Nadine J. Cohen
Welcome to "Grave Matters", a lively look at death.
Anthony Levin
All of us at "Grave Matters" would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land we are recording from. We pay our respects to the Cammaraygal people and their elders, past and present. We also acknowledge the traditional owners from all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lands and other
First Nations territories from which you are listening.
Nadine J. Cohen
A warning. This episode contains references to death, graphic violence, and the zombie apocalypse. Please take care.
Anthony Levin
Nadine J. Cohen, hi.
Nadine J. Cohen
Anthony Levin. Bonjour,
Anthony Levin
Nadine. Were you afraid of monsters when you were a kid?
Nadine J. Cohen
I think so. I think monsters, I mean, monsters covers a lot of things, but I don't remember being necessarily afraid of something I thought was a monster. But I was terrified that there was a witch that lived in the toilet. And I think my sister, my older sister probably told me that was true. And
yeah, then for years I would like, pee really quickly and then flush and run away as quickly as possible.
Anthony Levin
I am perplexed by why the witch would live in the toilet. I guess that's what makes it even scarier.
Nadine J. Cohen
Look, I didn't question her truth. She was just doing her thing. Like, I don't even remember what I thought she was gonna do to me. Like, she was just there.
Anthony Levin
Yes, Toilet Witch, okay,
Nadine J. Cohen
Toilet Witch was my nightmare and also my scar punk band. scar punk? That's a new genre, everyone.
Anthony Levin
I'm into it.
Nadine J. Cohen
What about you?
Anthony Levin
Yeah, probably similar to you. I, was not really scared of monsters, but I was scared of something that wasn't quite your typical boogeyman under the bed, in that I was frightened that someone was going to chop my arms off in the night.
Nadine J. Cohen
Interesting.
Anthony Levin
And I have a feeling it's probably connected to all the horror stories I heard as a kid from my grandparents, you know, surviving the Holocaust. But at nighttime, I would often be so frightened that I would make sure my arms were under the covers because I thought if they're under the covers, they
can't get me. And in the summer I would just sweat until I fell asleep because I thought that's the only way to stay safe. I mean, absurd.
Nadine J. Cohen
Yeah, amazing.
Anthony Levin
And, that lasted till I was about 18. Nah, jokes. Jokes.
Anthony Levin
Well, you might think that monsters like zombies and vampires are little more than fodder for your horror filled delight. Think Netflix and Kill. But for centuries they've been used to represent social anxieties, reflect political upheaval, or reinforce burial rites. In today's episode, we dip our
toes into the monstrous world of the undead. We ask what can we learn about dying from creatures who can't? What can the humble revenant or her blood sucking cousin tell us about ourselves and our relationship with death and the afterlife? So Nadine, have you ever been into horror as a genre?
Nadine J. Cohen
No. I'm a massive scaredy cat. Listeners should know that when you and I watched "Twin Peaks" together, which is not horror, it's more creepy, I made you sleep at my house after every episode because I was terrified of the boogeyman. However, I have been known to enjoy an 80s slasher film like
Freddy Krueger or "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" or those types of, you know, tits and fears movies. Cause the special effects are just so bad and it's all so camp that it's funny, not scary.
Anthony Levin
Did you say tits and fears?
Nadine J. Cohen
Tits and fears. I just coined that.
Nadine J. Cohen
Starting a magazine.
Anthony Levin
Yeah, I'm still haunted by the music from "Twin Peaks". And I'm not big into horror like you. I did watch a few films in my teenage years because I had a friend who was allowed to do all sorts of things that we weren't allowed to do and got up to mischief. So we watched "Evil Dead" and "Heart of
Darkness" and other horror comedies. And that was my entree into horror.
Nadine J. Cohen
I'm intrigued that you think most teenagers weren't doing that.
Anthony Levin
Probably they were. I just had a very sheltered upbringing.
Nadine J. Cohen
You did indeed.
Anthony Levin
All right, Nadine, quick quiz.
Anthony Levin
Are you ready?
Anthony Levin
Zombie wedding or vampire funeral?
Nadine J. Cohen
Vampire funeral.
Anthony Levin
Correct. Brad Pitt or Robert Pattinson?
Nadine J. Cohen
Brad Pitt in the movie. Robert Pattinson in press interviews. He's amazing.
Anthony Levin
Okay, nuanced. Would you sacrifice yourself to "Nosferatu" to save humanity?
Anthony Levin
"Fifty Shades of Grey" was originally "Twilight" fanfiction and would be readable if they left the vampires in, true or false.
Nadine J. Cohen
Still false.
Anthony Levin
Correct. Congratulations Nadine. You win this wooden stake that I carved for you at home with my teeth.
Nadine J. Cohen
Uh, thank you? So who's our guest today?
Anthony Levin
Dr. Emily Zarka is a public scholar and digital educator based at Arizona State University who specialises in monsters, the gothic and horror in literature and film. She's a writer and host of the award winning YouTube series "Monstrum" on PBS. She wrote and hosted the award winning documentary "A
History of Zombies" and she has written an Audible original lecture series about serial killers. Her research on monsters as a way to examine human history has been featured in National Geographic, Slate, and The Conversation. Dr. Emily Zarka welcome to "Grave Matters"
Dr. Emily Zarka
Hello. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Anthony Levin
So let's dive in. You're an expert on zombies, vampires, and everything in between. Do you remember the first time you encountered those creatures? Was it in a book or a film or somewhere else?
Dr. Emily Zarka
I do, actually. And I think this is what really started my whole journey into my research with monsters as a whole was the undeads. They have a very special place in my heart, and I can't remember which one I saw first. There are three movies that I saw almost pretty much in succession, and it was
the first "Night of the Living Dead", the original in black and white. I saw "Salem's Lot" and then "Scooby Doo on Zombie Island". So I had kids text, yeah, with zombies. I had, you know, Romero's original film with zombies. And then I had an iconic 80s vampire movie as well. And there was just
something about the undead, both the zombie and the vampire, that just really attracted me to those monsters and kind of opened up my world. And I started diving more and more into spooky stuff and essentially haven't stopped since.
Nadine J. Cohen
Do you remember how old you were at this point? Were you like five watching "Night of the Living Dead"?
Dr. Emily Zarka
No, I want to say I was like eight or nine maybe. So it was a little early. but my mom is a big lover of all things science fiction and horror. And some of my earliest memories were watching, you know, terrible sci fi movies, while she was, like, folding laundry. So I think I just, I wasn't scared
of them, which seems odd, but guess maybe was fortuitous or, you know, premonition in a way.
Anthony Levin
I mean, eight is still pretty young to be watching a film like "Night of the Living Dead".
Dr. Emily Zarka
It is pretty young. And I think that I don't remember any other, like, real horror movies that I saw, like under 10 that stuck out to me in the same way as that did. But I did start reading a lot of, like, spooky literature, so "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" and "Goosebumps", and that kind of a
thing. I was just consuming all this horror content and again, wasn't scaring me. I was more scared of, of real life things or urban legends, of, you know, someone hiding underneath your car. And I think that maybe as a young girl, at least here in the United States, but certainly that happens
elsewhere, that I was, you know, trained from a very early age to, like, be aware of my surroundings. And I was a Girl Scout, so always be prepared. And I was, I feel more concerned about the living human real life threats than the fictional ones.
Nadine J. Cohen
I think that's extremely valid, being a girl who grew up in the world.
Dr. Emily Zarka
Yes. I should also say too that my dad is actually a pathologist and my mom used to be in science as well. So a lot of our dinner conversations, again from a young age that I can remember, we were talking about, you know, my dad, part of his job was doing autopsies at the hospital. And not that he
was, you know, blatantly explaining the things that he was doing in these autopsies, but I think that a lot maybe of, subjects around death and the body were more open in my household, from a scientific standpoint at least, than maybe some other people experienced.
Anthony Levin
Something that I found interesting that I was reading recently was the suggestion that one reason why we like horror as a genre is because it allows us to kind of master our own body and our visceral reaction to things. We know it's not real and we enjoy the pleasure of knowing that it's not real
and still being frightened. Does that resonate for you?
Dr. Emily Zarka
Absolutely. I definitely subscribe to that and it comes into my research and some of the work that I've produced as well. From a non scholarly standpoint, I have been involved in some studies about cooperation and, you know, read a lot of scientific work, not even just in the humanities, but
literally from STEM to thinking about how the people who were most prepared for something like the COVID-19 pandemic were people who actually watched horror movies on a regular basis. And I think that part of that is because, like you said, that they do sort of serve as this not just intellectual,
but emotional safe space where you do have that barrier between the real and the unreal that allows you to both experience fear in a way that still feels safe, but also learning lessons from what you see, at least that was the case for me. I remember I made my first go bag after seeing the movie
Nadine J. Cohen
If you don't know what a "go bag" is, it's a lightweight survival kit which you keep in your car, or at home for emergencies. It contains essential items like food, water, medicine, chargers, and did I say food?
Dr. Emily Zarka
Which was, you know, surreal to watch that movie after 2020, again, because it seemed very fortuitous. And I think that's something that horror and science fiction has always done. It's always kind of pointed a light at some of the darker aspects of humanity. And some of the worst case scenarios.
But most of the time those stories also invite heroes and survivors and monster hunters and people who get to get through the bad thing. And again, I, as a young girl and then a teenager, consuming all of this content, frankly, even now that it made me feel more prepared of, like, what to do if a
bad situation arose. And it serves as what I like to call a training ground for that kind of emotional and even physical response.
Nadine J. Cohen
Yeah, I was just thinking in regards to the incredible meteoric rise of true crime with podcasts, and we're always trying to work out why does everyone love true crime so much. And that would definitely go a ways to explaining that in part or for some people.
Dr. Emily Zarka
I did explore that a little bit. I did a series called "Serial Killers: Real and Imagined", for Audible. And I learned when doing the research for that that women statistically, listen to a lot more true crime. And I do think that people who have felt marginalised in their life in any capacity, at
least in my anecdotal experience, like, turn to horror or crime for, again, I think preparation, for lack of a better way of putting it, and resistance. I should say that too. I do think that a lot of great horror and great undead stories actually come from marginalised communities and marginalised
voices. I mean, that's how zombies began as a whole. And I think over time, that's a pattern that I've seen in my research.
Anthony Levin
So let's talk about zombies and vampires for that matter. Can you give us a bit of a short history of both?
Dr. Emily Zarka
Sure. For me, it's a being that craves human flesh or craves the human body in some capacity and cannot fully control their basic instinct to consume. But what I think is interesting and not as many people know about, is the origin of the zombie is actually a direct result of the transatlantic
slave trade. It comes from a fear where what was worse than literal slavery would be not to have any kind of freedom in death. So the original roots of the zombie were spelled Z-O-M-V-I. And again, those were largely a combination of spiritual practices from the West African diaspora that
combined in Haiti during the transatlantic slave trade. So, of course, these enslaved individuals who felt so disconnected and, you know, or in terrible circumstances, they still managed to find community and connection with one another. And part of that was through the rise of Vodou. So part of the
Vodou religion is the belief that the human body has different components. There's the flesh component, the physical being, and then there are actually two different spiritual elements or parts of the soul. And so a zombie was essentially someone who had one of those parts of their soul stolen by a
malicious practitioner of the religion called a bokor. And they were controlled by this outside individual. So I think what's really interesting about thinking the zombie in that regard is that at the time the zombie originally emerged in Vodou in Haiti, it wasn't, you know, the white slave owners
who were zombifying people. It was literally people in their own community. And I think there was an additional level of fear there. And if your soul was captured, it couldn't go back to your ancestral land. So there was a huge threat there. And the zombie remained relatively contained, I would say,
or like lesser known, that transferred again through transatlantic slave trade to the United States. And then Vodou turned into voodoo and hoodoo, which I should recognize are all legitimate spiritual practices still practice today. So the zombie is something in that regard that's alive and well and
very different from what we see in pop culture.
Anthony Levin
To understand how the zombie entered pop culture in the 20th century, you need to know a bit about what happened to this Caribbean island during the 19th. Haiti first gained independence in 1804 after defeating Napoleon and becoming the world's first black republic. Then in 1915, it was invaded by
the United States. And during the nearly 20 year military occupation which followed, practitioners of Vodou were persecuted and criminalised.
Dr. Emily Zarka
And we start getting a lot of these really derogatory and demeaning reports from both military individuals from the US and journalists that saw these different spiritual practices and made them way more grotesque and violent than they actually were. And that of course translates into film. And so
you get something like the original representation of the zombie on film in "White Zombie". And it's terrifying. And again, they're not attacking people or eating their flesh. That was something that Romero kind of more introduced, but they were these, you know, mindless characters.
Nadine J. Cohen
Emily is referring to George Romero, director of "Night of the Living Dead", the genre defining film from 1968. On the surface, it's about a zombie uprising caused by a virus from space. But on a deeper level, Romero broke new ground with his insatiable flesh eating ghouls and by casting the first
African American actor to play the lead in a horror film. The result is a film which hints at the racial tensions of the time and reflects social anxieties linked to to consumerism and the space race.
Dr. Emily Zarka
Romero, who introduced this idea of like the headshot, the flesh eating, all of those more grotesque elements, and he was influenced by a variety of sources, including larger European traditions of the undead. And then people just latched onto it and we get more zombie movies and zombie video games,
and we see the next real resurgence in zombies in the early 21st century, kind of corresponding actually to terrorist attacks across the globe. In terms of the vampire, that's a little bit harder to pin down. So for me, broadly speaking, looking back through folklore and history, I think that a
vampire is a creature who was once human, but came back from the dead to hurt the living, taking their life force in some way. So this could be physically, emotionally, or spiritually, but usually they do it by consuming blood. And they exist across the world in different forms, at least for
cultures who actually bury their dead, which I think is really interesting. So from my awareness, every culture that buries their dead, has some kind of vampire-esque narrative. We call them vampires today rather than some of the other names that they were known by, again because of kind of pop
culture, but also because of things like gothic literature and, you know, the rise of people going around and actually writing down folklore. In the 19th century, the first vampire film, "Nosferatu", was 1922, and that really solidified Bram Stoker's idea of Dracula and the vampire in a really
physical way. In 1932, I should say, was, "White Zombie". And I think that that's what really made the leap for both zombies and vampires and other kinds of undead beings is that they've always been around. We've always talked about them in oral tradition. They've been written down. We see them on
the stage and we see them in, you know, these folklore collections and in, you know, gothic literature. But having an actor portray that actual undead body, I think made it something scarier and therefore more intriguing to a lot of people. So I think it really was the advent of the film industry
that kind of brought it into popular consumption.
Nadine J. Cohen
So one familiar vampire trope says that you can kill a vampire by staking their heart. I read somewhere that this might come from old, I think, European plague era practices when they exhume the dead and burn their hearts to stop the risk of contagion. Is that true?
Dr. Emily Zarka
It's very possible that at least some of vampire, lore was influenced by real life illness of things like rabies, of, things like porphyria, of, serial murderers who have, you know, mental illness and actually do go out and kill people in incredibly violent ways. So I approach monsters in horror,
including the vampire, that there's some grain of truth to that, at least to some parts of the story. And, sometimes it's how culture decides to interpret that condition or that illness at the time. Because, I mean, we still are in constant debate about what's actually happening with our bodies and
with medical knowledge and that's with all the technology that we have now. So I think that there is something to be said about these early medicine people and scholars and physicians from just regular people trying to understand these, you know, horrific illnesses and plagues and things that were
happening. I think that there's something of trying to explain it with a supernatural element that helps us understand it potentially, but also kind of lets us point the finger at something else rather than, like, the conditions that allow that thing to happen. I do know that something like the
staking of the heart or removal of the head or burning of the body or the use of iron, again, garlic even, are connected in some ways, to different medical conditions, but also to folklore where, you know, these oral stories passed down of, like, this worked before, or, you know, garlic helps mask
this sign of death. And there's like, Fae folk stuff. So that's the thing about monsters is that the hardest part of my job is trying to find that first point where the thing actually emerges. And a lot of the time with these older, iconic monsters, I can't, like, scholars just can't, because
there's so much going on. But that's what honestly keeps me really invigorated. And I think that's what's really interesting also when considering the undead in particular. Because what separates the undead from a lot of other different types of monsters is that they were once regular living humans.
And I think that there's a threat there. But there's also a reflection about how we see humanity in ourselves that, again, continues to survive.
Anthony Levin
So that may explain why stories and folklore about zombies and vampires and other undead creatures are so enduring. Because they're really us, aren't they? I mean, they're, they become a kind of proxy for our fears. I wonder if you can talk a bit about that. About not just how they were used as a
sort of foil or projection for anxieties in the 18th century about, you know, epidemics, but also how they survive even today. When we have modern science, we have epidemiology, we have virology, we understand how disease spreads now and its causes, and yet still these stories persist. Why is that?
Dr. Emily Zarka
I think, again, because the disease or the scientific element is only a small portion of a much larger picture or a web. So thinking back to the 18th century, when stories particularly like the vampire were emerging, that a lot of it too was like foreigner interpretation of things that were
happening. I like to point out that monster hunters were actually a real thing going back hundreds of years, where the government would hear about these alleged attacks from the undead or other types of creatures and would send out officials who were condoned by sometimes the Catholic Church or
other churches and sometimes by government officials to like actually explore. And part of that was like digging up dead bodies. And that's the thing, I think, in part about the undead is that a lot of the stories you get are about people having to return to the grave where they had to like, exhume
the body to see if something was going on with it. And so to have the physicality of that, I think is really interesting. But, a corpse is a corpse. Like we, it looks like us to a degree. So, yeah, I do think that part of it is because it reflects physically our bodies in a way other monsters don't.
And that can't be explained away by science. So even for something like the Basilisk, people would have sworn up and down, like, was actually a thing that existed. You know, it appeared in not just bestiaries, but like in scientific textbooks alongside, you know, creatures we know to be real now.
But then with time and science, we realized that, no, there's not like a chicken that breathes fire out there. Like, that would be cool, but it doesn't exist. Whereas I think it's harder to dismiss stories of the undead because despite, like you're saying, what we know about epidemic, what we know
about medicine, what we know about the body and about viruses and all these other crazy things that can happen, we don't know what happens after we die. And until I think we get the answer to that question, which I don't think we ever will, I don't think that we're ever going to get rid of these
Nadine J. Cohen
I think also we use this to explain the human in the horror, and we can see elements of that. But conversely, the way that we do describe serial killers, you know, we call them a monster because we can't fathom that they are of this world, that they are so many, you know. Jeffrey Dahmer, BTK...
Anthony Levin
Ok. Jeffrey Dahmer was an American serial killer, also known as the Milwaukee Monster, who killed and dismembered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991. BTK refers to serial killer Dennis Rader, known as the BTK Strangler because of the way he bound, tortured and killed his victims.
Nadine J. Cohen
Often not just serial killers, people who do horrific things, terrorists, all of these things, you know, they're so bad as to we have to make them otherworldly.
Dr. Emily Zarka
Absolutely. And I think again, like you're pointing out that I think that in a lot of ways the monstrous body is the other body. And that applies to something like, even like the Haitian Vodou zombie as well, at least in modern interpretation. But again, I've done some research about this and I
think that the idea of serial killer is itself a cultural construct that goes for thousands of years we've been talking about, as you said, these individuals in ways that are monstrous. Because we don't know how to handle human to human violence. Because for a lot of us it seems unfathomable, but
it's something obviously that is very real and that happens more often than we would like to admit. We want to label it as something not human. And with serial murderers in particular, there's a long history of it being like the vampire of this or the werewolf of this. Like, literally not just
saying monster, but giving like monstrous designations in a really specific way that again, just kind of contributes to this cycle that we have.
Anthony Levin
Just to your point about violence, if you look at some of the work by Steven Pinker, for example, he argues that this time now is the most peaceful time in all of human history. But in fact, human history is really just the story of violence towards each other or between different groups of people.
Is there a sense in which we are kind of in denial about that because of the nature of the modern world and that we sort of internalise or maybe externalise that denial into these stories and folklore about monsters, whether they're real monsters, serial killers or fantasy ones.
Dr. Emily Zarka
I think it's a bit of both. Like as you said, I think externally we're projecting these fears and anxieties that we have about what's happening in the world right now. And so I think every time there's a new like technology or a new major like global movement or something that happens, we get some
kind of monstrous construction from that. So I'm thinking a lot about stuff like AI right now in horror and science fiction and you know, like a lot of recent movies and books coming out, kind of looking at that and again, projecting the worst case scenario of things. But I do think internal, again,
it comes down to that really deep and dark question that I think monsters, at least the way we conceptualise them, and a lot of the individuals that we see painted as monstrous, are people who we think like, well, we couldn't do that. Like, I would never do that. Stephen King deals with this a lot,
right. Of like, if your life or the life of someone you cared about was actually on the line and you had these stressor points, what would you do? And again, human history has proven that unfortunately, time and time again some people don't react to those pressure points as, you know, calmly as
others. And I think that is really scary. So, yeah, I think unfortunately, almost always in my interpretation, the real monster is not the actual supernatural, paranormal or monstrous being. It's the way the people around that thing respond to it. It's a lot about how communities or individuals will
just do what we would see as crazy, inexplicable things in very real scenarios. And that again, has happened throughout human history.
Nadine J. Cohen
My mental health professional, long suffering mental health professional, when I get extremely existential in my anxiety and in my depression and, you know, that happens a lot, especially at the moment, she reminds me, she likes to say, like, every generation living at every time has thought they
were living in the worst time. There was always an existential threat. There's, you know, nuclear terrorism, the plague, like, you know, and she kind of tries to ground me in that. Not to say it's not a horrible and violent time, because it is. And there's horrible things happening in the world
perpetrated by, I would say, monsters. But it's not unique in history like we think it is because we're just living it.
Dr. Emily Zarka
Exactly. And like you said, it gets darkly comforting in a way. But that's my larger, you know, vein of studying monsters is I do think that monster history is human history. And part of that is like you're saying we're going to keep making monsters and we always have because we always feel like we
are living in horrible situations in the worst time. I find horror as a whole very comforting because that's the thing that all monster stories are inherently stories and even going back to original folklore, these legends and stories that were being told were being told orally. So literally, people
gathered together. We get a lot of like winter monsters, for instance, right? Because everyone's cold and inside and huddled around a fire and like, what are you going to do to entertain yourself? So we have spun all these stories again, some of them based in part in truth and some of them on pure
speculation and whimsy and human imagination. But I think that there's something about connection there that's really, really interesting. And in a lot of horror movies, it's you know, one of two things I'm thinking you either have like the final person, and it's like one person gets out because of
some kind of knowledge or luck or skill set that they have. But a lot of the time it's because they get aid from someone else or a community of like minded people in a positive way, bands together. And not that there aren't, you know, racist and misogynist and sexist and problematic things that have
happened in horror and still do happen in horror as a genre and a whole. But I do think there's the other side of the coin. And I think there's something really beautiful about that.
Anthony Levin
I mean, monsters bringing people together has to be the kind of good news story of the year, really. You know, just that idea that it's darkly comforting for us to be in the zombie apocalypse together. Yeah, I like that. It also reminded me of that quote that's often attributed to Nietzsche but
sometimes others as well, that civilisation is a thin veneer over burning chaos, which kind of rings true no matter what time you're living in. But maybe as long as we're huddled around the fire together, we'll be okay.
Nadine J. Cohen
The idea that civilisation is a thin veneer has also been attributed to the ancient historian Thucydides and modern filmmaker Werner Herzog, two of history's most cheerful humans. I want to take us in a slightly different direction. Only slightly. I'm not, I've never been a horror person and I don't
have like that many reference points when it comes to zombies, like actually watching zombie films. But I have a lot with vampires. And I was thinking about this last night. I remember seeing "Interview with the Vampire" when I was, you know, young as well, and I'm a big "Buffy" fan and was in high
Anthony Levin
It was at this point in our interview with Emily that we finally reached Nadine's "Quiz Master" topic of choice.
Nadine J. Cohen
Sexy vampires.
Anthony Levin
Or more specifically, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", the hit TV show which aired from 1997 to 2003 and is currently being resurrected for a 2026 reboot.
Nadine J. Cohen
There were so many good things about "Buffy". It's a perfect television show.
Anthony Levin
Sarah Michelle Gellar, for one.
Nadine J. Cohen
Yep, Sarah Michelle Gellar, for one, Joss Whedon really set out to show the good versus evil, that there's evil inside us as much as there's good inside evil. And I think it was such a groundbreaking concept. And he did it through parody and satire, and it was such a clever show. But one thing it
also did, and I guess this was happening already over time. I mean, "Interview with the Vampire" Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt as sexy vampires.
Anthony Levin
Making eyes at each other.
Nadine J. Cohen
Making eyes at each other. Why did vampires become hot and sexualised creatures and zombies are, disgusting?
Dr. Emily Zarka
I literally just did an episode about sexy versus scary vampires and how they can be both and either for "Monstrum" So I'm in my wheelhouse right now. I'm, you know, fresh and ready. So originally, folklore wise, vampires were largely terrifying. They were often decaying or had like exaggerated
features in a way that was scary. They were not sexy. You were terrified of them. Some people would leave entire villages, abandon their homes and their lives to try to get away from these animated corpses. What I really think changed, and not just coming from the romanticist in me, was gothic
literature and the late 18th and then 19th century, where we have not just sort of the vampire knowledge or the undead becoming more popular or more well known, but we get things like the Byronic hero and, you know, who's like, brooding and dangerous and violent, but you can't help but be attracted
to him. And what's really interesting too, that a lot of the early vampire narratives in the 19th century and before that actually in fiction at least, were beautiful, aristocratic, sexual, for lack of a better way of putting it. And I think that since that moment, vampires have always been maybe
not sexy, but sexual, because that's the other thing that we can't really ignore when it's a type of vampire that's using their teeth like a phallic object to penetrate human flesh and then consume something for someone. There's a very obvious sexual narrative there. And a lot of the 19th, century
stories of vampires and even some of the folklore, it wasn't even the neck. It was often like the breast or other parts of the body that, you know, would usually be covered. So you have this idea of peeking behind the curtain through that concept of delight, right? It's not happening to you, so you
can kind of enjoy it in a lot of ways. And then Bram Stoker's "Dracula", I think, changed that slightly. Where there was other stories before that, like, "Carmilla" by Sheridan Le Fanu, which was largely considered to be the first overtly lesbian vampire story, where it's very much this like push
and pull. And ah, I think part of that is because again, of this idea of like mesmerism or hypnotism or allure that vampires have that zombies don't really have, even if the vampire body is more grotesque like it is in Bram Stoker's "Dracula" or "Nosferatu" or Guillermo del Toro's "The Strain" or
quite frankly the most recent "Nosferatu" movie. There's like some element of power and agelessness and that sexual element that I think a lot of people see as sexy and attractive. And I think zombies are different to a degree. And that's not to say there's a whole nother sub genre out there,
because trust me, there is. Of people who really are attracted to zombies.
Anthony Levin
Oh yeah, we'll get into that.
Dr. Emily Zarka
Less versed in that, let's put it that way. But again, I think a lot of the zombie, they're usually more rotting, they're more overtly violent and again, they can't really control it. So I think we have this narrative now, again, since largely the 19th century, but also a little bit before, where
vampires can kind of control their habits and their hunger to a degree, right? To like lure in their prey or they're stalking their victims at night, whereas a modern zombie is going to attack essentially anyone and anything. There are of course, instances where we've had quote unquote, like smart
zombies in modern pop culture that sort of defy that. And I'm thinking of something like "Warm Bodies" too. Right?
Anthony Levin
Emily means the film "Warm Bodies", a paranormal "zomcom" in which a zombie catches feels for a living woman without eating her brains.
Dr. Emily Zarka
Again, it's this idea that you can change the zombie by making like them have feelings again. But I think largely zombies have been conceptualised as more physically grotesque than vampires at least. And like this idea of rotting and tearing into flesh in ways that do not feel erotic.
Anthony Levin
I went down a little bit of a rabbit hole on this stuff because I was just over excited about where we might take this conversation. And I did find a "Fifty Shades of Grey and Zombies" version.
Nadine J. Cohen
Oh yeah, awesome.
Anthony Levin
And there's a whole world out there where, I mean, we know about, you know, "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" and a few other variants of sort of romantic literature that have been, you know, zombified. That's right. They've been enhanced with a zombie. But I did discover that there is this
particular subgenre of erotic fiction with zombies. It's out there.
Nadine J. Cohen
Everything's out there in erotic fiction.
Dr. Emily Zarka
It is. Like again, I'm not super, I know it's there. I'm not saying I'm consuming it a lot. But yeah, I mean, I think across different types of like media, like comics and written literature and fan fiction stuff, of course, but also in erotic videos. Like, it's all there. Yes. There's definitely
this monster element. It's not just zombies and vampires. It's other types of monsters like Cthulhu and dragons. And I have fewer explanations for that. But I think going back to the erotic nature of zombies or whatever, this idea of, like, consumption of another person as being a metaphor for how
intensely you feel for them. I think there could be something with zombies with that a little bit. Again, this idea of breaking barriers and being attracted to the other or to danger. Like an adrenaline junkie type situation. There's this sexuality that's been present forever.
Anthony Levin
Yeah. I mean, zombies need love too, you know?
Dr. Emily Zarka
Zombies need love too.
Nadine J. Cohen
That should be a beautiful song.
Anthony Levin
Mm. I'm m gonna write it.
Bob Dylan impersonator
Lord knows I've kissed cadavers / When I had nothing to do / Zombies need love too.
Anthony Levin
Well, we wanted to ask you a little bit about some of the creatures you've mentioned from other cultures. So, you know, you are more or less the queen of the undead. So we want to hear from you. What are some memorable creatures from around the world?
Dr. Emily Zarka
I'm honoured. I want to put that on, like, a business card now. Thank you.
Nadine J. Cohen
You should.
Dr. Emily Zarka
I think that there are three that stick out to me in particular. The Draugr which comes from larger Nordic tradition. They have different types of undead and revenants in that tradition. But the Draugr was, like, didn't necessarily do anything bad. Like, they could harm you, but they were most known
for, like, roof stomping. Like, they would just jump on your roof at night and kind of irritate you. And I thought, that's really funny and interesting in a lot of ways. And there's, so there's that tradition. And then I'm a big fan of one that I learned, called the Vrykolakas which is specific to
Greece. And so this is one of those really grotesque type vampires. So it was an undead, decomposing corpse with a black and swollen body, but still had, like, teeth and fingernails and all of that. And they were seen as a threat to the entire village. This was something that people very strongly
believed in and that anyone who died by suicide, murder, plague, or curse could become a Vrykolakas which obviously is a huge group. But a lot of the time they were caused when someone didn't bury them with proper religious rites Which is really interesting, too, because I think there's a larger
lesson there. And then this one's not technically undead. The Jiangshi or Chongxi, which is from the Qin Dynasty. They wear traditional robes. They're technically ghosts. They have long nails and teeth, and they're corpses that literally hop with outstretched arms. their name means, like, stiff or
rigid corpse. And there's a really interesting tradition there, too, about Chinese burial practices and the importance of being buried back in, like, ancestral lands. So people were employed to literally carry these people on big bamboo sticks. It would look like they were jumping. And I count that
as one of my favorite as the undead, even though I know it's not technically undead. Because when China started making horror movies and vampire movies in particular, with the influence of the Western vampire, the Chongxi became more of an undead type vampire. And they're just, like, campy and
mechanical and strange, and again, they drain your life force, not your blood. And there's a lot of, like, kung fu movies associated with them.
Nadine J. Cohen
Now, if you're a fan of Hong Kong new wave cinema, and quite frankly, who isn't, you might know some of the films which Emily alludes to. In the 80s and 90s, the figure of the Jiangshi was popularised by a string of horror movies which blended kung fu and comedy to show the clash between capitalism
and tradition. But by 1997, when Great Britain handed Hong Kong back to China, Hong Kong's movie industry was in decline. And with that, our favorite half vampire, half zombie sadly disappeared from the silver screen.
Dr. Emily Zarka
I like something that's both really rooted in cultural tradition and, like, old history that people have kind of taken in fun and unexpected directions. I guess I'm always attracted to, with monsters, not just the undead. Like, the weirder it is, the more I want to know why those weirdnesses are
there. I have to say it. I say this all the time. A lot of the explanations or causes or the way those different monsters are approached stems a lot from things like colonialism, from sexism, from racism. And I think that that's something that is definitely a dark part of monster fiction, as I even
mentioned with the zombie, right? But I think that we need to acknowledge that if we want to first of all, better understand the past, but hopefully understand ourselves and I optimistically think, build better futures. I'm not saying that zombie movies are going to change the world necessarily, but
I do think that if we respect the traditions and the stories where these things come from and are a little bit more aware of their history, I think that maybe would hopefully make us a little bit more critical of the monstrous identities presented to us, both in fiction and in nonfiction.
Nadine J. Cohen
How has your research and your extensive viewing and reading and immersion in this world, how has it helped you to understand and face your mortality?
Dr. Emily Zarka
I was afraid of vampires after I saw "Salem's Lot" for a hot second. Just like the scratching on the wall and more also the idea of like an intruder than anything else. So I think that seeing and consuming all this content and hearing about these deaths and you know, seeing some of the things on
screen and graphic novels, I've consumed so much of it, it doesn't scare me as much maybe as it did when even I was younger. And again, philosophically thinking about these things, as I mentioned, we don't know what happens after death. And I'm not saying that I want to come back as an undead
corpse, but I do think the more we are forced to confront death, and I think through the undead specifically with the actual physical body that so closely represents ours, we build up not necessarily an immunity to it, although I think that that's possible, but more of an understanding of again,
education. So as I just mentioned, a lot of these undead stories are if in general you respect other people around you and you leave behind enough loved ones that are, you know, wanting to take care of you after death, that seems to be only a largely positive thing. So I think I try to foster a lot
of my relationships, not that I, that I want them to help me not become undead, that, you know, there's going to be enough people around me when that time comes that, you know, I'll get whatever, you know, practices for end of life that I want. And I think that again, what monsters do and the undead
do because of that human corporeality is they force us kind of have those conversations. So something even like the Vrykolakas coming from the Greek tradition, the worst thing you could do would be to cremate the body. It's like not done in traditional Orthodox religion. And so my husband is Greek
and even he is like, I can't do it. So even just having conversations that about your loved ones deaths, in a lot of ways that at least I've had after watching zombie movies or vampire movies or having these discussions has felt really healthy.
Anthony Levin
Surely no one is better prepared for the zombie apocalypse than you. So what is in your zombie go bag?
Dr. Emily Zarka
Oh my gosh, my zombie go bag. I keep talking about now especially having a kid and I think this is worth mentioning is when you're not just in your own household and you don't, not just individual, like what were the things that you needed? If that's like special food, special medicine. But
personally, the one I keep in like my day to day back of car go bag. I do have a copy of "The Zombie Survival Guide" by Max Brooks. There are actually some really practical things in there about like how to make traps and like water. So some of it's ridiculous, but some of it is actually very
helpful. And I know that there are better books out there, but that was kind of one of the things that got me interested in very low level prepping. So I feel like I have to put it in there. I also have emergency water bars. I have water purification tablets and also ones to make them not taste as
bad. I have a lifestraw, of course. I have a lighter, but more importantly, waterproof matches and flint which I do know how to use
Nadine J. Cohen
Just quickly: A lifestraw is a portable filter which allows you to drink with abandon from any muddy puddle. Well, nearly. I'm still getting my head around this whole prepping thing.
Dr. Emily Zarka
I have expired medications, but I also have first aid stuff. I have duct tape. Duct tape is paramount.
Nadine J. Cohen
This is amazing.
Dr. Emily Zarka
I have an extra pair of glasses because I do have, you know, vision problems. And then practical things too, like emergency blankets. I have a sleeping bag that goes to a certain temperature of cold, which is ironic because it's the desert, but it does get cold here. What else do I have...?
Nadine J. Cohen
Sounds like a zombie go van.
Dr. Emily Zarka
It's heavy. You have to, that's the thing.
Anthony Levin
That is a big duffel bag.
Dr. Emily Zarka
I think the two most surprising things though, I would have in my go bag that again, you have to be able to carry it by yourself, would be miniature bottles of alcohol for sterilisation, but for bartering. And I also have cigarettes. And then I have Taco Bell hot sauce because God knows what you're
going to be eating. And if you can put some seasoning on it, maybe that's going to help.
Anthony Levin
That is a really interesting inclusion. Nadine probably doesn't know this about me, but I am a bit of a closet prepper.
Dr. Emily Zarka
Love it.
Nadine J. Cohen
Shocking. Shocking. Knowing everything about you. Deeply shocked.
Anthony Levin
Yeah. So I do have a go bag at home myself. And something my friends like to tease me about is that, the bag's just for me. It's not for my wife and child, which is not true. I want to put it on the record. It's not true. There are enough lollies in there for all of us. But one of the things, that
I, that I sort of think about is, yeah, like what perishables or non perishables you put in there. Because obviously you've got to go back to your go bag every few years to make sure that the expired things are replaced just in case the apocalypse is deferred, right? Hot sauce is not one, but I'm
going to think about that now.
Nadine J. Cohen
I travel with hot sauce.
Anthony Levin
Wait a minute. What did Nadine just say?
Nadine J. Cohen
I travel with hot sauce.
Dr. Emily Zarka
It's lightweight, it's tiny. The Taco Bell packets, ketchup. It doesn't take up a lot of space. That's great. I do have emergency ration bars that taste like shortbread and are delicious. I think I have. God, what else do I have? I don't actually have a lot of food, but I do have a can opener.
Because I think that at least my approach to prepping is this is like my stage zero. Like, this is gonna get me to somewhere else where I can prep better or get me back to my house where I'm a little more prepped.
Anthony Levin
Yeah, you need to go somewhere where you can loot cans of food and, know how to open them. I need to know why you travel with hot sauce.
Nadine J. Cohen
Not always, but in certain places, the food tastes terrible, and so I put hot sauce on it, and it's better.
Anthony Levin
So you are kindred.
Nadine J. Cohen
I don't have a zombie go bag, but I do have hot sauce in my bag. What is it? It's the Beyonce song, "Reformation". I got hot sauce in my bag. It's true. She knows, Beyonce knows. Beyonce is prepared.
Dr. Emily Zarka
Yeah, I do have, I've heard of people - That's funny that you said, like, lollies, because it's about comfort items too. So I know people who have coffee just because they're, like, addicted to coffee. And what's the last thing you want to be dealing with if there's actually an apocalypse? Is like a
pounding headache and need for coffee. So I think that that personal go bag just got to kind of get you through the worst part until you can figure something out. And in terms of it's not for, like, your loved ones or other household members. I abide by the airplane emergency philosophy where you've
got to put your mask on first to assist the others around you. So I would make it happen to make sure my husband and son are safe.
Anthony Levin
That's great. I mean, there really can't be any judgment about the contents of people's go bags. Okay. Let's not judge.
Nadine J. Cohen
Can't there though?
Anthony Levin
Okay, what is your all time favourite book, TV show or movie about undead monsters.
Nadine J. Cohen
Or all three.
Dr. Emily Zarka
All time. Oh, my gosh. I think it would be a tie for me. Not necessarily the best of all time, but the ones that have the most meaning to me, would be "Night of the Living Dead", because, again, that was, like, my introduction. And then I'm going to throw a weird one out there. It's going to be
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Christabel", which is actually a poem, an unfinished poem from the Romantic period. And that was the first vampire I identified in literature that wasn't specifically called a vampire and kind of got me on my journey to my PhD and to where I am now. So it'd have to be
those two. But again, I love "Buffy", "28 Days later also is foundational. "The Train to Busan" is a zombie movie, is fantastic. And there's some really good comics and stuff out there, too. So I can make a giant list for you, but if I had to choose, I guess it'd be "Night of the Living Dead". And
Nadine J. Cohen
What would you like your family to say about you at your funeral, obviously, before you rise again from the dead?
Dr. Emily Zarka
Yeah, hopefully not, though, if I've done everything right. Oh, gosh, that's hard. So I definitely would want people to say that I made them think differently about the world in hopefully a positive way, and that I was an innovative person, in my field. I've come up with a lot of barriers in the
work that I do, so having that recognition of actually being impactful would definitely be important. But I think what's interesting about the work that I do, much like, you know, any creator or artist who leaves behind something physical or tangible, I do have, you know, this litany of things that
I've done and produced. So I think I'm less concerned maybe, about what people are going to say at my funeral. But how can future generations look back and see my work is somehow important?
Anthony Levin
Well, thank you so much for spending an hour talking to us about the undead. It's been delightful.
Dr. Emily Zarka
It has been delightful. Anytime. Thank you so much for having me.
Anthony Levin
So, Nadine, apart from hot sauce and the Beyonce Knowles survival guide, what else is in your end of times go bag?
Nadine J. Cohen
I mean, what else is there? hairbrush, makeup. protein balls. Potentially, life straw. I'm into that. Everything she said. Lighters, flints. All the things.
Anthony Levin
All the things.
Nadine J. Cohen
Chargers, AirPods, books. It's a big, it's going to be a big bag.
Anthony Levin
Yeah, you're going to -
Nadine J. Cohen
And underwear.
Anthony Levin
Underwear, yeah. Important inclusion.
Nadine J. Cohen
Yeah. And deodorant. I can keep going so you just need to cut me off soon because I'm just going to keep throwing things in the bag.
Anthony Levin
All right. It's a Mary Poppins survival bag.
Nadine J. Cohen
It is a Mary Poppins survival bag. And you don't, You haven't seen me travel. How about you?
Anthony Levin
Peptides, crossbow, fake id.
Anthony Levin
All the essentials. Yeah, I can be on the run for 50, 60 days with those, you know?
Nadine J. Cohen
That's it. Those three things.
Anthony Levin
Those three things.
Nadine J. Cohen
That's good.
Anthony Levin
Just Bear Grylls some road meat.
Nadine J. Cohen
I'll just be running behind you with like three cases of like, my stuff.
Anthony Levin
Like the actual things I need, or your things. Yeah, the things you need. And maybe some of the things I should actually have.
Anthony Levin
Yeah, look, I, fancy myself a bit of a, you know, a Bear Grylls kind of character. I can get out there. I can get amongst it. I can survive for maybe, maybe 30 minutes.
Nadine J. Cohen
I was gonna say the sheltering didn't stop yet.
Anthony Levin
No, no, no, it didn't. Okay, well, thanks again to our well prepped guest, Dr. Emily Zarka. In our next episode, we talk to forensic cleaner Gabrielle Simpson about crime scenes, hoarding and how to solve a problem like cat urine.
Gabrielle Simpson
You might end up with a spray of body fluid and tissue that could be a metre square. Or you could have every single thing in that room. Everything.
Nadine J. Cohen
If this episode has raised issues for you and you'd like to seek mental health support, you can contact Beyond Blue on 1300 22 46 36 or visit beyondblue.org au. Also, Embrace Multicultural Mental Health supports people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Visit
embracementalhealth.org.au. For 24/7 crisis support call Lifeline on 13 11 14. Or in an emergency, please call 000.
Anthony Levin
"Grave Matters" is an SBS podcast written and hosted by me, Anthony Levin, Nadine J. Cohen and produced by Jeremy Wilmot. The SBS team is Joel Supple, Max Gosford, Bernadette Phương Nam Nguyễn and Philip Soliman. If you'd like to get in touch, email audio@sbs.com.au. Follow and review us wherever
