’Zombie Orientals Ate My Brain!’ Anti-Arab & Anti-Asian Themes in Zombie Film & Fiction

Eric Hamako, Professor of American Ethnic Studies at Shoreline College

Since 2001, zombies have become more popular than ever.  Why?  Zombies tap into historical narratives about Arabs, Muslims, and East Asians.  Symbolizing the racial and socioeconomic “Other,” zombies are infused with Orientalist qualities such as an insatiable yet asexual hunger for the flesh, unintelligibility, implacability, and a hordelike social-structure that threatens to pollute heteronormative White family structures and racial purity.  But, some zombie stories play with and resist these Orientalist ideas – and so can we.