Joshua Laranang
Professor Lynn
English 100
September 21, 2014
Cultural Fascination with Fantasy
Zombies and vampires are popping up everywhere! They’re all over the place and they keep on coming. Whether they’re on your television, in literature or the next big hit at the box office, there’s no doubt that these creations have dominated popular culture in the recent years. The cultural fascination with vampires, zombies, and other fantasy creatures has increased substantially over the last decade. They continue to hold their place in society and remain very popular because these fantasy creatures help provide us with a healthy way to prepare for reality; their existence gives people something similar in which they can relate their everyday lives to, and it attracts and helps to satisfy our human cravings for power. Fictional fairytales have helped young children learn to face reality and become better people. In “The Child’s Need for Magic” by child psychologist, Bruno Bettelheim, the author argues that fairytales and magic are both needed for the healthy, psychological development of a child to transition into becoming a well-rounded adult. For example, He mentions "in late adolescence, years of belief in magic are called upon to compensate for the person’s having been deprived of it prematurely in childhood.” He explains that young people today seek escape in drugs and black magic because they were prematurely pressed to view reality in an adult way. Since the person did not have a brief time period where they believed in ‘magic’ they have a harder time dealing with reality. If the child grew up with the fairytales then they would have a better understanding of what is right and wrong. They would not need to find other ways to escape the reality of the adult world. Another example is when the child is meeting new and unfamiliar faces; the child will refer back to a certain story when someone who seems unpleasant or threatening at first may become a really helpful friend later on. A child will learn to be prepared for life because they are learning through the prior observations and connections made with fairytales and make-believe stories. Then in a real life during a situation where the child will be meeting others, they will already have the courage to go up and meet new kids at school or on the playground. These fictional stories that children read about or see on television help mold their personalities and develop their thought process as they mature and grow. Children learn how to deal with real life scenarios through these fairytale stories because they are subconsciously mirroring the fictional personalities and creatures they have learned to love. Our culture has become so fascinated with these creatures because people can relate to them. In “My Zombie, Myself: Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead” by Chuck Klosterman, the author compares and contrasts the everyday life of humans to the life of a zombie. His purpose is to prove that society is starting to resemble a zombie apocalypse through their everyday actions and lifestyle. He states, “Every zombie war is an attrition. It’s always a numbers game. And it’s more repetitive than complex” (Klosterman 385). What he means by this is that many people are living in a routine existence day after day without even realizing it. They have become entrapped into a mindless routine every day of their simple lives. People are doing the same tedious tasks without even realizing that they are doing them, exactly like a zombie. He points out that this practice is very similar to how killing zombies is also such a repetitive process. He connects this to his theory of how “ a lot of modern life is exactly like slaughtering zombies”. Things like the Internet, social media and cell phones are effectively consuming our humanity. It is similar to a zombie outbreak infecting us because if we let these everyday tasks consume our lives, then we are letting ourselves become ‘infected’