Historically, the fact that zombies originated in Haiti, as an expression of the terror felt by enslaved people towards the idea that they would remain enslaved even after death,makes the fact that nowadays, zombie narratives have become synonymous with "white dude (usually cop or adyancent) fantasy where you get to unleash your violent desires on a mass of homogenous dangerous people who are coming for your kid and wife next" makes it sooooooooooo much worse. Zombies have always been political
ok I looked this up bc I don’t know very much about it and this NPR article has a good excerpt:
Suicide was the slave’s only way to take control over his or her own body … And yet, the fear of becoming a zombie might stop them from doing so … This final rest — in green, leafy, heavenly Africa, with no sugarcane to cut and no master to appease or serve — is unavailable to the zombie. To become a zombie was the slave’s worst nightmare: to be dead and still a slave, an eternal field hand.
which I think reinforces the reading of zombies in american pop culture as these racialised non-persons, although the perspective on them has shifted drastically
hey can you guys not put fucking fandom tags on this post. slavery isn’t inspiration for your “blorbos”
Due to centuries of cultural exchange there are a lot of similarities between the hamster religion and that of the chipmunks, both now being functionally death cults. The root of where they differ is how the two religions view this holy death.
To hamsters, death is an art form, an ever-ascending pillar of the strange and the grotesque. Hamsters seek beauty and uniqueness in death, venerating the most outlandish of the dead as saints: Our Lady of the Plumbing, Saint Tim the Blended, and Saint Ms. Cupcake Who Got Into That Barrel of Degreaser, to name a few. Through death, they connect with their god, whose immense corpse formed the world after choking to death on a stray asteroid. Hamsters will spend weeks planning their deaths and awaiting an opportunity to swan dive off this mortal coil.
Chipmunks follow a warrior’s religion. While hamsters embraced humanity as creators of new and exciting shapes and poisons, chipmunks never forsook their wild ways. Chipmunk culture idealizes the divine struggle: to face insurmountable odds and to die with honor. Only by throwing themselves under the wheels of a moving vehicle can they earn their reincarnation and escape the cruel jaws of the fox-god who awaits them in the underworld. Every chipmunk goes to their death secure in the knowledge that they have faced their fate a million times before and that they will face it a million times again.
Extinction is always accompanied by unanswerable questions. Absence makes mysteries of the simplest details: the Passenger Pigeon’s weight; the Dodo’s tail; the diet of the Thylacine.
We know more about some species’ cause of death than we do about the life that preceded it. When its last refuge was clearcut in the 1940’s, the biggest question about the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker’s disappearance was whether it was, in fact, gone. But another mystery nagged from the depths of the swamp.
Like the Ivory-Bill, the stronghold of the Carolina Parakeet had been old-growth wetland forest—rich with cypress nuts too hard for other birds to crack, and plentiful places to roost and rear young. Though extirpated elsewhere by hunting & the pet trade, the bird should likewise have been expected to persist in the wildness of the Southern swamps. Yet the common parakeets vanished 40 years sooner than did the woodpecker.
A cavity-nester, the Carolina Parakeet made its home not among tree branches, but inside their dead, hollow trunks. The Ivory-Bill was able to drill itself a new nest each year, but a beak made for cracking cypress shells was useless at excavating solid wood, and parakeets were dependent upon whatever hand-me-down hollows they were able to find.
There are other species that live in secondhand nests. And the fingerprints of human influence can be found far beyond the reach of a physical hand.
The honeybee was brought to North America in 1622, and the European imports quickly set off on their own New World conquest, heralds of the incoming tide. In less than 200 years, they were established throughout the lands east of the Mississippi River. Most often, feral swarms would build their buzzing homes inside of hollow trees.
There’s no way to know for sure how large a part the European Honeybee played in the loss of the Carolina Parakeet. But we do know that swarming honeybees have been documented stealing nests from the vulnerable ‘Ua'u bird of Hawaii, leaving limp bodies welted with stings beneath their feathers.
We know, too, the impact that our current honeybee-centric system of agriculture has upon the 4000+ species of bee native to North America, 1 in 4 of which is threatened with extinction. Wild bees require diverse diets and habitat to thrive; they struggle to survive amid our sprawling, bug-sprayed monoculture, much less meet the demands of its pollination.
Without the honeybee, it’s often said, our industrialized foodchain would collapse. But, maybe it isn’t too late to find ways to prevent everythingelse from crumbling at our expense.
The title of this painting is ’The Colonizers’. It is gouache on 18x24" paper, and is #6 in my series about the Carolina Parakeet.
