The Barbie Zombie Apocalypse

Today a coworker told me about the Barbie Zombie Apocalypse House in Kirkland. I don’t care much for the undead part of Halloween but often use “zombie apocalypse” as an example of how humans might function in a crisis. People are being turned against each other by politicians at a time when we need to be standing united, meaning that if we have an earthquake, EMP, or other emergency, I’m not confident we’ll help each other survive. The book One Second After delves into this psychology.

This burst of spooky creativity showed Baywatch Ken, Disney princesses, and others rushing headlong (or headless) southward though the autumn leaves.

Turn on some accompanying epic movie music, and you’ll surely feel the emotion of these bedraggled souls rushing down towards their hapless prisoner.

Each character showcases a different kind of compulsion, confusion, or torment.

It appears the Mattel posse has already deprived their captive of its flesh. At the time, I laughed because it was so absurd. But the more I’ve talked about it, I wondered if this was a spontaneous parent-child project, or a statement by a deep soul about our society?

There are so many places this commentary could go. Are these wayward folks running towards a false god? An example of group think? GMOs gone wrong? Politically, are we forming gangs to devour our fellow citizens instead of finding common ground and working together? Is this what we are becoming, a species that is regressing instead of progressing, turning on each other instead of building each other up, trading beauty and benevolence for blood and brains?

Part Gulliver’s Travels, part pirate ship… is this what we are doing to our republic right now by allowing ourselves to become more polarized and fractured? Is this what we look like on the inside as we allow various vices in to compensate for pain, emptiness, anxiety? I doubt the artist(s) meant it to be so deep but this whimsical Halloween decoration could stand for so much more.

This Halloween, as we stand surrounded by tragic news and uncertainty, I hope that as a nation we can focus on what’s right, what benefits all of us, what will keep us together. Otherwise, if we don’t allow freedom of speech, freedom of expression, liberty, life… if we can’t let our neighbors speak their minds even when we disagree with them… we will lose our heads.

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We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately. –Benjamin Franklin

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