Brains for dinner, Brains for lunch, Brains
for breakfast, Brains for brunch
Brains at every single meal. Why can't we have some guts?
--“Braineaters,” The Misfits
Zombie lovers know that
George Romero’s ghouls weren’t brain-crazed. They didn’t moan “BRAAIINS” or
prefer the cerebellum to the liver the way humans prefer white to dark meat.
Romero’s living dead were cannibals, true, but they ate everything. In fact, they
seemed to particularly enjoy the glistening entrails of their friends and
families.
It wasn’t until 1985’s Return of the Living Dead that zombies
began to lust specifically for brains. More importantly, they began to express
that desire vocally. That’s almost twenty years after Night of the Living Dead—that’s a generation.
I was aware of this distinction
when I wrote Brains, yet I still
decided to make the acquisition and consumption of brains the main focus for my
zombies. Heck, I even made it the title of the book. That’s how dedicated I am
to the idea of brains.
There are a lot of
reasons for this. First, a zombie groaning for grey matter is just funny—especially
if it’s a zom-com, which Brains is.
End of story.
Second, the cliché of
zombies and their love of brains has moved beyond the Return series. It’s a part of our shared culture now, part of our common
vocabulary. It’s in newspaper comic strips and on t-shirts. It’s the punch line
to one of my favorite jokes: Why did the zombie cross the road? BRAAINS! When someone
murmurs “brains” at a party and lurches for the punch bowl, the people standing
around laugh—could be at or with the person who said it, but it doesn’t matter.
Everyone gets it.
But mainly, I went with
braineaters because brains are a metaphor. They stand for everything the living
and the living dead want and can’t achieve. Brains are the unattainable,
Brains represent
yearning and striving. The accumulation of brains is the American dream, the
happiness we were promised in the fifties—the whole house, lawn, spouse, and
kids set-up. But, of course, everyone was miserable in the suburbs, thank
goodness, because then we got the sixties.
But brains are the
impossible joy we all feel entitled to. We catch glimpses of it at times. We
try to grab hold of it with our fingers, but it’s like a moth’s wings: turns to
dust when you touch it. You might be content for a few hours or even days—but
something else will come along. A better lover, a bigger television, the chance
to remake every Academy Award-winning movie in 3-D!
As for me, I ate brains
once at a taco stand in
Bon appétit,
Robin Becker, author of BRAINS
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