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102-445: Zombie apocalypse is a subgenre of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction in which society collapses due to overwhelming swarms of zombies . Typically only a few individuals or small bands of human survivors are left living. In some versions, the reason the dead rise and attack humans is unknown, in others, a parasite or infection is the cause, framing events much like a plague. Some stories have every corpse zombify, regardless of

204-469: A "group mind" or "mob behavior" was put forward by the French social psychologists Gabriel Tarde and Gustave Le Bon . Sheeple ( / ˈ ʃ iː p əl / ; a portmanteau of "sheep" and "people") is a derogatory term that highlights the passive herd behavior of people easily controlled by a governing power or market fads which likens them to sheep , a herd animal that is "easily" led about. The term

306-706: A front seat when it comes to social marketing , paving the way for campaigns such as Earth Day , and the variety of anti-smoking and anti-obesity campaigns seen in every country. Within cultures and communities, marketers must aim to influence opinion leaders who in turn influence each other, as it is the herd mentality of any group of people that ensures a social campaign's success. A campaign run by Som la Pera in Spain to combat teenage obesity found that campaigns run in schools are more effective due to influence of teachers and peers, and students' high visibility, and their interaction with one another. Opinion leaders in schools created

408-444: A lone survivor named Robert Neville waging a war against a human population transformed into vampires . The novel has been adapted into several screenplays, including The Last Man on Earth (1964), starring Vincent Price , The Omega Man (1971), starring Charlton Heston and I Am Legend (2007) starring Will Smith . George A. Romero took inspiration from Matheson and developed the idea with his apocalyptic feature Night of

510-545: A long-running debate over whether the film could be categorised within the genre of zombie apocalypse. This was based on the technicality that the people infected with rage in the film are still alive rather than returning from the grave. The debate was further fuelled by the director Danny Boyle choosing not to label the film as a zombie movie. Screenwriter Alex Garland finally settled the matter by stating, "Whatever technical discrepancies may or may not exist, they're pretty much zombies". While aggressive quarantine may contain

612-451: A market context can become informed through the price in such a way that private information is aggregated correctly and efficiently. Subsequent work has shown that markets may systematically overweight public information; it has also studied the role of strategic trading as an obstacle to efficient information aggregation. Herd behavior is often a useful tool in marketing and, if used properly, can lead to increases in sales and changes to

714-557: A mere sum of separate individuals are made into a 'society' ". Other social scientists explored behaviors related to herding, such as Sigmund Freud (crowd psychology), Carl Jung (collective unconscious), Everett Dean Martin (Behavior of Crowds) and Gustave Le Bon (the popular mind). Swarm theory observed in non-human societies is a related concept and is being explored as it occurs in human society. Scottish journalist Charles Mackay identifies multiple facets of herd behaviour in his 1841 work, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and

816-476: A metaphor for various contemporary fears, such as global contagion, the breakdown of society, and the end of the world. It has repeatedly been referenced in the media and inspired various fan activities such as zombie walks , making it a dominant genre in popular culture . The myth of the zombie originated in Haiti in the 17th and 18th centuries when African slaves were brought in to work on sugar plantations under

918-632: A number of subgenres, for example by setting or subject, or a distinctive national style, for example in the Indian Bollywood musical. A music genre is a conventional category that identifies pieces of music as belonging to a shared tradition or set of conventions. It is to be distinguished from musical form and musical style , although in practice these terms are sometimes used interchangeably. There are numerous genres in Western classical music and popular music , as well as musical theatre and

1020-411: A particular culture or community. The work of Georg Lukács also touches on the nature of literary genres , appearing separately but around the same time (1920s–1930s) as Bakhtin. Norman Fairclough has a similar concept of genre that emphasizes the social context of the text: Genres are "different ways of (inter)acting discoursally" (Fairclough, 2003: 26). A text's genre may be determined by its: In

1122-616: A place to eat. They see that restaurant A has customers while B is empty, and choose A on the assumption that having customers makes it the better choice. Because other passersby do the same thing into the evening, restaurant A does more business that night than B. This phenomenon is also referred as an information cascade . Crowds that gather on behalf of a grievance can involve herding behavior that turns violent, particularly when confronted by an opposing ethnic or racial group. The Los Angeles riots of 1992 , New York Draft Riots and Tulsa Race Riot are notorious in U.S. history. The idea of

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1224-526: A platform for opinion leaders to take the stage and influence purchase decisions, and recommendations from peers and evidence of positive online experience all serve to help consumers make purchasing decisions. Gunawan and Huarng's 2015 study concluded that social influence is essential in framing attitudes towards brands, which in turn leads to purchase intention. Influencers form norms which their peers are found to follow, and targeting extroverted personalities increases chances of purchase even further. This

1326-481: A review of the film for the Chicago Sun-Times , in which he commented on the reaction of the young audience: "I don't think the younger kids really knew what hit them. They'd seen horror movies before, but this was something else. This was ghouls eating people—you could actually see what they were eating. This was little girls killing their mothers. This was being set on fire. Worst of all, nobody got out alive—even

1428-419: A room with two equal and equidistant exits, a majority will favor one exit while the minority will favor the other. Possible mechanisms for this behavior include Hamilton 's selfish herd theory , neighbor copying, or the byproduct of communication by social animals or runaway positive feedback. Characteristics of escape panic include: The philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche were among

1530-539: A speculative attack and it will tend to cause moderate inflation in the short term. When consumers realize that the inflation of needed commodities is increasing, they will begin to stockpile and hoard goods, which will accelerate the rate of inflation even faster. This will ultimately crash the currency and likely lead to civil unrest . Large stock market trends often begin and end with periods of frenzied buying (bubbles) or selling (crashes). Many observers cite these episodes as clear examples of herding behavior that

1632-481: A story, or allegorical personifications. They usually deal with subjects drawn from "everyday life". These are distinguished from staffage : incidental figures in what is primarily a landscape or architectural painting. "Genre" is also be used to refer to specialized types of art such as still-life , landscapes, marine paintings and animal paintings, or groups of artworks with other particular features in terms of subject-matter, style or iconography . The concept of

1734-531: A structured classification system of genre, as opposed to a more contemporary rhetorical model of genre. The basic genres of film can be regarded as drama, in the feature film and most cartoons , and documentary . Most dramatic feature films, especially from Hollywood fall fairly comfortably into one of a long list of film genres such as the Western , war film , horror film , romantic comedy film , musical , crime film , and many others. Many of these genres have

1836-432: A swarm of flesh-eating zombies, but almost everyone thinks they can handle it, and that's exactly what makes these movies so entertaining." In 2018, The Independent reported the findings of a survey conducted by NOW TV , which found that almost 25% of British people had a plan to survive a zombie apocalypse. The survey also found that one in six had considered putting in place a survival kit. Most respondents believed that

1938-510: A viable mode. He then uses two additional criteria to distinguish the system. The first of the criteria is the object to be imitated, whether superior or inferior. The second criterion is the medium of presentation: words, gestures, or verse. Essentially, the three categories of mode , object , and medium can be visualized along an XYZ axis. Excluding the criteria of medium, Aristotle's system distinguished four types of classical genres: tragedy , epic , comedy , and parody . Genette explained

2040-409: A zombie invasion. In a blog post, assistant surgeon general Ali S. Khan wrote, "That's right, I said z-o-m-b-i-e a-p-o-c-a-l-y-p-s-e. You may laugh now, but when it happens you'll be happy you read this". The post provided instructions for preparing for a zombie onslaught, as a comical way to prepare the public for similar emergencies, such as a hurricane or pandemic. CDC spokesman Dave Daigle said that

2142-516: Is pluralia tantum , which means it does not have a singular form. While its origins are unclear, the word was used by W. R. Anderson in his column Round About Radio , published in London 1945, where he wrote: The simple truth is that you can get away with anything, in government. That covers almost all the evils of the time. Once in, nobody, apparently, can turn you out. The People, as ever (I spell it "Sheeple"), will stand anything. Another early use

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2244-466: Is a highly specialized, narrow classification of a cultural practice. The term has come into usage in the 21st century, and most commonly refers to music. It is also associated with the hyper-specific categories used in recommendations for television shows and movies on digital streaming platforms such as Netflix , and is sometimes used more broadly by scholars analyzing niche forms in other periods and other media. Herd behavior Herd behavior

2346-591: Is because the stronger personalities tend to be more engaged on consumer platforms and thus spread word of mouth information more efficiently. Many brands have begun to realise the importance of brand ambassadors and influencers, and it is being shown more clearly that herd behaviour can be used to drive sales and profits exponentially in favour of any brand through examination of these instances. Marketing can easily transcend beyond commercial roots, in that it can be used to encourage action to do with health, environmentalism and general society. Herd mentality often takes

2448-446: Is further subdivided into epic , lyric , and drama . The divisions are recognized as being set by Aristotle and Plato ; however, they were not the only ones. Many genre theorists added to these accepted forms of poetry . The earliest recorded systems of genre in Western history can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle . Gérard Genette explains his interpretation of the history of genre in "The Architext". He described Plato as

2550-441: Is irrational and driven by emotion—greed in the bubbles, fear in the crashes. Individual investors join the crowd of others in a rush to get in or out of the market. Some followers of the technical analysis school of investing see the herding behavior of investors as an example of extreme market sentiment . The academic study of behavioral finance has identified herding in the collective irrationality of investors, particularly

2652-521: Is met or not. Many genres have built-in audiences and corresponding publications that support them, such as magazines and websites. Inversely, audiences may call out for change in an antecedent genre and create an entirely new genre. The term may be used in categorizing web pages , like "news page" and "fan page", with both very different layout, audience, and intention (Rosso, 2008). Some search engines like Vivísimo try to group found web pages into automated categories in an attempt to show various genres

2754-407: Is often applied, sometimes rather loosely, to other media with an artistic element, such as video game genres . Genre, and numerous minutely divided subgenres, affect popular culture very significantly, not least as they are used to classify it for publicity purposes. The vastly increased output of popular culture in the age of electronic media encourages dividing cultural products by genre to simplify

2856-426: Is seen as an indication of better quality, and consumers will use the opinions of others posted on these platforms as a powerful compass to guide them towards products and brands that align with their preconceptions and the decisions of others in their peer groups . Taking into account differences in needs and their position in the socialization process, Lessig & Park examined groups of students and housewives and

2958-750: Is the 2007 uranium bubble , which started with flooding of the Cigar Lake Mine in Saskatchewan , during the year 2006. There are two strands of work in economic theory that consider why herding occurs and provide frameworks for examining its causes and consequences. The first of these strands is that on herd behavior in a non-market context. The seminal references are Banerjee (1992) and Bikhchandani, Hirshleifer and Welch (1992), both of which showed that herd behavior may result from private information not publicly shared. More specifically, both of these papers showed that individuals, acting sequentially on

3060-505: Is the behavior of individuals in a group acting collectively without centralized direction. Herd behavior occurs in animals in herds , packs , bird flocks , fish schools and so on, as well as in humans. Voting , demonstrations , riots , general strikes , sporting events, religious gatherings, everyday decision-making, judgement and opinion-forming, are all forms of human-based herd behavior. Raafat, Chater and Frith proposed an integrated approach to herding, describing two key issues,

3162-446: Is used to describe those who voluntarily acquiesce to a suggestion without any significant critical analysis or research, in large part due to the majority of a population having a similar mindset. Word Spy defines it as "people who are meek, easily persuaded , and tend to follow the crowd (sheep + people)". Merriam-Webster defines the term as "people who are docile, compliant, or easily influenced: people likened to sheep". The word

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3264-548: The Journal of Physics Special Topics. The study concluded that on the 100th day of the epidemic, only 273 human survivors would remain, outnumbered a million-to-one by the undead. A follow-up study using different parameters showed that the human population could recover. On May 18, 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published an article, Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse providing tips on preparing to survive

3366-511: The Renaissance period. According to Green, "Beethoven's Op. 61 and Mendelssohn's Op. 64 are identical in genre – both are violin concertos – but different in form. However, Mozart's Rondo for Piano, K. 511 , and the Agnus Dei from his Mass, K. 317 are quite different in genre but happen to be similar in form." Some, like Peter van der Merwe , treat the terms genre and style as

3468-460: The Vietnam War . Erin C. Cassese, associate professor of political science, commented that public fears over racial tensions are reflected in the faces of the zombie horde in the film and that the dehumanisation of the zombie is a warning about human psychology. This commentary on the civil war between races was however accidental. Romero had hired African-American actor Duane Jones simply because he

3570-452: The social influence on shopper behavior shows that shoppers are influenced by direct interactions with companions, and as a group size grows, herd behaviour becomes more apparent. Discussions that create excitement and interest have greater impact on touch frequency and purchase likelihood grows with greater involvement caused by a large group. Shoppers in this Midwestern American shopping outlet were monitored and their purchases noted, and it

3672-617: The structure of society . Whilst it has been shown that financial incentives cause action in large numbers of people, herd mentality often wins out in a case of "Keeping up with the Joneses". Communications technologies have contributed to the proliferation to consumer choice and "the power of crowds", Consumers increasingly have more access to opinions and information from both opinion leaders and formers on platforms that have largely user-generated content , and thus have more tools with which to complete any decision-making process. Popularity

3774-527: The " hierarchy of genres " was a powerful one in artistic theory, especially between the 17th and 19th centuries. It was strongest in France, where it was associated with the Académie française which held a central role in academic art . The genres, which were mainly applied to painting, in hierarchical order are: The hierarchy was based on a distinction between art that made an intellectual effort to "render visible

3876-498: The Dead and Shaun of the Dead . Devon Maloney writing for Wired commented that zombie fandom shares a group mentality that has manifested in group activities like zombie walks , and that the concept of seeing a zombie as an "other" has been a complicated metaphor. He said, "The more realistic apocalypse scenarios in movies struggle to be, the more likely people are to consider them seriously". Kerrang! 's Mike Rampton wrote, "Perhaps

3978-466: The Dead and Zombieland , as well as video games in the Resident Evil series and The Last of Us have been major commercial successes. In 2010, Frank Darabont , executive producer of The Walking Dead commented, "To be a fan of zombie films was a really sub-cult thing for many decades. In the last five years, it's become massively mainstream". The release of 28 Days Later in 2002 created

4080-401: The Dead underscore the fears of capitalism and mindless consumption that racked the late 1970s". From the 1980s, the zombie apocalypse was driven by a fear of global contagion, due to the appearance of Ebola in 1976, AIDS in 1980, Avian Flu in the mid-90s and SARS in 2003. This fear of contagion provided creators with a new explanation for the zombie apocalypse. The contagion concept

4182-626: The Herd in Peace and War (1914). In The Theory of the Leisure Class , Thorstein Veblen explained economic behavior in terms of social influences such as "emulation", where some members of a group mimic other members of higher status. In "The Metropolis and Mental Life" (1903), early sociologist George Simmel referred to the "impulse to sociability in man", and sought to describe "the forms of association by which

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4284-613: The Living Dead (1968), but for vampires he substituted shuffling ghouls . Romero stated, "I confessed to him that I basically ripped the idea off from I Am Legend . He forgave me because we didn't make any money. He said, 'Well, as long as you didn't get rich, it's okay.'" Romero said that he never referred to the monsters in his film as "zombies". Instead, the term appeared in an article in Cahiers du Cinéma . Romero commented that earlier depictions of zombies in film, "were very Caribbean and it

4386-490: The Living Dead as one of the most influential horror films of all time. He commented, "Romero's dark fantasy dragged in many of the anxieties of its age. And, of course, it gave the horror world a new monster: a being that rises from the grave to feast on human flesh. They came to be known as zombies". Jon Towlson of the British Film Institute remarked that the ground-breaking legacy of the film lies in, "Romero making

4488-455: The Madness of Crowds . "Benign" herding behaviors may occur frequently in everyday decisions based on learning from the information of others, as when a person on the street decides which of two restaurants to dine in. Suppose that both look appealing, but both are empty because it is early evening; so at random, this person chooses restaurant A. Soon a couple walks down the same street in search of

4590-588: The Zombie Apocalypse" that included a fictional interview with a director of research at the CDD, the "Center for Disease Development". The interview involved "Dr. Dale Dixon" answering questions about how different weather conditions affect zombies' abilities. Questions included "How does the temperature affect zombies' abilities? Do they run faster in warmer temperatures? Do they freeze if it gets too cold?" Donald Clarke writing for The Irish Times described Night of

4692-456: The assumption that a type of person could tell one type of story best. Genres proliferate and develop beyond Aristotle's classifications— in response to changes in audiences and creators. Genre has become a dynamic tool to help the public make sense out of unpredictability through artistic expression. Given that art is often a response to a social state, in that people write, paint, sing, dance, and otherwise produce art about what they know about,

4794-400: The authors concluded that offensive strategies were the most reliable, due to risks that can compromise a quarantine. They also found that a cure would leave few humans alive, since this would do little to slow the infection rate. The study determined that the most likely long-term outcome of such an outbreak would be the extinction of humans. This conclusion stems from the study's reasoning that

4896-439: The basis of private information and public knowledge about the behavior of others, may end up choosing the socially undesirable option. A large subsequent literature has examined the causes and consequences of such "herds" and information cascades. The second strands concerns information aggregation in market contexts. A very early reference is the classic paper by Grossman and Stiglitz (1976) that showed that uninformed traders in

4998-574: The campaign was a response to a question about whether zombies were a potential danger due to radiation in Japan. In the unclassified document titled " CONOP 8888 ", officers from U.S. Strategic Command used a zombie apocalypse scenario as a training template for operations, emergencies and catastrophes, as a tool to teach cadets about the basic concepts of military plans and disaster preparation using its admittedly outlandish premise. On October 17, 2011, The Weather Channel published an article, "How to Weather

5100-508: The cause of death, whereas others require exposure to the infection, most commonly in the form of a bite. The genre originated in the 1968 American horror film Night of the Living Dead , which was directed by George A. Romero , who took inspiration from the 1954 novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson . Romero's film introduced the concept of the flesh-eating zombie and spawned numerous other fictional works, including films, video games and literature. The zombie apocalypse has been used as

5202-484: The closely related concept of "genre ecologies". Reiff and Bawarshi define genre analysis as a critical reading of people's patterns of communication in different situations. This tradition has had implications for the teaching of writing in American colleges and universities. Combining rhetorical genre theory with activity theory , David Russell has proposed that standard English composition courses are ill-suited to teach

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5304-418: The creator of three imitational, mimetic genres distinguished by mode of imitation rather than content. These three imitational genres include dramatic dialogue, the drama ; pure narrative, the dithyramb ; and a mixture of the two, the epic . Plato excluded lyric poetry as a non-mimetic, imitational mode. Genette further discussed how Aristotle revised Plato's system by first eliminating the pure narrative as

5406-429: The encouragement to save energy when they were told that 77% of their neighbours were using fans instead of air conditioning, proving that communities are more likely to engage in a behaviour if they think that everyone else is already taking part. Herd behaviours shown in the two examples exemplify that it can be a powerful tool in social marketing, and if harnessed correctly, has the potential to achieve great change. It

5508-655: The end of the world as we have known it." Initial public reaction to the zombie apocalypse genre was immediately positive. When Night of the Living Dead premiered at the Fulton Theater in Pittsburgh on October 1, 1968, the film was an instant hit and was well received by movie goers in America and Europe. It received praise from Sight and Sound magazine in Britain and Cahiers du Cinéma in France. By contrast, critical reception

5610-402: The epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often. According to a 2009 Carleton University and University of Ottawa epidemiological analysis, an outbreak of slow zombies "is likely to lead to the collapse of civilization, unless it is dealt with quickly." Based on mathematical modelling ,

5712-948: The field of rhetoric , genre theorists usually understand genres as types of actions rather than types or forms of texts. On this perspective, texts are channels through which genres are enacted. Carolyn Miller's work has been especially important for this perspective. Drawing on Lloyd Bitzer 's concept of rhetorical situation, Miller reasons that recurring rhetorical problems tend to elicit recurring responses; drawing on Alfred Schütz , she reasons that these recurring responses become "typified" – that is, socially constructed as recognizable types. Miller argues that these "typified rhetorical actions" (p. 151) are properly understood as genres. Building off of Miller, Charles Bazerman and Clay Spinuzzi have argued that genres understood as actions derive their meaning from other genres – that is, other actions. Bazerman therefore proposes that we analyze genres in terms of "genre systems", while Spinuzzi prefers

5814-432: The first to criticize what they referred to as "the crowd" (Kierkegaard) and "herd morality" and the "herd instinct" (Nietzsche) in human society. Modern psychological and economic research has identified herd behavior in humans to explain the phenomenon of large numbers of people acting in the same way at the same time. The British surgeon Wilfred Trotter popularized the "herd behavior" phrase in his book, Instincts of

5916-593: The fourth and final type of Greek literature , was excluded by Plato as a non-mimetic mode. Aristotle later revised Plato's system by eliminating the pure narrative as a viable mode and distinguishing by two additional criteria: the object to be imitated, as objects could be either superior or inferior, and the medium of presentation such as words, gestures or verse. Essentially, the three categories of mode, object, and medium dialogue, epic (superior-mixed narrative), comedy (inferior-dramatic dialogue), and parody (inferior-mixed narrative). Genette continues by explaining

6018-401: The genres prose or poetry , which shows best how loosely genres are defined. Additionally, a genre such as satire might appear in any of the above, not only as a subgenre but as a mixture of genres. Finally, they are defined by the general cultural movement of the historical period in which they were composed. In popular fiction , which is especially divided by genres, genre fiction is

6120-492: The genres that students will write in other contexts across the university and beyond. Elizabeth Wardle contends that standard composition courses do teach genres, but that these are inauthentic "mutt genres" that are often of little use outside composition courses. Genre is effective as a tool in rhetoric because it allows a speaker to set the context for a rhetorical discussion. Devitt, Reiff, and Bawarshi suggest that rhetorical genres may be assigned based on careful analysis of

6222-403: The hero got killed". The film has since been recognised as a classic by film critics. In October 2018, Steve Rose writing for The Guardian described it as, "brilliantly perplexing, horrifying and mysteriously allegorical". Several decades after the release of Night of the Living Dead , the popularity of the genre has only increased. Films like 28 Days Later , Dawn of the Dead , Shaun of

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6324-407: The influence that these reference groups have on one another. By way of herd mentality, students tended to encourage each other towards beer, hamburger and cigarettes, whilst housewives tended to encourage each other towards furniture and detergent. Whilst this particular study was done in 1977, one cannot discount its findings in today's society. A study done by Burke, Leykin, Li and Zhang in 2014 on

6426-573: The integration of lyric poetry into the classical system by replacing the removed pure narrative mode. Lyric poetry , once considered non-mimetic, was deemed to imitate feelings, becoming the third "Architext", a term coined by Gennette, of a new long-enduring tripartite system: lyrical; epical, the mixed narrative; and dramatic, the dialogue. This new system that came to "dominate all the literary theory of German romanticism " (Genette 38) has seen numerous attempts at expansion and revision. Such attempts include Friedrich Schlegel 's triad of subjective form,

6528-505: The late 1980s and early 1990s by conspiracy theorist and broadcaster Bill Cooper on his radio program The Hour of the Time which was broadcast internationally via shortwave radio stations. The program gained a small, yet dedicated following, inspiring many individuals who would later broadcast their own radio programs critical of the United States government. This then led to its regular use on

6630-520: The later integration of lyric poetry into the classical system during the romantic period , replacing the now removed pure narrative mode. Lyric poetry, once considered non-mimetic, was deemed to imitate feelings, becoming the third leg of a new tripartite system: lyrical, epical, and dramatic dialogue. This system, which came to "dominate all the literary theory of German romanticism (and therefore well beyond)…" (38), has seen numerous attempts at expansion or revision. However, more ambitious efforts to expand

6732-479: The logo and branding for the campaign, built content for social media and led in-school presentations to engage audience interaction. It was thus concluded that the success of the campaign was rooted in the fact that its means of communication was the audience itself, giving the target audience a sense of ownership and empowerment. As mentioned previously, students exert a high level of influence over one another, and by encouraging stronger personalities to lead opinions,

6834-496: The lyric; objective form, the dramatic; and subjective-objective form, the epic. However, more ambitious efforts to expand the tripartite system resulted in new taxonomic systems of increasing complexity. Gennette reflected upon these various systems, comparing them to the original tripartite arrangement: "its structure is somewhat superior to most of those that have come after, fundamentally flawed as they are by their inclusive and hierarchical taxonomy, which each time immediately brings

6936-428: The mechanisms of transmission of thoughts or behavior between individuals and the patterns of connections between them. They suggested that bringing together diverse theoretical approaches of herding behavior illuminates the applicability of the concept to many domains, ranging from cognitive neuroscience to economics. A group of animals fleeing from a predator shows the nature of herd behavior, for example in 1971, in

7038-510: The more usual term. In literature , genre has been known as an intangible taxonomy . This taxonomy implies a concept of containment or that an idea will be stable forever. The earliest recorded systems of genre in Western history can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle. Gérard Genette , a French literary theorist and author of The Architext , describes Plato as creating three Imitational genres: dramatic dialogue, pure narrative, and epic (a mixture of dialogue and narrative). Lyric poetry ,

7140-440: The most appealing element of a zombie apocalypse is that it draws people together, forcing them to put their differences aside to unite against a common enemy and set it on fire. Other than the extraordinary violence involved, that sounds like a dream come true". Sophie Collins of MovieWeb considered that the appeal of the genre is that it is an escapist fantasy about survival: "Perhaps people underestimate what it takes to fight off

7242-841: The music of non-Western cultures. The term is now perhaps over-used to describe relatively small differences in musical style in modern rock music , that also may reflect sociological differences in their audiences. Timothy Laurie suggests that in the context of rock and pop music studies, the "appeal of genre criticism is that it makes narratives out of musical worlds that often seem to lack them". Music can be divided into different genres in several ways. The artistic nature of music means that these classifications are often arbitrary and controversial, and some genres may overlap. There are several academic approaches to genres. In his book Form in Tonal Music , Douglass M. Green lists madrigal , motet , canzona , ricercar , and dance as examples of genres from

7344-401: The name of security, we've allowed fingernail clippers , eyeglass screwdrivers, and toy soldiers to be taken from us prior to boarding a plane." Currency crises tend to display herding behavior when foreign and domestic investors convert a government's currency into physical assets (like gold) or foreign currencies when they realize the government is unable to repay its debts. This is called

7446-714: The oft-cited article "Geometry for the Selfish Herd", evolutionary biologist W. D. Hamilton asserted that each individual group member reduces the danger to itself by moving as close as possible to the center of the fleeing group. Thus the herd appears as a unit in moving together, but its function emerges from the uncoordinated behavior of self-serving individuals. Asymmetric aggregation of animals under panic conditions has been observed in many species, including humans, mice, and ants. Theoretical models have demonstrated symmetry-breaking similar to observations in empirical studies. For example, when panicked individuals are confined to

7548-435: The organizers of the campaign were able to secure the attention of other students who identified with the reference group. Herd behaviour not only applies to students in schools where they are highly visible, but also amongst communities where perceived action plays a strong role. Between 2003 and 2004, California State University carried out a study to measure household conservation of energy , and motivations for doing so. It

7650-410: The physics (and metaphysics) of human survival: how the end of the world would bring out the best and worst in the human condition". Nicholas Barber from BBC Culture opined that, "zombies embody the great contemporary fear", noting their "relentless shuffle into the mainstream of popular culture " and particularly highlighted the commercial and critical success of films like 28 Days Later , Dawn of

7752-429: The plot involves not re-animated corpses but living humans infected with a pathogen. Improved CGI technology and the rise of first-person shooter video games resulted in the herd behavior being replaced by zombies capable of running, jumping, and attacking as individuals. From the beginnings of the genre, film makers have used the zombie apocalypse as a metaphor for various cultural fears and social tensions, including

7854-463: The primary epidemiological risk of zombies is the continual growth of the infected population, a phenomenon which would only cease with the infection or death of all surviving humans. In 2017, a group of students from the University of Leicester Department of Physics and Astronomy used an epidemiological model called a SIRS model to plot the spread of a zombie infection. Their findings were presented in

7956-485: The radio program Coast to Coast AM by Art Bell throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. These combined factors significantly increased the popularity of the word and led to its widespread use. The term can also be used for those who seem inordinately tolerant, or welcoming, of widespread policies. In a column entitled "A Nation of Sheeple", columnist Walter E. Williams writes, "Americans sheepishly accepted all sorts of Transportation Security Administration nonsense. In

8058-511: The rule of France . The slaves believed that if they ended their own lives by suicide they would be condemned to spend eternity trapped in their own bodies as the undead. This myth evolved in the Voodoo religion into the Haitian belief that corpses were reanimated by shamans. The zombie concept eventually infiltrated western culture with the publication of the first example of zombie fiction in 1927, which

8160-431: The same, saying that genre should be defined as pieces of music that share a certain style or "basic musical language". Others, such as Allan F. Moore, state that genre and style are two separate terms, and that secondary characteristics such as subject matter can also differentiate between genres. A music genre or subgenre may be defined by the musical techniques , the styles, the context, and content and spirit of

8262-614: The search for products by consumers, a trend the Internet has only intensified. In philosophy of language , genre figures prominently in the works of philosopher and literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin . Bakhtin's basic observations were of "speech genres" (the idea of heteroglossia ), modes of speaking or writing that people learn to mimic, weave together, and manipulate (such as "formal letter" and "grocery list", or "university lecture" and "personal anecdote"). In this sense, genres are socially specified: recognized and defined (often informally) by

8364-429: The search hits might fit. A subgenre is a subordinate within a genre, Two stories being the same genre can still sometimes differ in subgenre. For example, if a fantasy story has darker and more frightening elements of fantasy, it would belong in the subgenre of dark fantasy ; whereas another fantasy story that features magic swords and wizards would belong to the subgenre of sword and sorcery . A microgenre

8466-518: The slow, lumbering, and unintelligent kind first popularized in the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead . Zombies were repeatedly shown in slow-walking groups demonstrating herd behavior and overwhelming victims by strength of numbers. In the 2000s, several films featured zombies that are depicted as more agile, vicious, intelligent, and stronger than the traditional zombie. In many cases of these "fast" zombies, e.g., 28 Days Later , Zombieland , Dying Light , The Last of Us , and Left 4 Dead ,

8568-428: The spread of disease and plague. The narrative of a zombie apocalypse carries strong connections to the turbulent social landscape of the United States in the 1960s when the originator of this genre, the film Night of the Living Dead , was created. At the time when Romero was shooting the film, Americans were viewing televised images of various violent events, including the 1967 Newark riots , 1967 Detroit riot and

8670-534: The subject matter and consideration of the audience. Genre is related to Ludwig Wittgenstein's theory of Family resemblance in which he describes how genres act like a family tree, where members of a family are related, but not exact copies of one another. This concept of genre originated from the classification systems created by Plato . Plato divided literature into the three classic genres accepted in Ancient Greece : poetry , drama , and prose . Poetry

8772-623: The themes. Geographical origin is sometimes used to identify a music genre, though a single geographical category will often include a wide variety of subgenres. Several music scholars have criticized the priority accorded to genre-based communities and listening practices. For example, Laurie argues that "music genres do not belong to isolated, self-sufficient communities. People constantly move between environments where diverse forms of music are heard, advertised and accessorised with distinctive iconographies, narratives and celebrity identities that also touch on non-musical worlds." The concept of genre

8874-456: The tripartite system resulted in new taxonomic systems of increasing scope and complexity. Genette reflects upon these various systems, comparing them to the original tripartite arrangement: "its structure is somewhat superior to…those that have come after, fundamentally flawed as they are by their inclusive and hierarchical taxonomy, which each time immediately brings the whole game to a standstill and produces an impasse" (74). Taxonomy allows for

8976-947: The universal essence of things" ( imitare in Italian) and that which merely consisted of "mechanical copying of particular appearances" ( ritrarre ). Idealism was privileged over realism in line with Renaissance Neo-Platonist philosophy. A literary genre is a category of literary composition. Genres may be determined by literary technique , tone , content , or even (as in the case of fiction) length. Genre should not be confused with age category, by which literature may be classified as either adult, young adult , or children's . They also must not be confused with format, such as graphic novel or picture book. The distinctions between genres and categories are flexible and loosely defined, often with subgroups. The most general genres in literature are (in loose chronological order) epic , tragedy , comedy , novel , and short story . They can all be in

9078-414: The use of genre as a tool must be able to adapt to changing meanings. The term genre is much used in the history and criticism of visual art, but in art history has meanings that overlap rather confusingly. Genre painting is a term for paintings where the main subject features human figures to whom no specific identity attaches – in other words, figures are not portraits, characters from

9180-399: The whole game to a standstill and produces an impasse". Although genres are not always precisely definable, genre considerations are one of the most important factors in determining what a person will see or read. The classification properties of genre can attract or repel potential users depending on the individual's understanding of a genre. Genre creates an expectation in that expectation

9282-450: The work of Nobel laureates Vernon L. Smith , Amos Tversky , Daniel Kahneman , and Robert Shiller . Hey and Morone (2004) analyzed a model of herd behavior in a market context. Some empirical works on methods for detecting and measuring the extent of herding include Christie and Huang (1995) and Chang, Cheng and Khorana (2000). These results refer to a market with a well-defined fundamental value. A notable incident of possible herding

9384-753: The zombie apocalypse would begin in New York City and spread to London . It also found that one in ten respondents believed that they would only survive for one week in a post-apocalyptic world. Subgenre Critical discussion of genre perhaps began with a classification system for ancient Greek literature , as set out in Aristotle's Poetics . For Aristotle, poetry ( odes , epics , etc.), prose , and performance each had specific features that supported appropriate content of each genre. Speech patterns for comedy would not be appropriate for tragedy, for example, and even actors were restricted to their genre under

9486-500: The zombie genre allows people to deal with their own anxiety about the end of the world. He commented, "People have a lot of anxiety about the future. They're constantly being battered with these very scary, very global catastrophes. I think a lot of people think the system is breaking down and just like the 1970s, people need a 'safe place' to explore their apocalyptic worries". Kim Paffenroth noted that "more than any other monster, zombies are fully and literally apocalyptic... they signal

9588-435: The zombies into flesh-eating beings, creating an allegory of a society devouring itself from within. This would become the central metaphor underlying much modern apocalyptic horror". Adam Nayman of The Ringer considered that the power of the zombie apocalypse movie is its plausibility. He said, " In Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead , Romero had smartly de-emphasized the why of his zombie outbreaks to focus on

9690-450: Was a book titled The Magic Island written by William Seabrook . The book was later adapted for cinema as the 1932 film White Zombie . Directed by Victor Halperin and starring Bela Lugosi , it was the first feature-length zombie film, establishing the sub genre of zombies and paving the way for the zombie apocalypse in cinema. An early inspirational work of the genre was Richard Matheson 's novel I Am Legend (1954), which features

9792-430: Was all to do with voodoo". By contrast his versions were flesh-eating monsters returned from the grave: "We thought up very few rules or powers for them. The idea was they are your neighbours in a different state. One of the few early ideas we did have was that you have to shoot them in the head to kill them". Several themes and tropes commonly appear in zombie-apocalypse films: Generally, films have depicted zombies as

9894-412: Was found that factors like saving the environment, saving money or social responsibility did not have as great an impact on each household as the perceived behaviour of their neighbours did. Although the financial incentives of saving money, closely followed by moral incentives of protecting the environment, are often thought of as being a community's greatest guiding compass, more households responded to

9996-471: Was found up to a point, potential customers preferred to be in stores which had moderate levels of traffic. The other people in the store not only served as company, but also provided an inference point on which potential customers could model their behavior and make purchase decisions , as with any reference group or community. Social media can also be a powerful tool in perpetuating herd behaviour. Its immeasurable amount of user-generated content serves as

10098-524: Was from Ernest Rogers, whose 1949 book The Old Hokum Bucket contained a chapter entitled "We the Sheeple". The Wall Street Journal first reported the label in print in 1984; the reporter heard the word used by the proprietor of the American Opinion bookstore. In this usage, taxpayers were derided for their blind conformity as opposed to those who thought independently. The term was first popularized in

10200-427: Was mainly negative. A reviewer for Variety commented that the film raised, "doubts about the future of the regional cinema movement and the moral health of filmgoers who cheerfully opt for unrelieved sadism." The graphic violence depicted in the film caused particular controversy. Pauline Kael writing for The New Yorker described it as, "one of the most gruesomely terrifying movies ever made". Roger Ebert wrote

10302-558: Was the best actor, but noted that after finishing the film, "that very night we heard the news that Martin Luther King had been shot. There were race riots everywhere". Christopher Shaw writing for The Guardian noted that Romero's 1978 follow-up film Dawn of the Dead is a satire on consumer society . In the film, zombies overrun a shopping mall where survivors have taken refuge. Javier Zarracina for Vox commented, "The zombies in Dawn of

10404-451: Was used in the 1996 video game Resident Evil and the 2002 film 28 Days Later . From the beginning of the post-apocalyptic television series The Walking Dead in 2010, the predominant theme shifted from a fear of the zombie horde to the fear of other humans. The series focuses on small groups of survivors driven by self-preservation and protected by walls designed to keep out both the zombies and other survivors. Max Brooks opined that

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