• by Tom Siebert , Op-Ed Contributor, November 8, 2010

Team Edward? Team Jacob? Forget it, the hot squad right now is Team Corpse.

While the breakout cable hit "The Walking Dead" may be the most mainstream example -- it launched as the biggest premiere in AMC history (demonstrating the dead are twice as popular as the Draper) and its second episode showed little dropoff -- zombies are inexorably lumbering to the forefront of numerous pop culture platforms and the collective unconscious of The American.

At the 'plex and on Netflix, "Zombieland" was an unexpected hit, with a sequel on the way (hopefully they'll find a way to bring back Bill Murray, or find Dan Ackroyd). In print, Mel Brooks' kid Max has been building his own tidy little franchise with "The Zombie Survival Guide" and the sly Studs Terkel pastiche "World War Z." Even long-dead Jane Austen got into the act, with Seth Grahame-Smith's bizarre mashup "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies."

Then, at the end of last month (and just in time for Hallowe'en), the critically acclaimed Rock Star Games western "Red Dead Redemption," introduced an "Undead Nightmare" patch that spins the game into supernatural territory. Online rumors abound that the even more popular "Call of Duty" franchise will soon do the same.

But why Brand Zombie? Why now? They're not sexy like vampires, with their thinly veiled metaphors for lust and promises of dark seduction. They don't stir unsettling thoughts about the duality of man, the way werewolves do (lycanthropes had their comeback shot, with Benicio del Toro no less, and they blew it).

No, zombies are hot right now because they tap into the communal sense of unease and looming dread that's infected most Americans, the 63% who say the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction. Something wicked this way comes, and because no one can see the future, nobody can quite put their finger on what it is -- massive unemployment, economic collapse, terrorist attack, political assassination, martial law, biological outbreak, Mayan apocalypse -- but the citizenry can sense it, like the way the animals get quiet before a tornado.

Whether you're to the right of the Tea Party or the left of DailyKos, everyone across the political spectrum agrees that folks on the other side are lock-step, brain-dead automatons -- partisan zombies, so to speak. And both sides agree that the country has serious problems that aren't being addressed the right -- er, correct -- way, and that everything's going to come to a head, and it ain't gonna be pretty. In fact, it's going to be pretty ugly. Like a zombie.

It's been a slow, long time coming, but it's reliably relentless and it's going to reach us ... and when it does, things are going to be pretty damn horrible.

And, from an even broader macro view, in their most primal resonance, zombies are a profound fictional representation of Death itself. Death might not get you today, it might not get you tomorrow. But it's coming for you, it's inescapable, unstoppable, inevitable, and eventually you're going to get caught. Maybe even swarmed.

So the popularity of zombies isn't a particularly good thing, considering what it says about us. But maybe once we realize why zombies are resonating across our culture, we can use that awareness as a shovel to bash its brains out. But I won't be holding my breath ... at least until my dirt nap.