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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
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PATRICK SYLVAIN: The fear is to become a zombie.
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SYLVAIN: The moment a family member is dead, they will drive a stake into the person's heart or into the person's head so that their children and so forth1 will not be turned into a zombie. And so the people are taking precautions out of their own understanding that perhaps a dead person is not fully2 dead.
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SYLVAIN: The zombie is real. Right? That zombie is real.
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ANDERSON COOPER: As you already know, the zombie apocalypse is upon us. The flesh eaters appear to be everywhere.
UNIDENTIFIED FOX NEWS HOST: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posted a guide called Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: Economic Modeling Specialists International ranked cities on their ability to defend against a zombie attack - stockpiling food, containing zombies, finding a cure. You may think that this is all fun and games, but these guys mean serious business. Their motto is - if you can survive a zombie apocalypse, you can survive anything 'cause you never know what can happen.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: There's going to be a zombie apocalypse. It's just when.
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RUND ABDELFATAH, HOST:
You're listening to THROUGHLINE from NPR...
RAMTIN ARABLOUEI, HOST:
Where we go back in time...
ABDELFATAH: To understand the present.
Hey. I'm Rund Abdelfatah.
ARABLOUEI: I'm Ramtin Arablouei. And on this episode - zombies.
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ABDELFATAH: Zombies are a global phenomenon. They're in the news, as you just heard, and appear in the countless3 number of books, movies, video games and TV shows that make up the zombie genre4.
ARABLOUEI: A genre that's going strong - at least 10 zombie movies have come out in 2019 alone. Some people are so zombie-obsessed that they dress up like zombies and roam the streets - and not just on Halloween. And then there are those people who are prepping for a zombie apocalypse. You heard a description at the top about the Department of Zombie Defense5, which was started by former law enforcement officials to teach survival tactics in case of an apocalyptic6 scenario7, zombie or otherwise.
ABDELFATAH: Our collective fascination8 with zombies started almost a century ago, which made us wonder - who invented the zombie, and why are we still so drawn9 to these flesh-eating monsters? THROUGHLINE producer Laine Kaplan-Levenson tells this story.
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SYLVAIN: The music, right, is almost like in a circus. Right?
LAINE KAPLAN-LEVENSON, BYLINE10: (Laughter).
This is what it sounded like when I first got connected to Patrick Sylvain. He was talking to me from an NPR station in Boston.
SYLVAIN: (Laughter) This - that's the WGBH zombie music.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: Turns out, we were just crossing wires with their hold music. Still, it was a creepy way to begin our conversation.
SYLVAIN: I'm a lecturer at Brown University, and my work is actually on zombies.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: Patrick writes about the origin of the zombie as well as the contemporary obsession11. His fascination goes back to his childhood growing up in Port-au-Prince.
SYLVAIN: There was a farmer. And in order to protect his field - because he used to grow corn - and he would put indigo12 crosses on his corn in the same way that you might have scarecrow, for example. And so he used to tell us that in his field, he has a zombie. And as young boys, we will dare each other - you know, why don't you go into the field? And we will say, no, I do not want to be caught (laughter).
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KAPLAN-LEVENSON: In Haiti, zombies aren't just scarecrows in the fields, and they're not just scary, flesh-eating monsters that only exist in movies.
SYLVAIN: I grew up in fear of becoming a zombie.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: When Patrick was a kid, that fear hit especially close to home.
SYLVAIN: So I was about 12 or 13. And my sister Mildred (ph), who was a soccer player - football player - and she was a star in Haiti. And one of her teammate give her food in which, a few hours later, she collapsed14, and she was sick. And she was convulsing, and she went into what looks like a coma15.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: A nearby Voodoo priest told Patrick's family not to take her to the hospital.
SYLVAIN: Because that was not a natural seizure16 - that was not a natural collapse13.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: Patrick's family believed that one of Mildred's teammates poisoned her out of jealousy17, which put her in a coma - a zombie-like state.
SYLVAIN: We don't know exactly what happened to my sister. Was she really poisoned out of jealousy, or was it her own illness? We don't know. But what I remember vividly18 is the way in which she was rushed out of the house, the way she was carried; she was convulsing. And she was, you know, fine the day before. And the narration19 was that it's because it was jealousy. They wanted to steal her soul.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: The Voodoo priest gave Mildred specific foods and remedies to try and coax20 her out of her coma.
SYLVAIN: She was bathed with so many different leaves. I remember, you know, her head was covered, you know, with certain leaves, which I did not know what they were. After four days of treatment, Mildred returned to consciousness. She did not become a zombie. The system was restored.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: Patrick says being poisoned and entering into a zombie-like state...
SYLVAIN: Is a very prevalent fear in Haiti because of - the zombie is real. Right? It's not abstract. It's real.
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KAPLAN-LEVENSON: To understand how the zombie came to be associated with a death-like state, a body without a soul, we need to go back to the original zombie in Haitian culture. After the break, how the myth of the living dead was born out of being enslaved.
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PEPIN: Hi. This is Pepin (ph) from Gouldsboro, Maine, and you're listening to THROUGHLINE from NPR.
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KAPLAN-LEVENSON: Before Haiti was called Haiti, it was a French colony called Saint-Domingue. And in the 18th century, Saint-Domingue was one of the most profitable colonies in the world.
SYLVAIN: Between 1697 to, let's say, the 1780s, France became a superpower. So the rate of import of slaves was extremely fast within a short period of time, and sugar production surpassed all other production throughout the world.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: The colony produced about 40% of all the sugar and 60% of all the coffee consumed in Europe.
SYLVAIN: So Haiti was called the Pearl of the Antilles because of what Haiti provided - or Saint-Domingue provided the French. So the rate of accumulation of wealth, we can also equate22 that to the rate of death.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: Life on the plantation23 was so brutal24 for the enslaved Africans that many didn't live past their teenage years. They were literally25 worked to death. And that backbreaking, endless labor26 they faced day in and day out hardly felt like living.
SYLVAIN: It was a place where the slaves were broken - right? - to make docile28 and servile. This person becomes, in a sense, a machine of production. And so a slave who is broken becomes an automaton29. From dawn until sunset, all I'm going to do is work and work and work and work. And therefore, the loss of the will, symbolically30 speaking, this person becomes a zombie.
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KAPLAN-LEVENSON: The word zombie seems to trace back to numerous Central and West African languages.
SYLVAIN: We could think of the word mvumbi (ph), which is a cataleptic individual. You have nsumbi (ph), which means devil. You have zumbi (ph), which is kind of fetish and Nzambi is also a deity31 - a deity of death.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: Some languages interpret the word as corpse32. And in others, like the Congo language, zombie directly translates to the spirit of a dead person. Many of these original interpretations33 allude34 to a soul that's been dispossessed of its own body but somehow remains35 trapped within it.
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KAPLAN-LEVENSON: By the 18th century, Africans had been forced into slavery all over the Caribbean, including and especially Saint-Domingue. Between 1783 and 1791, enslaved Africans in Saint-Domingue made up a third of the entire Atlantic slave trade.
SYLVAIN: The slave is the perfect zombie.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: In a way, their word for the living dead became the same word for being enslaved.
SYLVAIN: The loss of will, the loss of home, cannot speak, has no say - it is a person what was made to be dead-like but used still within the plantation system to become a slave.
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KAPLAN-LEVENSON: This is one type of Haitian zombie - the broken slave, someone whose soul has been stripped from them due to the unfathomable cruelty of the colonial slave economy. But there is another type of zombie in Haiti that gets at the belief in a returned soul - the revolutionary slave.
SYLVAIN: These are people who refuse to submit themselves to the harshness of slavery, and they resisted by various means. And one of the means was really to poison their masters.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: These individual acts of resistance against the French planters eventually grew into one of the largest and most successful slave rebellions in the history of the Americas - the Haitian Revolution.
SYLVAIN: You had this active resistance in which the colonialists, the French, were being killed.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: The zombie is this unbelievably fearful thing on both ends - right? - because if you're an enslaved person, the zombie is your biggest fear because you don't want that to be your fate. And then on the other end, if you're the planter, the zombie is your biggest fear because that's the revolutionary.
SYLVAIN: Exactly.
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KAPLAN-LEVENSON: The Haitian Revolution began in 1791 and raged on for 13 years. It's during the middle of this war that the word zombie was written about, perhaps for the first time, by a French writer named Moreau de Saint-Mery. And he refers to zombie as the slave's belief in a returned soul, and that's published in 1797.
This is Elizabeth McAlister.
ELIZABETH MCALISTER: And I'm a professor of religion and African American studies at Wesleyan University.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: In 1884, seven years after that documented reference, the Haitian people ultimately defeated their colonizers. They trashed the colonial name Saint-Domingue and called their newly freed nation Haiti, which means land of high mountains in the island's indigenous36 language. Haiti is the first independent country to be founded by former slaves.
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KAPLAN-LEVENSON: The Haitian Revolution ended French colonial rule. But...
MCALISTER: The idea of slavery is still very much alive.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: In an effort to boost the economy, Haitian President Jean-Pierre Boyer passed the Rural Code, which denied farmers the right to leave their own land and enforced production quotas37. And then, in the 1820s, France demanded reparations for their losses due to the revolution. France refused to recognize Haiti's independence until it paid them 150 million francs, the modern equivalent of $21 billion.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: Just 20 years after their independence, Haitians were still, in effect, endlessly working the plantations39 for the French.
MCALISTER: And I think that the figure of the zombie is a reminder40 that slavery happened to people, that they freed themselves from it, that it still happens in a kind of an afterlife and in echoes in social practices.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: Haiti had to hand over its profits to France, not only because there were military ships waiting to attack if they didn't but it was the only way they'd be allowed to participate in global trade. This made it impossible to create a stable economy. And by the early 20th century, Haiti was still in a state of social and political turmoil41.
SYLVAIN: The U.S. claimed they wanted to stabilize42 Haiti. Of course we've heard this term before. Right?
MCALISTER: It's the same old story. You know? It turns out that it's really about political economy. It's really about Americans gaining interest in business opportunities in Haiti.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: At the time, other Western countries had influence in Haiti. Germany, for instance, dominated trade on the island.
SYLVAIN: And with World War I, the U.S. claimed that the Germans in Haiti were agents of Germany, that they were using Haiti as an excuse to invade the United States.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: And so in 1915, President Woodrow Wilson ordered the U.S. Marines to invade Haiti.
MCALISTER: The Marines occupy Haiti between 1915 and 1934.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: They instituted a formal system of unpaid43 labor, which forced Haitians to build new roads. This imposed yet another form of slavery and zombification.
MCALISTER: And along with this occupation comes a kind of a vanguard of journalists and travel writers.
SYLVAIN: And they had never encountered autonomous44, independent black men who resisted white rule. And so how do you then demonize these people who resisted? Call them cannibal. Then the black man, the black body becomes a consumer of flesh.
MCALISTER: And there's this one guy named William Seabrook.
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KAPLAN-LEVENSON: William Seabrook was a World War I vet-turned-New York Times reporter and was notorious for his excessive drinking, womanizing and sensationalist travel writing. He had a desire for what he perceived as the occult and developed a particular interest in Haitian Voodoo.
MCALISTER: Seabrook finds his way to somebody who tells him about the phenomenon in Haiti where someone is punished by having their soul extracted and by being made to work in the cane45 fields. And he writes a whole chapter about this dead man working in the cane fields, and he describes a dead body which is made to walk and act and move as if it were alive.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: Seabrook said that's how all this was described to him by Haitians he met. He said he himself didn't believe in zombies. Nonetheless, he wrote about it with high drama.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2, BYLINE: (Reading) The zombie, they say, is a soulless human corpse, still dead but taken from the grave and endowed by sorcery with a mechanical semblance46 of life. People who have the power to do this go to a fresh grave, dig up the body before it has had time to rot, galvanize it into movement and then make of it a servant or slave, occasionally for the commission of some crime, more often simply as a drudge47 around the habitation or the farm, setting it dull, heavy tasks and beating it like a dumb beast if it slackens.
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KAPLAN-LEVENSON: Seabrook also wrote embellished48 descriptions of religious ceremonies.
SYLVAIN: And so you have this kind of trope. Haitians become nothing else but an orgy-driven people, death-driven people. That's all they do is play the drum and, you know, have orgies, suck each other's blood. And they kill each other, turning each other into zombies. Oh, my God. This is so juicy. But yet - oh, my God - these people are so uncivilized; these people are barbaric.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: In 1929, Seabrook published "The Magic Island."
SYLVAIN: It became a best-seller.
MCALISTER: And it's widely read in the United States.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: Giving Americans a new nightmare - the living dead.
SYLVAIN: So it wasn't until after the U.S. occupation in which the zombie is made into this walking monster. Having this kind of portrayal49, the U.S. occupation is then given proper rationality - OK? - that we deserve to be there because we are saving these black people from their own savagery50 and we are civilizing51 them.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: So the production of that narrative52 is defending...
SYLVAIN: Is defending.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: ...U.S. actions.
SYLVAIN: Exactly. Exactly.
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KAPLAN-LEVENSON: The U.S. occupation of Haiti brought the zombie onto American soil. When we come back, zombies go to Hollywood.
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CAROLINE KILBOURNE: I'm Caroline Kilbourne (ph) in North Bethesda, Md., and you're listening to THROUGHLINE from NPR.
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KAPLAN-LEVENSON: By the early 1930s, Hollywood was in its golden age. Movie studios were king, and so was horror. Some of the most iconic monsters were terrifying audiences on the big screen. You had "Frankenstein"...
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COLIN CLIVE: (As Henry Frankenstein) It's alive. It's alive. It's alive. It's alive.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: ..."Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde"...
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FREDRIC MARCH: (As Mr. Hyde) If you could see me now, what do you think? (Laughter).
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: ...And...
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BELA LUGOSI: (As Dracula) I am Dracula.
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KAPLAN-LEVENSON: Then, just one year after these three blockbusters, Bela Lugosi - Dracula himself - stars in "White Zombie."
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UNIDENTIFIED VOICE ACTOR #1: From Haiti, land of the Voodoo, comes the most infamous53 cult21 of all, the sinister54 power behind the "White Zombie."
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SYLVAIN: You have a white couple. Again, you know, you cannot have a honeymoon55 without going to paradise. Right? (Laughter). You have to go to a place that is exotic. Right? So you have this, you know, white couple going to Haiti. And the first thing they encounter upon their arrival is a group of males walking away from a plantation without any kind of life force - walking as if they are, like, robots.
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UNIDENTIFIED VOICE ACTOR #1: This soul-killer56 takes men from their graves to be his slaves.
SYLVAIN: The innocent white couple have never seen anything like that. And the coachman had to tell them, you know, be careful; these are zombies. And the moment they heard this word, they're like, well, zombies - what?
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JOHN HARRON: (As Neil Parker) Zombies?
LUGOSI: (As Murder Legendre) Yes. They are my servants.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: A wealthy plantation owner falls in love with the woman, Madeline, and wants her for himself. He turns to a Voodoo priest named Murder - seriously - who tells him that to get Madeline, she has to be turned into a zombie. So they poison her, bring her back to life, and chaos57 ensues. But naturally, all ends well for the white couple. The evil Voodoo priest is killed, Madeline's zombie spell is broken, and she and her husband live happily ever after.
SYLVAIN: That became the sensation in Hollywood in the 1930s.
KILBOURNE: And this becomes a genre of American films made out of Hollywood that are set in the Caribbean and that speak to Americans' fears of racialized others rising up in protest. And the whole space - the Caribbean space in which these are shot is sort of this primitive58, creepy, superstitious59, borderline diabolical60 space.
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KAPLAN-LEVENSON: "White Zombie" inspired many more of these exploitative horror films. "Maniac62" came out in 1934. "Revolt Of The Zombies," a type of loose sequel to "White Zombie," came out in 1936. "King Of The Zombies" came out in 1941.
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MANTAN MORELAND: (As Jeff) (Unintelligible) Big black ones with frozen faces - with eyes that look at you and they don't see nothing.
JOHN ARCHER63: (As Bill) What's he talking about?
MORELAND: (As Jeff) Oh, zombies. Mr. Bill, let's get out of here. Why, this place is a walking cemetery64.
ARCHER: (As Bill) Wait a minute.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: And "I Walked With A Zombie" came out in 1943.
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UNIDENTIFIED VOICE ACTOR #2: And out of their West Indian island comes a tale of terror and Voodoo, of witchcraft65 and zombies and all the weird66 black magic that the white man seldom sees.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters, singing in foreign language).
MCALISTER: These early Hollywood representations of zombies really are a great example of what the late and great Toni Morrison called American Africanism, which was her word to talk about, like, the ways that African peoples have come to signify and be misread by Eurocentric and American intellectuals. So it's, like, white Americans' projections67 onto black people.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: This first iteration of the American zombie narrative goes strong for a solid decade. And then, after World War II, as the U.S. entered into the Cold War era, the zombie trope slowly starts to morph away from the Caribbean, away from the backwards68 Voodoo practitioner69 and straight for the mad scientist.
MCALISTER: From the 1940s to the 1960s, Hollywood produced a slew70 of what got called trash films. And they featured mutated or hybrid71 monsters. And in these trash films, a lot of them were mutants because they had been subject to radioactivity.
SYLVAIN: Then the zombie becomes a ghoul - right? - that is, this person who was dead, with flesh kind of dripping and worms coming out the eye socket72 and so forth. That became the desirable theme.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: This is the zombie era of experiments gone wrong. You've got sci-fi films like "Teenage Zombies"...
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UNIDENTIFIED VOICE ACTOR #3: Never before has man been transformed into such hideous73 proportions. Never have teenage girls been subjected to the terrifying ordeal74 in the fantastic room of torture.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: ...And "The Last Man On Earth," which is based on the novel "I Am Legend."
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KAPLAN-LEVENSON: And then, out of nowhere, a newbie filmmaker came onto the scene and changed everything. George Romero was a few years out of college when he and some buddies75 wrote and directed their first feature length film.
(SOUNDBITE OF "NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD" TRAILER)
UNIDENTIFIED VOICE ACTOR #4: "Night Of The Living Dead" - the dead who live on living flesh.
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KELLY BAKER76: So his first movie, which set the tone for how we understand zombies now, was "Night Of The Living Dead" in 1968.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: This is Kelly Baker.
BAKER: I have a Ph.D. in religious studies, and I've written a short book on zombies and zombie apocalypses in American culture.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: "Night Of The Living Dead" took a new approach to the zombie narrative.
MCALISTER: There's a zombie outbreak. There's some contagious77 disease. And a little band of survivors78 who don't know each other hole up in a farmhouse79 in the middle of rural America. It's really brilliantly shot in this one little space that's one little farmhouse. And it's so creepy because it's this bucolic80, you know, farmhouse. And there's a cemetery nearby, and it's just Americana. And yet, the world of America is in the process of total collapse.
BAKER: And later what we find out in this is that space radiation is causing corpses81 to rise. And then they target humans.
MCALISTER: They all are freaking out, and there's zombies coming at them. And you see, you know, this - the drama of a band of survivors trying to figure out - who's the leader? What do we do? Whom do we follow?
And so the hero of that film is the black American student named Ben. Clearly, Ben has the best plan and is most capable. And yet, the white guy doesn't want to take orders from Ben.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: And most of the zombies are white.
BAKER: Which is again, you know, different from some of those earlier incarnations. It is very much this kind of inversion82 of that - right? - so that we move from Haitian zombies, black bodies who are zombies into a lead character who is human and complicated and contradictory83 and is trying to survive the zombies.
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BAKER: It pretty much is - when society falls apart, what happens? And Romero's answer is humans are terrible. (Laughter).
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BAKER: It's a film that you can't watch without thinking about black-and-white race relations. It's unavoidable because of the way that Ben comes into conflict with other white characters, because of the way the film ends. And I want to ruin it for people that haven't seen it, but it does not go well for Ben. So it is a very different take and, I would argue, a very kind of radical84 political take.
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KAPLAN-LEVENSON: The funny thing is the word zombie is actually never uttered in Romero's first movie - not once.
BAKER: He calls them things instead of zombies.
MCALISTER: You know, the public decided85 that this is what these figures were. And so the public called them zombies, and the name stuck.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: Ten years after his first film, Romero returned to his zombie apocalypse roots with "Dawn Of The Dead."
BAKER: I might even argue that "Dawn Of The Dead" might be his best one. I think there are people who would fight me about that. But you know, this is a great film, too. Right? It actually starts with a racist86 cop just shooting black and brown people.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "DAWN OF THE DEAD")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Look out (ph).
(SOUNDBITE OF AMMUNITION87 FIRING, CRASHES)
BAKER: So we're picking up those themes from the earlier movie about race. But also, it's a movie that becomes about consumerism.
MCALISTER: The survivors have to shelter in a shopping mall, and so Romero is really critiquing the hyper consumption that America is beginning to put itself into and the banality88 of consumption, the banality of the mall.
BAKER: Maybe the mall is a problem and capitalism89 is a problem.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "DAWN OF THE DEAD")
GAYLEN ROSS: (As Fran) They're still here.
DAVID EMGE: (As Steve) They're after us. They know we're still in here.
KEN27 FOREE: (As Peter) They're after the place. They don't know why. They just remember - remember that they want to be in here.
ROSS: (As Fran) What the hell are they?
FOREE: (As Peter) They're us. That's all.
MCALISTER: One of the survivors, whose name is Peter, you know, he says something like...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "DAWN OF THE DEAD")
FOREE: (As Peter) When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.
MCALISTER: So the idea is that the zombies are inhabitants of hell, which is somehow backed up and overflowed90 into the malls (laughter).
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: Peter says this as he and his fellow survivors are watching the zombies pressed up against the locked sliding doors outside of the mall, trying to claw their way in.
BAKER: I do love - right? - that you just have zombies kind of wandering around at the mall in the ways that I'm sure that lots of us spend some time just kind of aimlessly wandering around the mall - right? - that all of us capitalism is around us. And that - we might not even be engaging or something, but there's something about that space that draws us in - that these zombies come back to the places that comfort them. And the place that comforts them, of course, is the place they would shop.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: Romero continues to poke91 holes in the status quo with his third film in the series, "Day Of The Dead."
MCALISTER: It's set in this underground military bunker and so Romero is critiquing the over militarization of the country. And he's critiquing kind of military blind following of orders and military becoming out of control and out of civilian92 hands. Romero's brilliant because he's an anti-establishment filmmaker. Right? And so these films are all parables93 about the corruption94 in America, about consumerism, about racism95 - which then become cult classics.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: When we come back, how a cult series turned into a nationwide obsession and what that means about us.
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HENRY: Hi. My name's Henry (ph), and I like zombies because I just like all scary things. And I like them even more after I watched "Thriller96."
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: "Thriller." Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MICHAEL JACKSON SONG, "THRILLER")
VINCENT PRICE: The foulest97 stenches in the air, the funk of 40,000 years...
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: You can't talk about zombies in the '80s without talking about Michael Jackson's "Thriller." In the music video, Jackson and his date walk through the dark streets as bodies rise from graves and tombs - until Jackson leads the undead in one of the most groundbreaking and iconic dance numbers of all time.
(SOUNDBITE OF MICHAEL JACKSON SONG, "THRILLER")
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: Around the same time, Dunkin' Donuts came out with what might be its most iconic commercial.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MICHAEL VALE: (As Fred the Baker) Time to make the doughnuts - the doughnuts.
SYLVAIN: Time to make the doughnuts (laughter). Right?
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: Patrick Sylvain loves this commercial.
SYLVAIN: The baker automatically gets up, sort of arms raised. And the first thing that he says is, time to make the doughnuts.
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VALE: (As Fred the Baker) Time to make the doughnuts. Time to make the doughnuts.
UNIDENTIFIED VOICE ACTOR #5: Great doughnut-makers aren't born; they're made.
VALE: (As Fred the Baker) I made the doughnuts.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: By the way, there are more than five variations of this commercial made over the course of the '80s, so Patrick is not alone in his love for the doughnut zombie.
But once we hit the '90s, all things zombie took a plunge98.
BAKER: Part of why we don't have zombies quite in that time period is that there are other monsters that are more popular. Right? Like, there are other concerns here that folks have.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: Mainly, serial99 killers100.
BAKER: Like, I feel like all the films are about some kind of serial killer. Right?
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: So then what brings zombies back in vogue101 and when?
BAKER: After 2001 until, like, 2012, there are over 200 zombie films made. So there's something that happens in 2001 - right? - that really motivates this - Sept. 11.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BAKER: That very much captured the American psyche102 in that moment. Terrorism is something that can happen on the ground where you are. It's not something that happens really far away. There is this deep concern about what other people might do to us. Right?
So when you look at zombies and this threat that they pose, you can't reason with them. Right? You can't reason with a zombie and convince them not to attack you. You can't predict what they're going to do. You can't prevent it. That really works with the lingering nervousness over something like terrorism.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: And with that, the zombie trope took another turn.
BAKER: After 2001, it's definitely a shift to where the concern is we're frightened of other people.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BAKER: There is an axis103 of evil out there that wants to do us harm. And so it's very much that the threat comes from outside, not from within.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: And it was during this time that the president of the United States told us to go to the mall.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT GEORGE W BUSH: We cannot let the terrorists achieve the objective of frightening our nation to the point where we don't - where we don't conduct business, where people don't shop. That's - that's their intention.
SYLVAIN: Go shopping (laughter) - right? - you know, because they did not want what happened in 9/11 to disrupt the economy. Right? Then go shopping, you know? It's not like, well, go and read books (laughter) - you know, go visit your neighbors - but it's go shopping.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: 9/11 set off a whole new level of zombie mania61. This craze got so big that there was room for zombie parodies104, with movies like "Shaun Of The Dead" and, I kid you not, "Poultrygeist: Night Of The Chicken Dead."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "'POULTRYGEIST'")
CALIMARI SAFARI105: (Singing) 'Cause this is Poultrygeist, where the blood keeps spilling. This is Poultrygeist, where there's lots of killing106. You'll be eaten alive by zombie chickens tonight.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: It's also a time when people started prepping for a zombie apocalypse. So why, almost a hundred years after the first zombie movie, are we all still so hungry for these flesh-eating monsters?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: I love zombies 'cause I just love how it brings out people - like, people in this really basic primitive form where you see people end up becoming just as evil as the monsters around them and...
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: Just last week, we asked THROUGHLINE listeners why you love zombies so much, and you delivered.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: It's all about how human nature comes forth in an environment where social rules collapse and pandemics, which humans have an innate107 fear of. We're terrified of sicknesses.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: It's a character style that doesn't seem to be going away any time soon, and I think that's because it's so malleable108. You can kind of make it into a lot of different things.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: The invincibility109 of zombies seems to be that they can take on any desired meaning. They can shapeshift into almost anything we want them to.
BAKER: So it can be about consumerism with this all-consuming monster. It can be about bioterrorism and corporations who are negligent110. It can be about epidemics111 and how they can ravage112 us in some sort of way.
MCALISTER: But the zombie also is, you know, the hordes113 of brown people at the border. The zombie is a cipher114. The zombie, by definition, has no consciousness. The zombie is this empty category into which you can load meaning.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: Elizabeth says there's one consistent theme that keeps zombies relevant. It's always there, looming115 in the background or sometimes right up in your face and speaks to one of our most fundamental fears.
MCALISTER: Which is that we are all going to die and that everyone who's ever lived dies. So the zombie figure forces the living to face the condition of death, and - which is what religion is there to help humanity do, but the United States is becoming more and more secular116. This is a kind of a secular way to contend with, think about, imagine, dress up like and confront the human condition of dying.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: Something that may be on our minds more than usual these days.
MCALISTER: Certainly now more than ever, humans are facing the realities of climate change and of the degradation117 of the ecosystem118, and the idea of apocalypse is on the minds of humanity.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: At the same time, because zombies are now everywhere, they've kind of casually119 integrated themselves into our everyday existence. People have zombie-themed weddings, go on zombie-themed cruises. The CDC has a gag zombie preparedness page on its Web site. And then, of course, there are the people who are just living their best zombie lives.
MCALISTER: One time, I was walking down the street in Manhattan, and I saw this woman dressed up as a zombie bride, and, of course, being me, I decided I would follow her. And she went into Macy's, and she was walking around Macy's. And, like, she's this beautiful young woman all dressed up in a real wedding gown, and she's made herself up like a bride except that there's blood everywhere.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: And you were just like, hi. I happen to be a zombie scholar.
MCALISTER: Exactly.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: Can we talk?
MCALISTER: Hi. I'm a zombie scholar. Can I follow you wherever you're going? She's like, sure. I'm going to Macy's. Come along.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: Everyone that I interviewed for this story is clearly fascinated with zombies, but to be honest, they're also a little fatigued120 by the oversaturation and disheartened by a lack of substance - something Kelly says zombies have gradually been losing post-Romero.
BAKER: George Romero has radical political commentary. It's very much about Americans. It's very much about the racial state in America. It's about the consumerist state. It's about thinking about what we're doing, the systems that we're inhabiting, how they're oppressive. When zombies are everywhere, maybe they've lost some of their radical power. Where they might have been subversive121, now they're just mainstream122. I mean, if Disney can have a movie about zombies in which a zombie and a cheerleader who is human fall in love...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SOMEDAY")
MILO MANHEIM: (Singing) I know it might be crazy, but did you hear the story?
MEG DONNELLY: (Singing) I think I heard it vaguely123.
MANHEIM: (Singing) A girl and a zombie...
BAKER: I really feel like we've reached a point where the radical commentary is gone (laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SOMEDAY")
MANHEIM AND DONNELLY: (Singing) Oh, what could go so wrong with a girl and a zombie?
MANHEIM: (Singing) You're from the perfect paradise.
KAPLAN-LEVENSON: Patrick worries that Haiti and the original meaning of the zombie is getting lost in all of this. The American zombie, that brain-eating ghoul, has been exported all over the world. But he wonders how many people know that this horror figure is rooted in his country's history.
SYLVAIN: Once we've had this globalized figure of the zombie, then the question becomes, who owns it? Does it really belong to Haiti? No. The zombie, again, is a wonderful trope, but we must not forget where it came from, its essence. To lose the genesis of the zombie within trans-Atlantic slavery, that would be a problem.
(SOUNDBITE OF DROP ELECTRIC'S "SANTO DOMINGO")
ABDELFATAH: That's it for this week's show. I'm Rund Abdelfatah.
ARABLOUEI: I'm Ramtin Arablouei, and you've been listening to THROUGHLINE from NPR.
ABDELFATAH: This episode was produced by me.
ARABLOUEI: And me and...
ABDELFATAH: Laine Kaplan-Levenson.
ARABLOUEI: Jamie York.
ABDELFATAH: Lu Olkowski.
ARABLOUEI: Lawrence Wu.
ABDELFATAH: Jordana Hochman.
ARABLOUEI: And Njeri Eaton.
ABDELFATAH: Fact-checking for this episode was done by Kevin Volkl.
ARABLOUEI: Thanks also to Anya Grundmann.
ABDELFATAH: And we want to give a special shout out Ramtin's bandmates in Drop Electric.
ANYA MIZANI: Anya Mizani.
NAVID MARVI: Navid Marvi.
ABDELFATAH: Thank you for the amazing music you help make every week.
ARABLOUEI: If you liked something you heard or you have an idea for an episode, please write us at [email protected] or hit us up on Twitter @ThroughlineNPR.
ABDELFATAH: Thanks for listening.
1 forth | |
adv.向前;向外,往外 | |
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2 fully | |
adv.完全地,全部地,彻底地;充分地 | |
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3 countless | |
adj.无数的,多得不计其数的 | |
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4 genre | |
n.(文学、艺术等的)类型,体裁,风格 | |
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5 defense | |
n.防御,保卫;[pl.]防务工事;辩护,答辩 | |
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6 apocalyptic | |
adj.预示灾祸的,启示的 | |
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7 scenario | |
n.剧本,脚本;概要 | |
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8 fascination | |
n.令人着迷的事物,魅力,迷恋 | |
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9 drawn | |
v.拖,拉,拔出;adj.憔悴的,紧张的 | |
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10 byline | |
n.署名;v.署名 | |
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11 obsession | |
n.困扰,无法摆脱的思想(或情感) | |
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12 indigo | |
n.靛青,靛蓝 | |
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13 collapse | |
vi.累倒;昏倒;倒塌;塌陷 | |
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14 collapsed | |
adj.倒塌的 | |
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15 coma | |
n.昏迷,昏迷状态 | |
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16 seizure | |
n.没收;占有;抵押 | |
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17 jealousy | |
n.妒忌,嫉妒,猜忌 | |
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18 vividly | |
adv.清楚地,鲜明地,生动地 | |
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19 narration | |
n.讲述,叙述;故事;记叙体 | |
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20 coax | |
v.哄诱,劝诱,用诱哄得到,诱取 | |
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21 cult | |
n.异教,邪教;时尚,狂热的崇拜 | |
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22 equate | |
v.同等看待,使相等 | |
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23 plantation | |
n.种植园,大农场 | |
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24 brutal | |
adj.残忍的,野蛮的,不讲理的 | |
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25 literally | |
adv.照字面意义,逐字地;确实 | |
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26 labor | |
n.劳动,努力,工作,劳工;分娩;vi.劳动,努力,苦干;vt.详细分析;麻烦 | |
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27 ken | |
n.视野,知识领域 | |
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28 docile | |
adj.驯服的,易控制的,容易教的 | |
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29 automaton | |
n.自动机器,机器人 | |
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30 symbolically | |
ad.象征地,象征性地 | |
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31 deity | |
n.神,神性;被奉若神明的人(或物) | |
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32 corpse | |
n.尸体,死尸 | |
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33 interpretations | |
n.解释( interpretation的名词复数 );表演;演绎;理解 | |
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34 allude | |
v.提及,暗指 | |
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35 remains | |
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹 | |
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36 indigenous | |
adj.土产的,土生土长的,本地的 | |
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37 quotas | |
(正式限定的)定量( quota的名词复数 ); 定额; 指标; 摊派 | |
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38 injustice | |
n.非正义,不公正,不公平,侵犯(别人的)权利 | |
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39 plantations | |
n.种植园,大农场( plantation的名词复数 ) | |
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40 reminder | |
n.提醒物,纪念品;暗示,提示 | |
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41 turmoil | |
n.骚乱,混乱,动乱 | |
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42 stabilize | |
vt.(使)稳定,使稳固,使稳定平衡;vi.稳定 | |
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43 unpaid | |
adj.未付款的,无报酬的 | |
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44 autonomous | |
adj.自治的;独立的 | |
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45 cane | |
n.手杖,细长的茎,藤条;v.以杖击,以藤编制的 | |
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46 semblance | |
n.外貌,外表 | |
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47 drudge | |
n.劳碌的人;v.做苦工,操劳 | |
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48 embellished | |
v.美化( embellish的过去式和过去分词 );装饰;修饰;润色 | |
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49 portrayal | |
n.饰演;描画 | |
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50 savagery | |
n.野性 | |
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51 civilizing | |
v.使文明,使开化( civilize的现在分词 ) | |
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52 narrative | |
n.叙述,故事;adj.叙事的,故事体的 | |
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53 infamous | |
adj.声名狼藉的,臭名昭著的,邪恶的 | |
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54 sinister | |
adj.不吉利的,凶恶的,左边的 | |
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55 honeymoon | |
n.蜜月(假期);vi.度蜜月 | |
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56 killer | |
n.杀人者,杀人犯,杀手,屠杀者 | |
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57 chaos | |
n.混乱,无秩序 | |
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58 primitive | |
adj.原始的;简单的;n.原(始)人,原始事物 | |
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59 superstitious | |
adj.迷信的 | |
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60 diabolical | |
adj.恶魔似的,凶暴的 | |
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61 mania | |
n.疯狂;躁狂症,狂热,癖好 | |
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62 maniac | |
n.精神癫狂的人;疯子 | |
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63 archer | |
n.射手,弓箭手 | |
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64 cemetery | |
n.坟墓,墓地,坟场 | |
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65 witchcraft | |
n.魔法,巫术 | |
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66 weird | |
adj.古怪的,离奇的;怪诞的,神秘而可怕的 | |
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67 projections | |
预测( projection的名词复数 ); 投影; 投掷; 突起物 | |
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68 backwards | |
adv.往回地,向原处,倒,相反,前后倒置地 | |
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69 practitioner | |
n.实践者,从事者;(医生或律师等)开业者 | |
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70 slew | |
v.(使)旋转;n.大量,许多 | |
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71 hybrid | |
n.(动,植)杂种,混合物 | |
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72 socket | |
n.窝,穴,孔,插座,插口 | |
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73 hideous | |
adj.丑陋的,可憎的,可怕的,恐怖的 | |
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74 ordeal | |
n.苦难经历,(尤指对品格、耐力的)严峻考验 | |
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75 buddies | |
n.密友( buddy的名词复数 );同伴;弟兄;(用于称呼男子,常带怒气)家伙v.(如密友、战友、伙伴、弟兄般)交往( buddy的第三人称单数 );做朋友;亲近(…);伴护艾滋病人 | |
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76 baker | |
n.面包师 | |
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77 contagious | |
adj.传染性的,有感染力的 | |
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78 survivors | |
幸存者,残存者,生还者( survivor的名词复数 ) | |
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79 farmhouse | |
n.农场住宅(尤指主要住房) | |
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80 bucolic | |
adj.乡村的;牧羊的 | |
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81 corpses | |
n.死尸,尸体( corpse的名词复数 ) | |
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82 inversion | |
n.反向,倒转,倒置 | |
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83 contradictory | |
adj.反驳的,反对的,抗辩的;n.正反对,矛盾对立 | |
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84 radical | |
n.激进份子,原子团,根号;adj.根本的,激进的,彻底的 | |
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85 decided | |
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的 | |
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86 racist | |
n.种族主义者,种族主义分子 | |
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87 ammunition | |
n.军火,弹药 | |
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88 banality | |
n.陈腐;平庸;陈词滥调 | |
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89 capitalism | |
n.资本主义 | |
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90 overflowed | |
溢出的 | |
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91 poke | |
n.刺,戳,袋;vt.拨开,刺,戳;vi.戳,刺,捅,搜索,伸出,行动散慢 | |
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92 civilian | |
adj.平民的,民用的,民众的 | |
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93 parables | |
n.(圣经中的)寓言故事( parable的名词复数 ) | |
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94 corruption | |
n.腐败,堕落,贪污 | |
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95 racism | |
n.民族主义;种族歧视(意识) | |
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96 thriller | |
n.惊险片,恐怖片 | |
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97 foulest | |
adj.恶劣的( foul的最高级 );邪恶的;难闻的;下流的 | |
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98 plunge | |
v.跳入,(使)投入,(使)陷入;猛冲 | |
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99 serial | |
n.连本影片,连本电视节目;adj.连续的 | |
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100 killers | |
凶手( killer的名词复数 ); 消灭…者; 致命物; 极难的事 | |
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101 Vogue | |
n.时髦,时尚;adj.流行的 | |
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102 psyche | |
n.精神;灵魂 | |
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103 axis | |
n.轴,轴线,中心线;坐标轴,基准线 | |
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104 parodies | |
n.拙劣的模仿( parody的名词复数 );恶搞;滑稽的模仿诗文;表面上模仿得笨拙但充满了机智用来嘲弄别人作品的作品v.滑稽地模仿,拙劣地模仿( parody的第三人称单数 ) | |
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105 safari | |
n.远征旅行(探险、考察);探险队,狩猎队 | |
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106 killing | |
n.巨额利润;突然赚大钱,发大财 | |
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107 innate | |
adj.天生的,固有的,天赋的 | |
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108 malleable | |
adj.(金属)可锻的;有延展性的;(性格)可训练的 | |
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109 invincibility | |
n.无敌,绝对不败 | |
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110 negligent | |
adj.疏忽的;玩忽的;粗心大意的 | |
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111 epidemics | |
n.流行病 | |
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112 ravage | |
vt.使...荒废,破坏...;n.破坏,掠夺,荒废 | |
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113 hordes | |
n.移动着的一大群( horde的名词复数 );部落 | |
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114 cipher | |
n.零;无影响力的人;密码 | |
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115 looming | |
n.上现蜃景(光通过低层大气发生异常折射形成的一种海市蜃楼)v.隐约出现,阴森地逼近( loom的现在分词 );隐约出现,阴森地逼近 | |
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116 secular | |
n.牧师,凡人;adj.世俗的,现世的,不朽的 | |
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117 degradation | |
n.降级;低落;退化;陵削;降解;衰变 | |
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118 ecosystem | |
n.生态系统 | |
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119 casually | |
adv.漠不关心地,无动于衷地,不负责任地 | |
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120 fatigued | |
adj. 疲乏的 | |
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121 subversive | |
adj.颠覆性的,破坏性的;n.破坏份子,危险份子 | |
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122 mainstream | |
n.(思想或行为的)主流;adj.主流的 | |
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123 vaguely | |
adv.含糊地,暖昧地 | |
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