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I was watching a docu on Horror movies of the '60's and 70's and during a discussion of the Romero oeuvre, someone claimed that cannibalism is a primal fear going back to when we are small and adult make omnomnom noises and say things like, "What a cute baby, I could just eat it up!" This got me thinking about zombies and primal fears. As far as I can tell, I have no fear of cannibalism at all, no primal horror. Instead, for me, zombies represent the loss of identity, of rationality, of self. They shuffle along like Alzheimer's patients, laking any real knowledge of who they are, but following ingrained patterns and basic urges. That's horrifying, really. so is the idea of someone one has loved, changed into something else, malevolent and dangerous; I've been there RL so many times. Then there is the crowd element. As someone who's had a small mob of people all trying to touch me, to grab me, that aspect of zombies harks to something real and unnerving. Mobs can rip you apart if they love you as well as hate you and there is something in obsession that seeks to destroy and make over the person that sparked the obsession. Mobs and the loss of identity is for me a much more potent thing than the simple fear of cannibalism. The cannibalism here symbolizes for me subsumption of the self to the mob mind.

What do people think?