By STEPHEN FRAGANO
COLUMNIST
Having heard the great reviews recieved by the AMC original series “The Walking Dead,” my girlfriend and I practically felt obligated to begin watching the show from the very beginning of the first season.
After being captivated by the ever-expanding storylines and intriguing character developments, I had a moment to ponder the show. Basically, the show is nothing more than a unique take on the zombie genre which encountered its heyday in the ’80s. It is not necessarily revolutionary in terms of subject matter or presentation.
The zombie genre, however, is not the only genre to make a comeback. Vampires have also become all the rage in the past few years with the Twilight saga flying off bookshelves and appearing on the silver screen all around the world. Although much of America’s youth today is familiar with the vampire genre, its inception is by no means recent. Bram Stoker’s Dracula was published in 1897 — over 100 years before the whole vampire fad began.
Even old children’s fables such as
“Jack and the Beanstalk” have been called upon again, with a new movie called Jack the Giant Slayer in theaters. So why exactly are creations like zombies, vampires and storybook heroes recycled again and again? Are people nowadays lacking creativity?
Various studies done by scholars suggest that only seven basic story plots exist. That is it.
Therefore, it is impossible to be totally original in any form of storytelling. A storyteller is forced to make new inventions and new variations on the limited amount of possibilities there are in an attempt to make it his or her own work.
In a way, the best storytellers are people that can take something old or already done and make it relevant and captivating for the newest generation of consumers.
This principle does not only pertain to storytelling. Other fields, such as fashion, encounter resurgences of things that have already been done in the past.
It seems that this disappearance and reappearance of things is the way of the world, and historians even use the old mantra, “Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it,” to show the importance of being well-versed in the past.
So, the reappearance of zombies, vampires and even a little boy who climbs beanstalks, is not Hollywood’s way of slacking off; things are simply following the usual ebb and flow of history and storytelling, which occurs in the context of popular culture.
The reality for today’s storytellers is one of uneasiness. Creating a personal, unique, interesting style is essential, but there is an extremely good chance that a previous artist’s work will be rehashed, albeit in a new light.
The fact of the matter is that what is old is new again.