曾几何时，一个名为《植物大战僵尸》的小游戏让对《生化危机》习以为常的游戏迷重新燃起对僵尸的“热爱”。2010年底，改编自同名漫画的史上第一部僵尸美剧《行尸走肉》（The Walking Dead）在网上掀起了收看热潮，电影《生化危机4》横扫全球银幕——还在为《暮色》里的吸血鬼神魂颠倒？好莱坞已经找到它的新宠儿啦！
At George Mason University, 1)Anthropology 396 is called, simply, “Zombies.” The guy behind the class is Professor Jeffrey Mantz, and he says zombies are pretty hot right now.
在（美国）乔治梅森大学，人类学第396号课程简单来说就是“僵尸学”。负责这门课的就是杰弗里·曼茨教授。他说，如今僵尸可受欢迎呢。
Mantz: Zombies are on fire.
曼茨：僵尸正风靡一时。
In a huge 2)auditorium, Professor Mantz is 3)miked, lecturing to an audience of a couple hundred students.
在一间巨大的礼堂里，曼茨教授用麦克风为两百多名学生讲课。
Mantz: This class was…didn't result merely because I had an interest in it. It resulted from the students constantly 4)pestering me about it for the last two years… So when Professor Mantz created his zombie class, he thought he'd get about 50 students.
曼茨：这个班……并不仅仅是因为我对僵尸感兴趣才设立的，而是因为在过去的两年里，不断有学生缠着我要学习这方面的内容…… 所以，当曼茨教授设立僵尸课时，他原以为大概只能收到50名学生。
Mantz: I got 50 within a few days, and pretty soon, we had 235. So they just came in 5)hordes.
曼茨：我在几天时间里就收了50人，很快我们就有235个学生。他们一群一群地涌了进来。
Baughman: Like zombies?
鲍曼：就像僵尸一样？
Mantz: Like zombies.
曼茨：就像僵尸一样。
So Professor Mantz built his 6)curriculum. And it may sound like an easy-A elective, but the 7)syllabus is actually pretty 8)rigorous. Students have to read texts like The Political Lives of Dead Bodies. And sometimes the course is more like a history class.
于是曼茨教授制定了课程表。虽然它听起来像是一门很容易得“优”的选修课，实际上其教学大纲相当严谨。学生必须阅读《死人的政治生命》之类的材料。有时候，这门课更像是一门历史课。
Mantz: Zombies ha[ve] an interesting history in the Caribbean. A zombie is historically a…a slave. It's somebody who's possessed. It has 9)myriad meanings in the 10)Haitian context, but...
曼茨：僵尸在加勒比海地区有一段有趣的历史。在历史上，僵尸其实是……一个奴隶，指的是受控于人者。在海地语中，它的涵义很丰富，不过……
So that's where you can trace zombies back to: Haiti and the idea of Haitian voodoo注1, where subjects were put into a mindless 11)trance and controlled. And that's pretty much what zombies were in American culture, until...
所以你可以由此追溯僵尸的过去——海地和海地人的伏都教（巫毒）文化，让目标进入无意识的恍惚状态并加以控制。在过去的美国文化里，僵尸基本上就是这个样子，直到……
Mantz: Beginning in 1968, you see a shift that takes place with Romero's Night of the Living Dead注2. And now zombies are essentially walking 12)ghouls, the kinds of figures that you would see in like Michael Jackson's Thriller video or something.
曼茨：从1968年开始，你可以看到在罗梅罗的电影《活死人之夜》里发生的转变。如今的僵尸基本上就是会走路的食尸鬼，你可以从迈克尔·杰克逊的音乐录像《颤栗》之类的作品中看到这种形象。
Professor Mantz says zombies changed from mindless ghouls into something more 13)sinister during the Cold War when everyone had nuclear 14)annihilation on the mind.
曼茨教授说，在冷战时期，核毁灭的阴影导致人心惶惶，僵尸也顺应时势地从不会思考的食尸鬼变成了更危险的存在。
Mantz: Concerns about radiation and 15)radiological objects falling back to Earth. So you have Night of the Living Dead, which is a 16)reflection of those anxieties and fears put on the screen. At…at the time, that film was regarded as the most terrifying film ever made.
曼茨：人们对辐射和落回地球的放射物感到担心。所以你可以看到《活死人之夜》将这种焦虑和恐惧的情绪投射在银幕上。在……当时，它被认为是有史以来最恐怖的电影。
And you'll notice right here, everyone laughs. They think the old zombies from 1968 are mostly funny. But this?
你也注意到了吧，每个人都笑了起来。他们认为1968年的老僵尸还挺有趣的。但这一部呢？
The same 230 students watching a modern zombie movie, 28 Days Later—total silence. Then when the modern zombies attack, they're fast, 17)vicious and terrifying, and Professor Mantz says there's a reason for that.
同样是这230名学生，他们正在观看一部当代僵尸电影《惊变28天》——全场鸦雀无声。当现代僵尸发动攻击时，它们的行动迅速、狠毒而可怕。曼茨教授说，这种变化是有原因的。
Mantz: That more or less reflects another kind of social phenomena associated with the digital age, with globalization, with things speeding up, the…the 18)hyper-speed of the Internet…
曼茨：这或多或少反映了另一种社会现象，与现在这个数字时代有关，还有全球化、生活加速……网络超高速等等。
In other words, if everything else is fast, why shouldn't zombies be, too? And students seem to prefer those zombies. It's a fast world they live in, after all.
换句话来说，如果生活节奏加快了，僵尸为什么不能快起来呢？学生们似乎更喜欢这样的僵尸，毕竟他们生活在一个快节奏的社会里。
Student: Especially people nowadays are so attached to, like, texting on their phones, and they walk around, like, run into, like, street signs, like, they're like a type of zombie. So it's kind of terrifying, too.
学生：特别是现代人都如此依赖科技，比如专心发短信，他们走路时很容易撞上路牌，就像他们也是某种僵尸，所以这挺吓人的。
Professor Mantz did send me off with a list of eight things you need to know about zombies. This is item seven: MOST WILL EAT YOU IF YOU GET TOO CLOSE. In fact, a large proportion of those who study zombies argue that they are basically a 19)metaphor for 20)consumption.
曼茨教授确实发了一张表单给我，上面列举了你需要知道的僵尸“八项注意”。以下是第七条：如果你靠得太近，大多数僵尸都会把你吃掉。事实上，许多僵尸研究者都认为僵尸从根本上说来就是对消费主义的一种比喻。
注1：伏都教（voodoo）又译作“巫毒教”，源于非洲西部，是糅合祖先崇拜、万物有灵论和通灵术的原始宗教。巫毒信仰中最著名、最恐怖的特色就是利用河豚毒素制造活死人，即僵尸。
注2：乔治·A·罗梅罗（George A. Romero, 1940-），促成现代恐怖电影革新的世界僵尸电影之父，其僵尸三部曲——《活死人之夜》（Night of the Living Dead, 1968）、《活死人黎明》（Dawn of the Dead, 1979）及《丧尸出笼》（Day of the Dead, 1986）——不但成了僵尸电影的里程碑，还对现代僵尸进行了准确定义。