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Samuel Webster

Mr. Hellmers

English Composition 1201

20 June 2021

The Undying Zombie of War and Violence

Few remixes stay as true to their original tune as the Bad Wolves's version of Zombie.

Originally written in protest of the 1993 Warrington bombings, Zombie has highlighted the

cyclical nature of violence and the disastrous consequences that it can have on the world. The

Bad Wolves’s version of the song serves to reach a younger audience while preserving the

original’s message. It puts a modern tune on The Cranberries classic while paying homage to

the song's original creator. The Bad Wolves’s version underscores the fact that the same

violence and war that occurred at the time of the original song, still continues to this very day,

just in other forms and places.

The original Zombie song was a protest song in response to the deaths of two children

and the injury of 56 other people in the Warrington Bombings. The bombs, planted in a crowded

shopping area, were placed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (I.R.A) in an attempt to put

pressure on Great Britain to remove British troops from Northern Ireland. When Dolores

O'Riordan, the lead singer of The Cranberries and an Irish native, heard of the attack, she wrote

Zombie in protest of the IRA’s bombings. Listening to the lyrics, we can hear the line “Child is

slowly taken” in reference to the lives of the children taken in the attacks. With its many

references to the destruction war can cause, the song makes clear its aim towards a wide

audience, society itself, to show first-hand what violence and war can do to communities.
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The Bad Wolves’s version of the song seeks to retain the message of the original

version of Zombie while modernizing the tune and lyrics for a younger audience. The original

Cranberries version had the line “It's the same old theme since nineteen-sixteen” in reference to

when the I.R.A seized several locations in Dublin from British Troops in 1916. Bad Wolves

replaced this line with the line “It's the same old theme in 2018” to indicate that the violence

described in the original version continues to this day. The Bad Wolves also replaced the word

“guns” for “drones” in the line “With their tanks, and their bombs, and their bombs, and their

guns”. Replacing the word “guns” for “drones” serves both as a reference to modern technology

in warfare and the current wars in the Middle East where drone-related attacks are common.

Phonetically, both songs don’t stray too far off from one another. However, the Bad Wolves’s

version has a distinctly smooth, modern sound to it and the musical style leans more towards

the rock genre. In contrast, The Cranberries version is rawer and the singer’s wavering voice

gives it a distinct sound. Although the Bad Wolves version has some musical differences, the

differences aren’t necessarily meant to alter the meaning of the song, but rather to appeal to a

newer and younger audience.

From a filmographic point of view, each version of the song’s video is completely

different. The Cranberries version of the song focuses on the outside world in their video,

depicting a community ravaged by war. It shows soldiers walking around the streets, dirty

children pretend-fighting, and dogs gnawing at bones. The video acts as a reminder of the

destruction that war and violence can cause in the world and emphasizes the song’s message.

In particular, the shots of the young children pretending to fight with guns and sticks in the

middle of a half-destroyed town encapsulate the main message of this song: violence and war

continue to repeat over and over again, with violence inciting more violence in a cyclical nature.

The children in this instance represent the future and their actions now mirror what their actions

will be. The children mimicking the actions they’ve seen of their parents embodies the message
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that violence often repeats over and over again, being passed down from generation to

generation.

In contrast, the Bad Wolves's version of the song focuses less on the outside world and

instead focuses on the band members and the lead singer interacting with a woman painted in

gold. From the beginning, the video centers around the woman covered in golden paint. It starts

by showing the golden paint flow down the woman’s body as she becomes covered in the paint.

The video then transfers to a full body of the shot, eerily reminiscent of O’Riordan in The

Cranberries’s video (who had happened to pass away just before the shooting of the video).

The video then shows the lead singer of the Bad Wolves attempting to make contact with the

woman but failing because of a sheet of glass that is separating the two. In this instance, the

woman covered in golden paint represents O’Riordan herself and the ideas she embodied

through her original version of Zombie. The glass represents the wall between life and death.

The scene is a powerful reminder of how even though O’Riordan physically may be separated

from the rest of the world, her messages continue to shine through. Through the use of the

woman painted in gold, the Bad Wolves are able to continue to portray the message of the

original song while also paying homage to its creator.

Although both The Cranberries and Bad Wolves’s version of Zombie attempt to get

similar messages across to viewers, each does so using different rhetorical techniques. The

Cranberries version of the song sends its message through the use of pathos and logos. The

Cranberries video uses logos through its many scenes of poverty, such as dirty children, dogs

gnawing at bones, and destroyed buildings. These scenes of destruction show viewers the

results war and violence can have on communities and gives reason for the song’s message.

The video also uses pathos through the use of black and white films. All parts of the video that

are centered on the community are shot in black and white giving an eerie, spooky vibe to the

video. The purposeful color choices incite fear into the viewer and give heavier weight to the

singer’s words.
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The Bad Wolves version of the song sends its message mainly through its appeal to

pathos. For example, the song uses the woman covered in gold paint to invoke an emotional

response in the viewer by reminding the viewer of O'Riordan from The Cranberries’s Zombie

video. The use of black as the only background color in the video is important in establishing a

darker mood within the video, reminiscent of the darker message the song is trying to send. The

use of black also allows viewers to focus on the band and especially on the interactions

between the lead singer and the woman covered in gold. Through its reminder of O'Riordan and

its use of black as the background color, the video accomplishes one of its primary goals: to

give tribute to O’Riordan while staying true to the message of the original song.

Although both versions of Zombie send their message through different uses of rhetoric,

they both aim to send the same message. The Bad Wolves version sends its message mainly

through the use of pathos while The Cranberries version sends its message through a mixture

of both pathos and logos. Through their rhetoric, both bring awareness to the cyclic nature of

violence and the destruction it can cause to communities of people.

Works Cited:

Bad Wolves. Bad Wolves - Zombie (Official Video). Youtube. 22 Feb. 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XaS93WMRQQ. Accessed 12 Jun. 2021.

The Cranberries. The Cranberries - Zombie (Official Music Video). Youtube. 16 Jun 2009.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ejga4kJUts. Accessed 12 Jun. 2021.

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Wikipedia. “Zombie (The Cranberries Song).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 24 June 2021,

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_(The_Cranberries_song). Accessed 15 Jun. 2021