The Walking Dead Today in America, people can’t get enough of zombies, zombies are everywhere ranging from movies, books and tv shows. The entertainment business uses the zombie apocalypse theme in order to present a post apocalyptic situation that no other form of genre can really create. In American zombie apocalyptic entertainment, humans must face the horrors of survival and change, while fighting off the zombies, thus also challenging their morals. Pessimistic viewers may see the situation as depressing, prejudice and an means of expressing xenophobia. However optimistic viewers see the situation as an opportunity for better change, individually and as a collective community. A controversial example of this topic would be Robert Kirkman’s popular graphic novel, called The Walking Dead, filled with violence, betrayal and challenges. The Walking Dead can be read as a pessimistic text but the most appropriate way to read is …show more content…
Xenophobia presented in The Walking Dead is a “fuse between our fears of infectious disease and our fear of the other,” as said by Paul Stoller in his article Epidemics, Xenophobia and the “Other” Fear Factor, but the zombies in The Walking Dead, represents our fears of infectious disease more than the fear of the others because in the end of the fourth chapter, Rick the main protagonist states that they are “The Walking Dead,” meaning he sees the zombies as the same as them and that they are no different than the zombies themselves. The main characters in the graphic novel and tv show also allow others like Tyreese, Jesus and Abraham to join their community and group throughout their journey, therefore Xenophobia in The Walking Dead is not enforced entirely and the pessimistic view for the text is incorrect causing the appropriate way to read The Walking Dead is
The Walking Dead is a television show produced by AMC based off the black and white comic books by Robert Kirkman. The show and comic book center around main character Rick Grimes as he learns to cope with life after waking up from a deadly wound into an outbreak of virus wielding undead creatures known as “walkers.” Over the course of season two and season three, the show starts to center around how Rick is able to command the group of survivors and the challenges they face trying to settle down in a safe area. They are confronted with another community nearby late in season three along with the increasing number of walkers in the area. While facing these challenges, the number of surviving members continues to dwindle; however, the minority ratio in the group remains below the average number of majority characters in the show.
She can highlight the traits between white-collar and blue collar in the apocalypse to give more meaning towards why workers of that status should be afraid. “ our white-collar skills become worthless not through technical advance but through total system collapse”norton field guild to writing with readings and handbook 653. Bosch states that white-collar workers lack technical skills which are necessary in any apocalypse environment. One good quote she used was from Max Brooks that boils down to being a white collar worker you hire a plumber to fix you toilet so you do not have to fix it yourself and you can focus on work to make more money. The more money you make the more people you can hire so that you can focus more on work and be less distracted. What if one day it got turned upside down where your employees become your teacher. Bosch highlights that white-collar workers are useless in a topsy-turvy world, where as blue-collar workers have skills to survive and they become the top of the new social order. “skills in auto maintenance, farming, plumbing, and electrical work- not to mention marksmanship- land blue collar folks at the top”norton field guild to writing with readings and handbook 653. This gives the outlook that blue-collar workers are strong and resourceful. Bosch portrays the class of zombies as a terrifying threat. “Zombies however, never stop, so danger persists past the initial past the initial cataclysm” norton field guild to writing with readings and handbook 654. Bosch talks about zombies being a different type of disaster even though the white-collar worker will still have trouble surviving any disaster, zombies are the only kind of disaster that persist. This gives zombies a truly horrifying look and are overall portrayed as the best horror monster there is. Zombies will give these two working classes a reason to watch zombie films. It gives a positive message to blue-collar
Even though George Romero, director of the film, Night of the Living Dead, did not intentionally intend to create racial controversy, the film broke a lot of ground considering the year it was filmed in 1968. By making a black character, Ben, the most intelligent and resourceful of all the white characters, as well as the protagonist, Romero, shattered racist stereotypes in the horror movie genre as well as mainstream film. This was mainly due to the fact that Night of The Living Dead was one of the first films to follow a black protagonist who was filmed in a positive light. Ben’s personality was possibly the most subversive aspect of the whole film. Ben was a brave and quick-witted character who was able to see what needed to get done in order to ensure survival from the zombies. The fact that Ben was portrayed as the most composed character, especially out of the cast of distraught white characters only emphasized his position as the most important character. Without Ben, the other characters would have most likely died. Overall, despite the fact that Night of the Living Dead did not intend to make a racial statement, I believe it ended up symbolizing the progress African Americans made during the civil rights movement, yet certain points in the film such as the power dynamic between Ben and Harry, the zombies attacking Ben, Ben’s death scene, and the photographs at
Although the zombie metaphor focuses primarily on fear involving unconscious contributors and their mission of adding to their population, the fear of governmental control and how society responds to the epidemic is also an issue that needs to be considered. In this scenario, the viral outbreak is not only a threat to individual health but also to the stability of society as a whole.
George Romero's reinvention of the zombie in night of the Living Dead (1968) is clearly a critique of elements of the American society, and the film as a whole is easily twisted into a warped view on the 'American Dream'. Themes throughout Romero’s film, dealing with controversial topics during the time that the film was made, are still, to this day debated by critics and film historians. Themes of racism and war are defined within the movie, hidden underneath the idea of carnal, cannibalistic zombies and over the top heroes who, eventually, succumb to the reanimated; despite their every effort. These themes are colored over and painted to hide beneath subtle references to the typical American Dream during this time, and Romero does quite the good job at it too. This dream, whilst continuously changing in the everyday lives of modern Americans, can be loosely defined as a national ethos of the United States, or a set of ideals dealing with freedom and the opportunity for success - an upward social status that can be achieved through hard work and effort.
Season 1 of The Walking Dead, has a divers group of characters. The evolution of personality and moral responsibility will shift within a person or group in accordance to the “survive or die” scenario during a zombie apocalypse. Culminating a group of diverse abilities is essential to surviving. The main theme in the show is one of survival, the dead are walking all around them, but they are not necessarily the main problem. The battle over adversity is much more prevalent than just fear of dying. The characters are forced to realign a civilization around a new obstacle, yet essentially it is not much different than everyday life. The main issue is finding a group that can survive on skill alone instead of money or material things. They must also keep in mind that the dead are not the only threat in their existence.
When humankind turns directionless and destination less, when confusion confounds the society, when people act and react as if they are in world created out of hallucinations, when muddle-headed thinking becomes the accepted reasoning of lifestyles, take it for granted that they are the best candidates for and the ardent supporters of zombie consumerism. Phillip Mahoney in article Mass Psychology and the Analysis of the Zombie: From Suggestion to Contagion in the book Generation Zombie: Essays on the Living Dead in Modern Culture (2011) writes “What is important is that, for now “zombie” effectively operates as an “empty signifier,” capable of calling into existence an active, global front dividing those who respond to the call—in “whatever” fashion—and those who do not”(p.126). This is a situation of fiasco and confrontation, created out of the gifts of the materialistic civilization, the mad race for aggrandizement for wealth and heading towards the purposeless goal of more and more purchases, whether an individual genuinely needs those commodities or not!
How many times have you been scared awake by zombies after watching shows or reading comics? Zombies, a particular group of survival horror, are basically dead people who come back to us in an evil way. From novels to Hollywood films, we look like cowards who are repeatedly scared by zombies. How can we still get shocks in this age of scientific society? The answer is that zombies come back with cultural messages in stories, which express our extraordinary fears. Such a horrible story was created by Kirkman, in The Walking Dead he depicted zombies as a horrible metaphor for xenophobia by combining fear of otherness with infectious disease; as a result, fear of contagion fuses with our fear of outsiders, increasing the unequal treatment of immigrants in contemporary society.
Issac Berk focuses on how human react to a world without established law, social assistance and communities in The Walking Dead as a critique of American Democracy. In many ways, The Walking Dead’s setting, while hyperbolic, embodies a logic that is central to neoliberal capitalism: privatization of social services and basic human needs is enabled through the withdrawal of public state support, and individuals are left to fend for themselves in a hostile world with only their ambitions and families on which to draw (Berk 318). When establish justice systems are eliminated it becomes everyone for themselves and as communities form new systems are put in place. Leaders are chosen and hierarchy is established. Ish is established as the group leading in Earth Abides and as the colony grown and the younger generation emerges they accept him as leader and look to him for guidance. The same concept is applied to Rick among the survivors in The Walking Dead where he takes on the roll of leader and is accepted by all members of the group as
George R. Romero modernized the concept of the “zombie” in the film “Night of the Living Dead”, which revitalized the genre and reintroduced it to mainstream audiences. In Romero’s films, zombies are not the main antagonist, and instead, the villains are usually other human beings, making it so that zombies are presented as a physical projection of the tensions between the characters. (Feshami)
The idea of an apocalypse can’t help but seem enticing to us. In fact, we seem to like dystopian stories in general, and admire the characters fighting to survive. You don’t have to look any further than the book The Hunger Games, where the protagonist Katniss lives in poverty and has to hunt her own food, later being forced to kill others to stay alive in a battle to the death. Likewise, the TV show The Walking Dead showcases how far its characters will go to survive in a zombie apocalypse, where the characters are constantly put into “them or us” type situations with other survivors, throwing morals to the wind in order to
Zombies were born of Caribbean and bayou voodoo. They weren’t undead and flesh seeking, as society knows them today. They were people who were highly suggestible and didn’t think for themselves, being controlled by the voodoo practitioner. These stories quite often involved dark magic and rituals. In reality, it was a mix of herbs that caused the suggestible state. This fear is understandable as the government of the time grew increasingly powerful and every other system began to collapse during the Great Depression. The only way to survive would to be entirely subjected to Uncle Sam’s will.
They use a lot of information that is overwhelming, and does not add a lot of validity to the point they were trying to make. Throughout the article, the authors take from various other zombie pieces, such as movies, books, and TV shows and use them to add to their ideas. In some cases, they also use other pieces and discredit them as a way to prove their own point. For example, they talk about the “Cyborg Manifesto” by Donna Haraway. This essay presents the idea of the cyborg, which is an organism that is part human and part machine. Throughout the essay, Haraway gives examples of where we see the cyborg throughout media, and how humans might be connected to it. The authors in “A Zombie Manifesto” stated how they were influenced to title their piece after her, but they go on throughout the essay constantly trying to prove the piece wrong. They argue that the idea Haraway is presenting is not truly what humans connect to, and the authors think their ideas are more relatable. They believe their zombie interpretation is more relatable than Haraway’s cyborg interpretation. The authors are trying to make their interpretation more valid by invalidating another interpretation. This makes the piece hard to agree with, for an interpretation is relative to each person, and tearing apart another interpretation is an unproductive way to persuade readers to agree with you and your ideas. Another reason the article is difficult to agree with, is the fact that it is very difficult to understand. With the piece being as persuasive as it is, the authors did not take the time to ensure the writing would be easy to understand for all. In reading the article, it felt as though the authors had a specific group of readers in mind and didn’t accommodate to others who might find interest in zombies. The article is written in such a way
At first glance, modern zombie movie seem to be about the fear of disease. The zombie movies today feature the “infected” type of zombie being used as the most common, but what threat the zombies really show in the movies are not about the zombies infecting everyone, but the sheer numbers of them. Today’s biggest problem is overpopulation, people are reproducing so fast and so much that overcrowding is starting to appear. People are starting to leave the idea that the world is going to look like a desolate wasteland behind. Instead the end of the world is going to look like most zombie movies do, hordes of people mindlessly swarming everywhere. Even in the old zombie movies the fear that zombies represented was fear of the masses or mobs, than they were about disease, though that was part of it. People know that the world is overcrowded and it is almost like everyone is on their tiptoes waiting for a zombie-like disease to break out. The Scariest thing about zombies is that they mob you, when they attack. Again representing this fear of overpopulation for the modern ear, and the mindless mobs of the earlier
A series allows for broader representations, therefore a lot more criticism on the postmodern world. The Walking Dead’s ‘walkers’ as the character refer to them on the show, are fictional terrorists - people killing people, except their aims do not go past this, similar to a lot of terrorists in 2017. The media did not hesitate to call Salman Abedi a terrorist. Abedi was killed in the Manchester massacre, hence his intentions were never revealed. To compare, Stephen Paddock who is responsible for the Las Vegas shooting could not be labelled as a terrorist because “We still do not have a clear motive or reason why.” The definition of terrorist does not apply only to ‘Muslims’ howbeit to anyone. It is merely a stereotype that is rapidly corrupting the world. This is the same reason we enjoy zombie movies without contradiction. Terrorism is the second greatest fear in America while zombies are the least according to a Chapman University extensive survey. Zombies are fictional, as one grows up they can separate the real from the fake. Although we are still scared of them, meaning there has to be some truth. Yes, they are brain-eating monsters but they also embody a real life ordeal that we are facing greatly in reality. In The Walking Dead, an audience sees rotting facial features and thinks inhumane, dead. What we fail to notice is the dress codes. They wear everyday clothing.