Recently I have been watching The Walking Dead, a new Zombie apocalypse survival TV show from the US. So far – 5 episodes in – it’s awesome, with all the hallmarks of a good zombie show (zombies, good make up, gore, tension, nowhere to run) and all the hallmarks of a good US TV show (fine plot development, excellent acting, good scripting), and at the moment I’ve already enjoyed more zombie tv (5 hours’ worth, roughly) than I can usually bear. I won’t say more about the TV show yet except that it really is very good and you, gentle reader, should be scaring yourself grey on it as soon as possible.
This post is more about the sociological implications of zombification, something I don’t usually think about but was brought to contemplate by this essay on zombies as symbol of working class uprising. (I think this article is well worth a read even if you don’t agree with this part of its conclusions – it has some interesting ideas about keeping-up-with-the-jones’s and zombies as an allegory for individualism in modern pop culture that I quite like ). Zombies are rich with symbolism and, like Winnie the Pooh, just begging for analysis from every political and ideological perspective, so it’s no surprise that a socialist would fixate on them as a symbol of bourgeois fears of a working class revolution. I think there are a few flaws in that image, which I will describe in a moment, but the article got me to thinking about the rich symbolism of the modern zombie, and some of the many metaphors they can represent. Let’s go through a few.
Zombie as Working Class Revolutionary
This is the idea presented in the linked post, that Zombies represent middle class fears of the working class/ lumpen proles rising up to get them and take their stuff or destroy their lifestyle. Under this metaphor, zombies represent all those huddled faceless masses who are excluded from the tranquil pleasantries of middle class life, and whose exclusion is an essential element of the continuation of middle class life. In the zombie movie they come to take your pleasant life away from you, and you have to fight them off. This is a superficially interesting metaphor but I don’t think it works, because it’s a-cultural and a little bit a-historical. Particularly, the Zombie movie sprang up in 50s/60s America, when the industrial working class were well respected and integrated into American life, and the lumpen proletariat (i.e. the long-term unemployed) didn’t really exist. Had the Zombie sprung up elsewhere, e.g. in 30s Europe, I can see the power of this metaphor, but it didn’t. Furthermore, the linked essay doesn’t seem to take account of the importance of race in America, and given that the Zombie movie originated there, I think it’s important to consider. The main social tension in the US in the 50s was the final destruction of the barriers keeping black Americans out of ordinary life, and there was a strong fear of the loss of the established peaceful order of things. I imagine to many Americans at that time black Americans were faceless masses who threatened them, and the zombie may make the perfect image of the black American they fear – even the name is a caribbean import!
Which isn’t to say that the original creators of the Zombie (Romero?) were scared of a black uprising. They just read the mood and saw an excellent theme for a story. The zombie has remained an enduring vehicle for expressing certain social fears, and doing so doesn’t mean that we the viewer (or the creator) themselves feel those fears directly.
Zombies as New Left Demonstrators
If there was any political movement in the US in the 50s and 60s that could have genuinely stirred mainstream middle-class fear, it was the New Left with its huge anti-Vietnam war demonstrations, marches for equality, desegregation riots, etc. These people actually presented in public for the first time in a generation as a mass of faceless people on TV, confronting out-numbered and beleaguered security forces and all emitting the same senseless, mindless noise (“slogans”). These people didn’t usually carry weapons, but overwhelmed security forces by means of their bare hands and weight of numbers. Worse still, anyone could be infected with this disease – your daughter, your brother, white or black people, they’re all down there at the flower-power sit in. If the earlier Zombie movies represented a fear of any radical movement or revolution, it was surely the New Left, and the New Left was many things but it was not socialist.
In this sense we can see the survivors as the image of the security state, having to police each other for signs of nascent zombification. In earlier movies the police state was quite benevolent – you had to be bitten by a zombie, and they could wait for you to die before they administered any radical measures. But in the newer versions – particularly 28 Days Later – we see a newer, very post-9/11 (and I would add, very British) form of pre-emptive security. In the early minutes of that movie we see a brief, perhaps 2 second long debate between two survivors, in which one has been bitten and the other one gives him barely a moment to protest before terminating him with extreme prejudice. This is the logic of the modern security state, of control orders and imprisonment without charge. It’s the post-apocalypse-cinema version of executing a Brazilian chap on a train because he might be a terrorist, and getting away with it.
Reclaiming and Neutralizing Undeath through Zombies
The earlier Zombie was explicitly Undead – “when hell is full the dead will walk the earth” – but later Zombies have become a biological phenomenon. In later movies – especially 28 Days Later but also The Walking Dead and maybe Biohazard – they are a biological phenomenon, explained through viral studies and, for all that biological phenomena are explicable and potentially curable, infinitely more terrifying than the earlier zombie. The virus is transmitted even through a drop of blood, and in some cases can turn you to a zombie before you even die. Rapid intervention is needed, any form of exposure is not to be trusted, and there is no redemption or salvation. In earlier movies, the infected could be given a period of grace, could even be allowed to die with dignity. Not so anymore, the only solution to the viral zombie is immediate and extreme eradication. This change in the modern Zombie obvious corresponds to the development of modern public health consciousness, particularly the discovery and spread of HIV/AIDS, that most terrifying of infectious diseases. But in transforming the Zombie from undead to biological, we have removed the terror of ghosts, hell and the grave – we have rendered the undead into merely the viral, another form of explicable natural law, a pest that can be controlled. We know we can end the disease, and we know that no viral phenomenon is beyond modern science and public health. The modern zombie transforms our understanding of undeath, from a mysterious curse or magic to a mere biological mistake, easily cured.
Note also that the 28 Days Later storyline explicitly reflects modern fears about the transmission of disease from animals to humans, and indeed incorporates one of the main suspected causes of HIV into the story.
Zombies as critique of Urban Planning
Note that through all the eras of the zombie movie, the prime action tends to take place in a modern urban development of the time. From the suburban house of the 60s, to the shopping mall of the 70s, the pub in Shaun of the Dead, the metropolis and then the military camp in 28 Days Later. These places figure in the consciousness of the time and are incorporated into the movie as a central place of conflict between the main characters, who are aware of their difference from the masses, and the masses themselves. We may be defending some ideal of urban planning (the detached home of the early movies), retreating to the bastion of the modern order because it supplies all our needs (the mall in the 70s movies) or finding ourselves betrayed by the complex urban structures of our modern lives (28 Days Later), but in all cases the latest debates in urban planning are central to the development of the story, at least until it takes on its inevitable survivalist theme. Even survivalism takes on some form relevant to the modern debate about how we are living or should live – the pub in Shaun of the Dead, and the military camp in post-9/11 28 Days Later. Zombies are the ultimate, mindless incursion into our urban planning dreams and nightmares.
Drawing a long (cross)bow
These ideas are all silly, of course, or limited in their validity – there is no single rhetorical or metaphorical meaning to a zombie story, and they’re all very easily debated or dismissed. But I think when we watch the movies they invoke a lot of these kinds of themes and the sociological and political commentary makes a welcome undercurrent to what is usually a gripping and powerful story. This is why I think zombie movies have enduring appeal, even when their format is often very similar. It’s the setting and the underlying ideological conflict that makes the otherwise formulaic stories new and interesting. They’re a very versatile blank canvas on which to paint ideological and sociological debates. While blowing brains out.
December 7, 2010 at 7:07 am
I’d have to say that your last paragraph is the only one to resonate strongly for me.
My ideal stories aren’t philosophical debates writ large, they’re an interesting set of starting assumptions that drive a story that may align with a philosophical point. As such digging for meaning in such a story is more of a Rorschach test than analysing the story.
This is most clearly seen in the fact that zombie outbreaks have been used as training/thought exercises on public health issues and that some people maintain a zombie survival plan on the basis that if the plan works for zombies it’ll probably cover all other relevant possibilities too.
December 7, 2010 at 8:39 am
The one that fits closest for me is zombie as empty-eyed demonstrator. I think it comes much closer to the zeitgeist that the original movies were capturing than, say, fear of class revolt or black people getting rights. The thing I like about Zombie movies is their adaptability to the zeitgeist, so modern movies reflect our fears of disease outbreaks, and incorporate some concepts of evolution and biology, while previous eras were more drawn from social issues and had a more moralistic or spiritual basis. The key here I suppose is that they aren’t trying to tell a story about the issue of the day, so much as grabbing the issue of the day and using it to tell a gripping story that appeals to its contemporary viewers. I don’t think vampire stories, for example (much as I love them) do that so well, Buffy aside. In fact, although Buffy is probably an exception, it’s in zombie movies that we really see complex social dynamics and stories about friends and family and the pressure they face coming to the fore. Vampire movies are much more individualized but there’s a strong message in zombie movies that you sink or swim by the strength of your community ties. And there are some common questions that get asked in zombie movies – do we let the stranger in? Do we help the newcomer? Should we go back for people who are doomed? What cost do we place on our humanity? – that are much stronger in the genre than they are in other forms of horror or fantasy. And obviously, those questions are always easily rebadged to fit the current political and social scenario, and only really draw their power from being asked in that context. Which is why they have such strong appeal, I think.
December 7, 2010 at 8:58 am
I like theories one and two particularly well. It’s a good working establishment perhaps of why the stuff really started to resonate.
I would say the current resonance is because of the modern braindead person that doesn’t think and is basically entertained and run by the media, social media, corporations and of course, the government. As soon as that harmony of systems collapses for whatever reason for a semi-extended period of time.. -pow!- you literally have zombies running around, unable to fend for themselves as we have been neatly fenced in to operating in our own little niche and unable to survive without extensive outside support. Look at the black friday casualties for a nice demonstration.
December 7, 2010 at 9:24 am
I think there are 4 problems with that theory, Grey…
1. The zombies don’t seem to lack survival skills
2. the people thrown into the new world are the ones who in the old world were most likely to qualify as “the modern braindead person,” and we are supposed to identify with them, not the other.
3. Theories one and two are a response to demonstrations and the civil rights movement, and I don’t think you could say that the New Left or the civil rights movement were “modern braindead people” being manipulated by the media
4. Movies aimed at a mainstream audience and mainstream success, that are based on the critical claim that most of the audience are braindead, are unlikely to be successful if the underlying theory is true. Which suggests that it’s not. In fact the post I linked to has a nice point about this, that modern capitalism is based on a false construction of hyper-individualism (we can all separate ourselves from the other 6 billion people on the globe through our consumer choices) that basically requires us to see the remainder of society as a faceless braindead mass. Zombie movies in this sense are modern capitalism writ large, with those few non-faceless people being the ones we identify with. The zombie movie works in modern capitalism by getting every one of the 6 billion faceless people to think that they are the hyper-unique survivor. It’s a beautiful irony, but at its core is a fundamental contradiction best explained by recognizing that we are all unique individuals and no-one is braindead[1]
I though that last part was the most interesting bit of the linked post, incidentally.
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fn1: except Paul, of course. He’ll be the first against the chain fence, axe in hand, when the zombie apocalypse comes
December 7, 2010 at 11:15 am
1) Zombies don’t need them! They are the ones running around tearing everything up… as per your revolt theory.
2) As you mentioned in 4, everyone is going to be a unique flower and therefore “will” be the survivors even though there is a 99.9999~ chance they’re actually the horde.
3) Fits well into the timeframe but not in a modern sense.. which is the resonance I’m talking about.
4) See 2. Lots are braindead in the sense however in that we’ve become hyper specialized in exist within the system. Most couldn’t “insert food skill here” to save their life. Remove that structure and most of us are screwed. Most people probably recognize this on a subconcious level..
December 7, 2010 at 1:10 pm
Actually another obvious metaphor is the third world rising up to take back what’s theirs – immigration fears?
Regarding your 4, every time I watch a zombie movie I’m cast into a reverie of pondering “what would I do” and I’m really not confident that specialization and loss of “survival” skills is the issue. I might post on this…
December 7, 2010 at 2:38 pm
I like the theory that the ideal zombie movie would perfectly model what would happen in a zombie-pocalypse. Exactly the same way that climate forecast models predict the future. [1]
Obviously this ideal zombie movie would consist of paranoid right wing gun nuts shooting everything that moves in a way that is logical when everything is out to get you (i.e. behave exactly how zombie movie watchers say they would behave). They’d retreat to a heavily fortified compound where gun law advocates/the FBI would form the front rows of zombies around the compound. They’d grow basic crops until the zombies rotted away and the gun-totting inherited the earth.
Afterward they’d teach that God inflicted a plague that rivaled Noah’s flood and only the faithful and heavily armed survived.
It’s your basic right wing dream wrapped up in a nutshell [2]. Actually I should make that movie. It’d sell really well to all the people who read the Left Behind series.
[1] I’m on board with global warming. It’s just that having me on board doesn’t impact the amount of crap I give to anything/anyone.
[2] Convenient wording.
December 7, 2010 at 2:41 pm
Actually, this recalls a discussion I had with one of my brothers.
Brother: So what would you do if zombies attacked?
Me: Walk away. Its not like their fast.
Brother: What if they were fast like in 28 Days Later?
Me: Well then I guess I’d have to out think them by laying traps and fortifying properly.
Brother: What if they’re still intelligent? But now their also much stronger than you.
Me: Why the hell am I avoiding becoming a zombie? It doesn’t sound like I’d be worse off!
December 7, 2010 at 2:46 pm
I think the survivalist movie you are talking about would be Red Dawn, right?
Something I’ve always found hard to believe about vampire movies is why anyone would resist their siren call. You mean, in exchange for immortality and super powers I have to hand in … my conscience? The main barrier to my using them if I had them? Hmm, let me think about that…
December 8, 2010 at 1:47 pm
I haven’t seen Red Dawn I was just theorising a zombie movie.
It’d be bloody easy to do one as a paean to right wing survivalists.
And we all should know that one recent zombie game was notable racist by having (all or primarily?) black zombies. I’d go so far as to say that the zombie genre contains racial essentialist messages. After all, I’e been trained to spot them everywhere now. 😛
December 9, 2010 at 10:34 am
Haha, good to see my
prejudicescritical skills have rubbed off on you.If the zombie movie does represent a fear of the civil rights movement then it can be seen as containing racist messages. I’m not sure you could say they’re racially essentialist though because people have to be infected with the craziness. But as a metaphor it works, I suppose – black people are cast as vulnerable to mindless craziness while white people aren’t, and the only solution is to chop their heads off. Did this really happen in a recent zombie game?
December 9, 2010 at 2:00 pm
Yep. Resident Evil 5.
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2010/08/capcom-promises-no-more-racist-games/
There are a number of gaming sites that dismiss it as nonsense. But then again I can find a lot of LotR fans who’ll dismiss charges against that series as nonsense too…
March 13, 2012 at 9:09 am
Hearing hoofs ? think horses not Zebras…… In frightnening times its nice to
be taken away from reality and focus on a one hour fear fest. Perhaps leaving with us with some good fighting Zombie killing skills …..
March 13, 2012 at 10:12 am
Around here when there is the sound of hoofs it’s Faustus’s job to say “Zebras” and mine to say “Ants wearing horseshoes”.
😉
March 13, 2012 at 10:18 am
Although we can’t definitively rule out the possibility of undead clowns banging coconuts together.