It Is Easier To Imagine The Zombie Apocalypse Than To Imagine The End Of Capitalism

Modernities and Modernization in North America. Eds. Ilka Brasch and Ruth Mayer. Heidelberg: Winter, 2018

The unresolved 2007-2009 crisis of accumulation has led to the re-emergence in public discourse of the idea that capitalism could end. For many, it was proof of the Marxian notion that capitalist modernity has an endemic tendency towards crisis. For some, this generated hope of capitalism‘s ultimate demise. For those instilled with the neoliberal belief that "there is no alternative" and a Fukuyamaist sense of the "End of History," however, it also boosted an already latent dystopian sense of a crisis of civilization—a civilization torn by global military, ecological, ethno-nationalist, and racial conflict. This fundamental sense of crisis arguably facilitated and was perhaps also facilitated by the cinematic proliferation of the ubiquitous theme of post-apocalypse, in general, and 'zombie riots,' in particular. Cultural articulations of the latter, I argue, help create or sustain a cultural imaginary of ontological crisis in which the "unconditional Real of global Capital" (Žižek, Ticklish 4) can be effectively disavowed through fictionalizing one of its most overt material-symbolic symptoms: a growing global surplus proletariat of dispossessed, immiserated, and commonly racialized (non-)workers "no longer directly necessary for the self-valorization of capital" (Marx 557). Anticipated perhaps by Dan O‘Bannon‘s Return of the Living Dead (1985), contemporary cinematic zombie spectacles such as Dawn of the Dead (2004), World War Z (2013), and Daylight’s End (2016)1—not to mention the widely successful TV-zombies of The Walking Dead (2010-2018) and Fear the Walking Dead (2015-2018)—create mise-en-scènes that allow to allegorize the condition of the surplus proletariat and related social fears of "wageless life" (Denning), while often resonating in ambivalent ways with current social and political struggles.

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The zombie has been one of the most prevalent monsters in films of the second half of the twentieth century, and as many have noted, it has experienced a further resurgence (or should we say, resurrection) in British and American film in the last five years. Zombies are found everywhere, from video games and comic books to the science textbook. The zombie We wish to thank the following persons for their invaluable input and support:

boundary 2, 2008

The zombie has been one of the most prevalent monsters in films of the second half of the twentieth century, and as many have noted, it has experienced a further resurgence (or should we say, resurrection) in British and American film in the last five years. Zombies are found everywhere, from video games and comic books to the science textbook. The zombie We wish to thank the following persons for their invaluable input and support:

This thesis explores three contemporary zombie films, 28 Days Later (2002), Land of the Dead (2005), and Zombieland (2009), released between the years 2000 and 2010, and provides a sociological analysis of the fears in the films and their relation to the social fears present in North American society during that time period. What we consume in entertainment is directly related to what we believe, fear, and love in our current social existence. Thus, this paper argues that the rise in popularity of zombie films, and zombies in general, is directly connected to our fears and anxieties as a culture, and that the decade 2000-2010 was one of particularly heightened social fears and apocalyptic anxieties. The theories used in this research demonstrate the cycle where our cultural beliefs and values inform our daily fears and understandings of the world, which are then represented in our entertainment and re-interpreted in our consumption of it. The films are dissected using the theories of film critic Sigfried Kracauer, political economist C.B. MacPherson, and film theorist Kirsten Moana Thompson and a process of qualitative content analysis to identify, analyze, and connect the fears in the films with those in the social climate of the decade studied. This paper argues that the drastic increase in popularity of the zombie at the turn of the millennium directly reflects major fears in the decade: of pandemics, of untrustworthy authority, and of the total collapse of social order. We need to pay special attention to our forms of entertainment, as they speak volumes about the social climate in any particular epoch in our history. We may use what we learn in future research and social analysis.

The first decade of the new millennium saw renewed interest in popular culture featuring zombies. This essay shows that a comparative analysis of nightmares can be a productive method for analyzing salient themes in the imaginative products and practices of cultures in close contact. It is argued that zombies, as the first modern monster, are embedded in a set of deeply symbolic structures that are a matter of religious thought. The author draws from her ethnographic work in Haiti to argue that the zonbi is at once part of the mystical arts that developed there since the colonial period, and comprises a form of mythmaking that represents, responds to, and mystifies the fear of slavery, collusion with it, and rebellion against it. In turn, some elements of the Haitian zonbi figure can be found in patterns that haunt recent American zombie films. Zombies in these films are read as figures in a parable about whiteness and death-dealing consumption. This essay suggests that the messianic mood surrounding the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama was consistent with a pattern in zombie films since the 1960s where many zombie-killing heroes are figured as black American males. Zombies are used in both ethnographic and film contexts to think through the conditions of embodiment, the boundaries between life and death, repression and freedom, and the

2019

During the last decades, zombies and the horror tropes that surround them have become a staple of American popular culture, making them a familiar presence in movies, TV series, graphic novels, and video games. From their Caribbean folklore origins, the undead have evolved into potent metaphors for social issues and cultural anxieties. On the surface, much of these creatures’ appeal can be understood as the modern-day embodiment of age-old apocalyptic belief systems, alongside which morally meaningful identities can be identified within a value order that is increasingly perceived as disorienting and nihilistic. The resurgence of apocalyptic narratives and desires becomes visible in phenomena such as millennialism and catastrophe culture that embrace zombies as instruments to purge a seemingly unhinged social order. Perplexingly, zombies at the same time point towards the opposite of this longing for narrative stability and new beginnings. In academic discourses, they have long-since turned into avatars of the postmodern inclination to dissolve dichotomous ideologies and semantic superstructures. Here, the undead have been metaphorically conjured to lay bare a plethora of issue ranging from intertextuality and irony to revisions of race and otherness or the subversion of traditional narrative strategies. This article emphasizes the rarely recognized tension between apocalyptic desires to construct meaning and resurrect narrative stability through monstrous bodies on the one hand, and so-called postmodern interpretations that utilize the same figure to deconstruct existing convictions. Shining a spotlight on this supposed opposition, the article proposes that zombies amalgamate apocalyptic and postmodern mindsets by assuming the role as pop-cultural mediators that bridge the gap between increasingly polarized epistemologies in American society.

Zombies They Walk Among Us! Rethinking Consumer Capitalism, 2017

The purpose of this paper will be to describe how one would survive the zombie apocalypse from a philosophical perspective. This paper will draw on first generation critical theorist, Theodore Adorno to explicate the position. According to critical theory, the zombie apocalypse is already upon us. For Adorno, contemporary individuals in Western society live under the conditions of consumer capitalism. These individuals are manipulated by advertisements and the mass media into believing that the ideal way to relieve their inner frustrations is to mindlessly purchase goods and services that reflect their inner longings. Due to this constant manipulation, young people are ill-equipped with the tools required to think critically and evaluate both their own behaviours and the messages generated by advertisements. These individuals retain their human forms, but do not employ their mental faculties to engage in what truly makes them human (i.e. free, critical thought). Therefore, they are zombies in a figurative sense. This paper will propose that the only way to survive a zombie apocalypse of this sort would be for individuals to wake up and think critically for themselves about the socio-economic forces that manipulate the world in which they live. By becoming a free thinking, critical individual, a zombified person will awake human once again.

Amerikastudien / American Studies, 2016

Outbreak scenarios negotiate fears of a lack of control over the human and non-human environment and over increasingly instable borders in an age of globalization. Recently, the zombie genre has incorporated the outbreak narrative, combining it with the apocalyptic. In the zombie outbreak narrative, the critique of capitalist exploitation of humans and the natural environment is centered on the figure of the zombie who combines fears of environmental catastrophe and global migration. Marc Forster’s World War Z (2013) provides an example of this, as it refers to a sense of global environmental crisis in its credit sequence, while visualizing the break-down of borders and the subsequent ‘migration’ of bodies (zombies) in the main film. It thus aligns itself with a feeling of threat from both environmental disasters and global capitalism by envisioning the ‘migrating’ living dead as at once the retaliation of a human-made ‘unnatural nature,’ and as a stand-in for a foreign surplus laboring population. Rather than sticking with the genre’s inherent critique and apocalyptic vision, however, the film suggests in an epilogue that an American-controlled military-scientific world order is the answer to the problems we are facing; be they related to migration, natural viruses, or unequal capitalist relations.

Sociology Compass, 2013

In this essay, focusing primarily on the cinema of the walking corpse, I provide an overview of zombie studies and suggest potential avenues for sociological inquiry into zombie phenomena. I argue that zombie films, comic books, novels, video games, and the like can be seen as significant cultural objects that reflect and reveal the cultural and material circumstances of their creation. Despite emanating from complex culture producing institutions and (arguably) capturing extant social anxieties, sociology has remained quiet on zombie phenomena. Issues of significance, history, and definition are discussed. I then locate three avenues of inquiry ideally suited to the sociological toolkit: symptomatic analysis of content, production, and audience response and interaction. I conclude by calling for a multi-pronged sociological analysis into ‘zombie culture.’

Textes & Contextes 6, 2011

Critics have repeatedly focused on the political subtexts of the living dead films of George A. Romero, revealing, notably, how they reflect specific social concerns. In order to determine what makes the zombie movie and the figure of the zombie so productive of political readings, this article examines, first, the classic zombie movies influenced by voodoo lore, then Romero’s initial living dead trilogy (1968-1985), and finally some of the most successful films released in the 2000s. Resorting to a post-structuralist framework including Althusser’s notions of state apparatuses, Foucault’s distinction between subjection and subjectification, and Butler’s analyses of subversive resignification, the author argues that, while the classic zombie is entirely subjected to the master, and thus to the meanings the latter imposes, Romero’s living dead resist and sometimes create meaning, revealing both the contingency of the structures they disrupt and the constructiveness of the identities projected onto them. Resistance, then, is no longer directed at an “unnatural” order, as in the classic zombie movie, but at the “natural” order and is enabled by the contingency and multiplicity associated with the outbreak. The recent trend of zombie movies, whether survival horror or zombedies, confirms the diversity of complex, sometimes contradictory meanings enabled by the figure of the zombie.