Are We "The Walking Dead"?: Reading the Zombie Craze as a Product of a Post-9/11 Climate

 

 

Anyone who follows my work knows that I read just about every contemporary popular culture phenomenon through the lens of 9/11.  (It’s convenient for my research and, well, it almost always seems to work).  So, it’s not shocking that I sat in front of my television set watching the latest season of AMC’s The Walking Dead (2010-present) seeing subtle allusions to the national tragedy.  But, I’m sure I’m not alone, and I certainly am not the first to tie the resurrected popularity of zombie narratives (of which this show contributed to greatly) to 9/11.

In some ways the zombie craze simply falls into a larger wave of narrative trends that can be viewed as decade-specific products.  Studying the renewed popularity of horror films in the years following 9/11, Mark Alexander Soloff discusses how filmmakers express “post-9/11 anxieties through metaphor” allowing cinema to become a “therapeutic catharsis for the nation’s newfound fears.”  I have made the same argument for various television programs of the past decade (e.g. Lost, Heroes, 24, Alias, Fringe, etc.)  and still others have made similar claims about the abundance of post-apocalyptic narratives (be they in the form of print fiction, film, television or video games) flooding the market today.  (A key example would be young adult dystopian novels like Susan Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy).

Zombie narratives have often been read as acting as a metaphor for various cultural concerns, so the genre almost insists that its current manifestation be read in connection to 9/11.  One example would be Will Nixon’s article, “Are Zombies the Guilty Conscience of Post-9/11 America,” which suggests “that the zombie renaissance” represents America’s reaction “to 9/11 and the mess” the government made of global relations ever since the attacks.  Others argue that the recent zombie narrative (much like their sister narrative, vampire tales) highlight an “us versus them” binary – a fear of a dangerous “other” lurking in the shadows.  Zombie storylines have also been read as alluding to cultural fears concerning biological warfare, epidemics, global warming, consumerism, and over dependence on technology.  And although they likely tap into all of these fears, I’m (of course) partial to the 9/11 reading. 

After all, to claim that the national tragedy of 9/11 has been a defining moment in the first decade of the 21^st century for the United States is not profound, nor is the idea that it directly and indirectly influenced the cultural production within American society throughout these years.  It is my firm belief that in the decade following the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, cultural products have been sites for interrogating and remediating the trauma that 9/11 caused for the citizens of a country that believed itself to be untouchable.   (We are the unsuspecting survivors that never saw the zombie apocalypse coming). 

Many consider 9/11 to be a cultural trauma and anyone familiar with trauma recovery knows that it requires a move from repetition to “working through.”  My habitual claim is that the apocalyptic narratives that proliferate after 9/11 help viewers make this move; through their repeated mediation of fictionalized scenarios these narratives present trauma in order to do away with it, hence becoming a sort of emotional security blanket for individuals existing in an unstable post-9/11 world.  In terms of zombie tales in particular, the fact that we are eagerly consuming these stories suggests that we are seeking a safe space to wrestle with, and perhaps displace, the fears they play upon.

 So what fear does Walking Dead tap into?  Too many to list but I’ll focus on one issue it highlights well:  the concern about “where to do we go from here?”  Zombie narratives often highlight two possible ways to deal with the post-apocalyptic world:   survive or rebuild.  Storylines that focus on surviving often showcase central characters on the run doing anything possible to survive on a daily basis – even if it means a lone existence.  Storylines that focus on rebuilding highlight the importance of community, structure, and group cohesiveness; they include central characters who (sometimes) place limits on what they are willing to do to survive, which include not being willing to exist alone.  What is interesting about the third season of Walking Dead is that these two mindsets are portrayed through the parallel storylines unfolding with the core group held up at the prison and the inhabitants of the gated community of Woodbury.     While the group viewers have come to know and love (Rick’s crew) hold a bit of both mindsets – they are a community of sorts, a surrogate family system – they primarily find themselves on the run playing the role of “survivor.”  They keep attempting momentary respites which could be viewed as community building (e.g. life on the farm in season two; life at the prison now in season three), but these are always abandoned when their main goal must again be to simply survive.  They do have limits as to what they will do to achieve this goal, but viewers have seen these get stretched thin over time.

The Woodbury community (led by the Governor) exists as a faux utopia showing how there is a chance for “normalcy” and life after tragedy.  At least that’s what it seems like at first glance.  The setting is a seemingly normal town (quaint even, a throwback to the yesteryears), the residents seem safe and happy – no one is on the run and prior to recent events there had not been a death among them in quite some time.  But viewers quickly learn (if they didn’t guess immediately) that things aren’t quite what they seem in this happy town.  The Governor is willing to go to great extremes to ensure their safety (including murder).   But his motivation is not purely altruistic:  his scientific projects are in place because he longs to cure his infected daughter (who he had kept locked away in his living quarters) and all of his actions, arguably, really seem to be to ensure his place as a leader and a father figure to this new generation of survivors. 

Now usually those existing on the “community” side of the community/survivor continuum are portrayed as the more morally sound, after all, they have the betterment of society on their side.  It is interesting that Walking Dead flips this notion on its head.  Is it too much of a stretch to read the Governor, who gives his charismatic speeches about community and the future of humanity, as an allegory for George W. Bush?  Is the hypocrisy of the Woodbury leadership a metaphor for the Bush administration politics?  Can we read the staged fight scenes (with zombies whose teeth had been removed) as alluding to the smoke and mirror media spectacles of the post-9/11 era?  Or am I stretching here?

Regardless, the show definitely poses fundamental questions about humanity and forces viewers to wonder how they would react in post-apocalyptic scenarios.  And, arguably, these questions are more important today than they were twelve years ago back when we still felt like an untouchable people.  So are we the walking dead?  Are we still wandering around in a haze after the shock of 9/11?  And, if so, do watching these narrative do anything to lessen it?  I’m not sure but I’ll keep watching just in case they might.