When I
hear the term “horror” in any contemporary 21st century context I
can’t help but think of what is arguably the most “horrific” real event that
occurred on American soil in recent history:
the attacks of 9/11. The main
trajectory of my research, in fact, stems on tracing how 9/11 sparked various
narrative trends across genre & media – with a specific focus often on
television. And while I don’t tend to
focus on horror specifically, there is an element of the horrific in all the
televisual genres and programs that I find intricately tied to the terrorist
attacks (or more often, our responses to them).
In my
work I argue that 9/11 was framed as a trauma to be seen (in order to be felt) and that television has long been
the medium in charge of controlling feelings through the art of “seeing”
specifically constructed imagery. So,
for example, to many Americans, 9/11 unfolded in front of their eyes much like
a Hollywood blockbuster film – almost too spectacular to believe. Indeed, many survivors utilized the simile it
felt “like a movie” to explain the experience.
As Susan Sontag notes, “‘it felt like a movie’ seems to have displaced
the way survivors of a catastrophe used to express the short-term
unassimilability of what they had gone through:
‘It felt like a dream.’” So it’s
not really surprising that the American public turned to the realm of visual
culture/media to “replay” the event dominating their own memories almost
continuously throughout the past 13 years.
Marc Redfield argues, the phrase
itself, “‘it was like a movie’ conjures up not just an excess of event over
believability, but a sense that this event is
to be mediated, that it would have no sense, perhaps would not even have
occurred, if it were not being recorded and transmitted.” In this explanation it would seem that the
media was needed – it was the only way that people could move from disbelief
(that which they could not comprehend and some could not physically see) to
belief (that which they could only comprehend through repeat seeing). In my readings of televiusal narratives that
proliferate after 9/11 I propose that a very similar process is at work;
through their mediation of fictionalized scenarios they present trauma in order
to do away with it, hence becoming a sort of emotional security blanket for
viewers existing in an unstable post-9/11 world.
Certain stylistic changes can be seen on television during this time (a move to more filmic aesthetics is among them). But also, a shift toward more (to borrow from a Grey’s Anatomy phrase) “darky and twisty” fear-based programs. The 21st century saw a rapid rise of genres (or genre blends) on television that were not as prevalent before: dystopia, science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Like the trends noted for Hollywood horror films, television of the past decade and a half has increasingly featured programs that break with break old televisual commandments by ending routinely killing off major characters and often failing to offer the pre-requisite happy ending at a season or series end. While fictional television used to be the medium that provided a sense of predictability and comfort, the programming of the past decade or so has disallowed viewers to settle into any safe assumptions about how their narratives will unfold.
There
are a few consistent post-9/11 themes that have remained prevalent on
television throughout the past decade and a half:
·
Salvation/Rescue
Motifs – from political/terrorist peril (24, Alias, The Blacklist, Person of
Interest, Madam Secretary, State of Affairs), from technology gone awry
(Revolution, Fringe), from alien invasion (The Event, V)
·
Revenge/Vengeance/Vigilante
Justice Motifs – Revenge, Dexter
·
The
Do-Over/Resurrection Motif – time travel/shifting, vampire, zombies, rebirth,
cloning (Lost, Heroes, True Blood, Resurrection, Forever, Zero Hour)
·
The
Dark Side of Humanity – shows that about serial killers and cults (The
Following, Cult) and I
jokingly include here, politicians (ala
Scandal & House of Cards).
Arguably
the most popular contemporary television programs that falls into the
traditional horror genre, is AMC’s The
Walking Dead. This show features an
apocalyptic vision of the United States in the near future and incorporates all
of the previously mentioned post-9/11 themes and then some. I’m far from the first to read this show (or
the recent zombie craze more generally) as a product of the terrorist
attacks. In his article, “Are Zombies the Guilty Conscience
of Post-9/11 America,” Will Nixon suggests “that the zombie renaissance” represents
American’s reactions “to 9/11 and the mess” the government made of global
relations ever since the attacks. Others
argue that recent zombie narratives (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.
In a previous essay I argued Walking Dead rests upon a central question that could be read as
being allegorical in nature: “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. The
Walking Dead showcases both of these survival mindsets throughout various
characters who make the transition from lone survival to group living (e.g.
Michonne & Bob) and various central conflicts that ground the individual
seasons.
As previously discussed, the third season of Walking Dead highlights these mindsets
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 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. In analyzing this particular season, I’ve
asked: 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?
As the series continues on it is obvious that the show is
purposely casting post-apocalypse communities as surviving only through extreme
measures and questionable moral decisions that reveal the “horrific” side of
our potential human nature. (For
example, the actions that Carol took in season four – killing fellow community
members who were infected with an epidemic that threatened to wipe out the
entire prison and later – in one of the darkest moments I’ve yet to see on
television – assassinating a child in order to save the baby she was tasked to
protect). Outside of the group, this
thematic is found in season four when the morals of the “good” survivor group
are contrasted with those of the “bad” residents of Terminus. This was a community that originally
attempted to act as a sanctuary for all survivors but, after having been repaid
by invaders who stole, tortured, and killed them – turned just as vicious as
those who inflicted such injuries upon them.
They survive by luring unsuspecting refuges into their camp only to take
their positions and then literally consume them, having resorted to cannibalism
to survive.
The current season five offers yet another variation of this
motif when it pits the main cast against the survivors in Atlanta’s Grady
Memorial Hospital where the medical facility exists in a sort of police state
as the powers-that-be save only enough people from the local area to help
sustain their existence and turn a blind eye toward the abuse of both patients
and staff alike.
The Walking Dead
continually points toward the horrors of surviving at any cost, suggesting that
protecting one’s community from “invaders” through any means is immoral. That the fictional events of the show’s five
seasons unfold against the backdrop of real world debates about Homeland
security practices, foreign policies, and horrific accounts of the lengths our
own country went through in its efforts to be safe (e.g. “enhanced
interrogation techniques”) is no coincidence.
In my reading, this show, along with so many others, offers viewers a
chance to wrestle with the ethical dilemmas faced by fictional countries/communities
in peril in order to provide social commentary on the ways in which our real
ones deal with their own conflicts. There
is something horrific about imagining a world plagued by zombies… but there’s
something even more horrific about realizing that, in some ways, the world you
are living in is just as horrific.
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