there’s no longer any clear metaphor. While America may still suffer major social ills—economic inequality, policy brutality, systemic racism, mass murder—zombies have been absorbed as entertainment that’s completely independent from these dilemmas.I just can't agree with this. Though I don't think zombie fiction, in general, always speaks to these major social ills, there are many examples that use zombies as complicating factors in cultural critique. In other words, there is some really great stuff out there. The BBC's show In the Flesh might be a bit slow, but it packs a strong emotional punch and complicated, dynamic characters. It uses the reintegration of zombies into society as a way to deal with issues like post-dramatic stress, homophobia, and economic inequality. Colson Whitehead's Zone One (one of the few books that scared me enough that I couldn't read it at night) uses zombies and reanimation to question the role of the hero in postmodern society, racial tensions, and 20th and 21st century American exceptionalism. The zombie still has much to say, especially because it becomes a kind of blank slate in terms of symbolism - we can write whatever fear we want onto it, especially when we tweak the normal zombie narrative, giving zombies a chance to play multiple roles within a larger whole. Take Max Brooks' World War Z: in that text, zombies stand in for terrorism, global epidemics like AIDS or Ebola, rampant consumerism, immigration, cold war hysteria... and the list could go on. The plurality of symbolism doesn't negate the meaning behind each metaphors. Plural does not mean unclear - it just means we have to look harder at how characters react to zombies, as each metaphor puts ever more emphasis on characters instead of the monsters they fight.
Later in his article, Mariani also states:
American pop culture has used the zombie, fraught as it is with history, as a form of escapism, rather than a vehicle to explore its own past or current fears.This has me even more frustrated. As someone who is constantly trying to defend genre fiction - whether science fiction, fantasy, detective fiction, or romantic fiction, etc. - to my fellow academics and readers alike, this feels like the onslaught that constantly bombards most fantastic literature. Yes, there are many forms of sf/f (science fiction / fantasy) that read as little more than pulp fiction, with few, if any, depths or layers of meaning. But that does not preclude zombie fiction, or any speculative fiction for that matter, from having real meaning and cultural importance. I'm going to briefly look at The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead to discuss this a bit more. I'm using these two shows because 1) they are extremely popular and 2) they are specifically referenced in the Atlantic article. (I have issues with how the article addresses post-apocalyptic stories in general, but I think I leave that gripe for later). I'll try to keep myself to vague, non-plot specific stuff to avoid spoilers.*
From what I can tell, much of what Mariani finds problematic in The Walking Dead franchise is its lack of realism. His major issue centers on the escapism inherent in zombie fiction. He finds:
The monster once represented the real-life horrors of dehumanization; now it’s used as a way to fantasize about human beings whose every decision is exalted.Though he later acknowledges the death of most of the population as a way to give meaning back to the decisions and actions of the few who survive, he finds that kind of emphasis on an individual's choices worrying. In other words: if there are only a few humans left alive, of course what you decide to do matters... but isn't that just an escapist fantasy for the viewer? We all want to matter in some crucial way, just like the characters on these shows, but we will only find that meaning in fiction, not in reality.
I find escapism, however, more important than Mariani does. The fact that such escapism exists inherently in the show (and is so popular) tell us much about the culture that created it and consumes it. We, as viewers, want to watch these characters find meaning in their lives because we have, perhaps, lost our way in our own lives (perhaps due to economic reasons, or personal issues, or simply through some kind of postmodern malaise). This kind of viewing may be problematic in terms of how we deal with our own issues, but that isn't the show's fault - the escapism it promotes actually sheds light on current cultural feelings of discontent. The show's so-called flaws, its uses of heightened importance and individual agency, reflect the concerns and flaws we can easily find in our own society. Hell, even some of the characters in the show complicate how we view this kind of escapism. (I'm thinking specifically of Gabriel, who is constantly trying to convince himself his actions don't matter, or even Michone, who's escapist tendencies provide some intriguing character development in season 2).
In Fear the Walking Dead, escapism becomes more firmly linked to real life. Some of the characters, especially Daniel Salazar, bring the question of escapism and personal agency into sharp relief. Salazar, an immigrant from El Salvador, left his country for the US because of the Salvadoran civil war. His past (which I won't get into here, but is covered very well in an article from NPR) highlights how one man's choices really can affect society and how escapism works in the 'real' world. History does have a place in these shows, and when this emphasis on escapism works well, it allows characters to evolve beyond stereotypical or archetypal character structuring. The escapist, speculative qualities of these shows, then, have a point, even if an uneven one. We can find meaning in all this - and we don't even have to look very hard for it.
The other main issue Mariani has with The Walking Dead is its setting. He writes:
Zombies, in their American incarnation, strip earth back down to its essential parts: mankind, nature, survival. Think of The Walking Dead’s Georgia, a desolate but oddly idyllic expanse of camps, fields, abandoned motels, and forest clearings. In this way, post-apocalyptic zombie scenarios are as much utopian as they are dystopian. The landscape is cleared of industrial plants, oil derricks, real estate developments, traffic jams, construction sites, and urban blight.I have some big issues with what Mariani says here. While I agree that utopian impulses abound in The Walking Dead, as in much post-apocalyptic fiction, the way utopia is presented in the show (and in Fear the Walking Dead) immediately renounces any true utopian leanings. That idyllic Georgian forest the article references has more to do with Southern Gothic or a Cormac McCarthy novel than a true utopian, quasi-transcendentalist 'new' society. There are always zombies in the trees, as well as something much more dangerous: other people. Two-legged wolves roam those woods as well giant hordes of zombies. And the sites Mariani claims are missing from the show are all there, in very specific ways, serving a similar purpose as the forest. The seemingly empty cities, railway stations, real estate developments, traffic jams, and construction zones appear to be great places to build new, utopian settlements, far from threats. But all of these idyllic clusters of civilization inevitably fall. And they fall because humanity, for all its many redeeming qualities, is flawed. Unlike the very, very, very frustrating film version of I Am Legend, where a safe haven exists and hope can survive, there is no hope in these woods, nor in the secluded cabins, nor in the perfectly built sustainable housing. If there are utopias here, they all fall, fulfilling one of the main definitions of dystopia: a fallen utopia. This is where much of the meaning in the show comes to the fore - everything has flaws, everything can fall. So how will we continue? How will we survive?
So, yes, The Walking Dead is about mankind, nature, and survival, but in this case, survival depends on how you define the word. And that is what makes the show so interesting - what does survival actually mean? And what is more important, the survival of mankind as a species, the survival of mankind as a civilization, or the survival of our 'humanity'? And since this is a serialized TV show, not a film or a novel, the constant repetition of episodic rising and falling, finding hope and losing it, adds to the shows meaning. Survival will never have one true definition here, and the plurality of its meanings, for me at least, makes it all the more interesting.
In a nutshell, then, I think Mariani's article dismisses current zombie narratives too easily. Yes, the history of zombies and the cultural appropriation that has led us to the zombies we know today complicate how we can view zombie fiction. And, yes, much of the zombie fare we see today is riddled with clichés, stereotypes, flattened archetypes, and sensationalism. But that doesn't mean the zombie is an unclear metaphor or empty symbol. It just means we need to look at the zombie with new eyes are spend time close reading each text or film or TV show to find the nuances that, added together, make zombie narratives worth our consideration.
* I'm not saying this show is the best thing out there, but to dismiss it, and to dismiss zombie fiction in general, is to dismiss a cultural phenomenon that has more depth than it's given credit for.
Have you seen IZombie? They have a Zombie hero.
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