If It Sounds Like a Quack... by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

Author:Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling [Hongoltz-Hetling, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2023-04-04T00:00:00+00:00

One fact that the CDC and its fellow agencies failed to fully appreciate was that, in zombie properties like 2009’s feature film Zombieland and 2010’s hit television series The Walking Dead, very little screen time is given to public health concepts like water sanitation. The action takes place after most health authorities have had their faces eaten, leaving individual survivors to run around attacking infected people with baseball bats, crossbows, and shotguns as a means of self-preservation.

That’s why other groups were quickly lining up to enlist the hot new cultural craze into their own, very different agendas. Zombies became the centerpiece in gun advertisements and were a major part of the NRA’s annual conventions, where shooting at the undead carried none of the moral baggage that came with shooting at human targets.

“Because the zombie canon focuses so squarely on the apocalypse, its spread into popular culture can erode faith in the resiliency of civilization,” wrote Daniel Drezner, the Tufts University professor and zombie expert. “The zombie narrative, as it is traditionally presented, socially constructs the very narrative that agencies like the CDC and FEMA are trying to prevent.”

Drezner documented the way that zombie references became a sort of dog whistle for gun rights—those on the outside glossed over a quirky head-scratcher while targeted audiences became fired up, even though they would clearly never need to shoot a zombie in real life.

Until some Americans began to ask, Will I need to shoot a zombie in real life?

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