Prestige Television and Prison in the Age of Mass Incarceration by Victoria M. Bryan

Author:Victoria M. Bryan [Bryan, Victoria M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367726782
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2021-03-31T00:00:00+00:00

The zombie as cultural icon

The zombie in The Walking Dead should not be read as “criminal” or as “vilified Other,” but should instead represent the systemic problems that face our society: racism, classism, employment deserts, lack of access to quality education, poor mental health treatment, the criminalization (instead of medical treatment) of drug and alcohol addiction. This is not an entirely new analysis of the zombie, however. Scholars who study the zombie genre tend to agree that George Romero’s iteration of this particular monster in Night of the Living Dead (1968) altered popular culture’s understanding of the zombie story. Our contemporary zombie narrative shifted away from its Haitian roots, concerned mostly with postcolonial mad-scientists bent on mind control, towards narratives focused primarily on infection and cannibalism. In other words, the zombie no longer represented control, but instead represented mindless consumption. A decade later, Romero’s 1978 Dawn of the Dead changed our understanding of the zombie again into that of the mindless consumer (Moreman 1)—one that not only is not under the control of another character, but one who does not have the capacity for any control at all. Such studies of the zombie require a focus on what the zombie itself represents rather than simply how it can be used as a tool.

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