Looking for a zombie for the end of the world

So we never did manage to get a blog post together for last week’s topic on Zombies and the Apocalypse. James pitched this one and here’s what he had to say to kick it off:

“Zombies! More generally, what’s with our obsession with post-apocalyptic story-lines. More specifically, why Zombies?”

I responded with my favourite lecture of all time – Daniel Drezner‘s talk at CIGI on Theories of International Governance and Zombies (seriously, watch at least 10 minutes and enjoy his awesomeness):

The discussion, like the topic itself, was pretty wide ranging about why zombies and general themes of surviving some sort of apocalypse seem to have really hit a nerve in the cultural Zeitgeist in the last decade. Here are a few of the ideas that came out of our talk that I seem to remember:

  • Zombies tap into a general fear of the mindless hoard and the loss of individual identity. The fight the zombies is to fight for your very identity, to struggle against a seeming void that’s sole purpose seems to be to pull you in and force conformity, stripping you of everything that defines you as an individual.

  • Apocalypses, zombies included, present an opportunity to invert, or even obliterate class barriers. The people who survive are often a mix of different socio-economic backgrounds and we often see that it is not the very wealthy or powerful who survive, or do very well – but rather those who have practical skills, training, or at least a ruthless attitude (criminals seem to do okay in these things – look at Tom Price in Survivors.)

    Even in more light hearted examples, like the Zombie Walks held round the world, there is a spirit of reversal at play. Nathan pointed out that these events are akin to the carnival tradition, where power structures are temporarily inverted and we abandon the routines for revelry – there’s a power there.

  • I think there is also something interesting about our coming to terms with temporary, and often fragile nature of civilization. Be it the spread of zombies, a virus, a virus that makes zombies, or some nuclear catastrophe, it never seems to take all that much to undo the present state of civilization and plunge us back into a near feral society of small groups standing against the odds.These traditions serve as an interesting reminder that we have a lot riding on some systems that seem to be pretty fragile. On the other hand, in creating ensemble sets of characters that survive and seek to forge something new, there simultaneously seems to be at least an attempt to affirm the capacity of human intelligence and spirit to make do, and inevitably overcome the situation.

So yeah, it was an awesome discussion – and the beer was good too!

Regardless of how you feel on the subject, I think we can all agree with Joss Whedon:

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