"We are the walking dead!": Why Zombies Matter

by Dr. Kyle William Bishop Southern Utah University SpColl Cedar City, Utah LD 5101 Delivered as the . S5 5 Distinguished Faculty Lecture A2 at SUU, September 4, 2012 2012 Southern Utah University

Founded in 1897, Southern Utah University has evolved from teacher training institution into a comprehensive, regional university offering specialized training and associate, baccalaureate and graduate degree programs. Its spectacular 133-acre campus is a beautiful setting for the personalized and experiential education opportunities that have become a hallmark of the SUU experience. Faculty and staff alike take pride in making certain that this tradition endures today and far into the future.

The SUU community truly has something for everyone. The University is to a wealth of cultural, social and athletic activities. As host of the Tony Award winning Utah Shakespeare Festival, the Utah Summer Games, the only Hispanic Center for Academic Excellence in Utah and 16 NCAA Division l athletic teams, SUU is a uniquely dynamic and vibrant place to be. Beyond campus, Cedar City is surrounded by many national parks, monuments, forests and wilderness areas that draw millions of visitors each year from around the globe. In a mere 40 minutes, one can access year-round golfing or ski the "greatest snow on E_arth". Those preferring the city scene can reach the glittering entertainment capital of the world, Las Vegas, in just over two hours.

SUU is a fully accredited member of the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities and many of its academic programs have special accreditation or endorsement from the nation's top organizations. SUU has been recognized as one of America's Best Colleges by U.S. News and World Report, a Top 10 Best Value school by Consumers Digest and has earned the titles Best Value College and Best in the West from the Princeton Review. With more than 7,000 students and 260 faculty, SUU delivers the kind of education that is typically only found on private school campuses and does it for an affordable public institution price. For more information about SUU, visit www.suu.edu.

0 10 Dr. Kyle William Bishop

Born in Cedar City, Utah, Kyle William Bishop graduated from Cedar City High School in 1992. He studied art history, music, German and English at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and graduated Magna Cum Laude in 1998 with a BA in humanities. Bishop then attended the University of Utah and completed an MA degree in English and American studies in 2000 with an emphasis in film. Bishop went on to receive a PhD in American literature and film from the University of Arizona in 2009. He has since returned to Cedar City to become a third­ generation assistant professor at Southern Utah University, where he currently teaches courses in American literature and culture, film studies, fantasy literature and English composition.

Dr. Bishop has presented and published a variety of critical essays and articles on popular culture and cinematic adaptation, including such topics as Metropolis, , Fight Club, Buffi; the Vampire Slayer, Dawn ofthe Dead, Frankenstein, The Birds, Zombieland, and Tl1e Walking Dead. His first book, American Zombie Gothic: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Walking Dead in Popular Culture, is available from McFarland and Co., Publishers.

D 2 D The Distinguished Faculty Lecture

The Distinguished Faculty Lecture originated with the SUV Faculty Senate and SUV President Gerald R. Sherratt in 1983. Since then, 28 SUV faculty have been selected for this honor. Each year an outstanding faculty scholar is selected to present a paper as part of the Fall Convocation Series. The scholar receives an honorarium of $1,500, awarded by the Grace Adams Tanner Center for Human Values, and is honored at a reception following the presentation. The lecture is printed, bound, and placed in the Special Collections of the Southern Utah University Library. Each Fall the Distinguished Faculty Lecture Committee, a Faculty Senate Committee composed of two faculty members from each SUV College, invites SUV faculty to submit proposals. The proposals are selected on how well they meet the announced criteria:

• The proposal must evidence high standards of professional research and/or scholarship and delivery. • The lecturer should evidence contributions to the field of endeavor. • The topic should have broad appeal to the SUU community.

In early Spring the Committee members review the anonymous proposals and vote on the proposal that best meets the criteria. Only the Committee Chair is aware of the faculty members identify during this review process.

D3D "We are the walking dead!": Why Zombies Matter

2012 Tanner Distinguished Faculty Lecturer Kyle William Bishop

On May 26, 2012, a naked 31-year-old Rudy Eugene-allegedly acting under the influence of an amphetamine cocktail known on the streets as ''bath salts"1-chewed off the forehead, nose, eyelids, and lips of Ronald Poppo, a 65-year-old homeless Miami man.2 According to police sources, the first officer on the scene "approached and, seeing what was happening ... ordered the naked man to back away. When he continued the assault, the officer shot him... . The attacker failed to stop being shot, forcing the officer to continue firing. Witnesses said they heard at least a half dozen shots." 3 Almost immediately after news of the attack went viral, bloggers and comment posters across the internet began drawing parallels between Eugene's attack and the zombie apocalypse: "This was obviously a zombie attack," wrote an anonymous reader on the Miami Herald website. "So sharpen those machetes and stock up on bullets."4 Paranoid suspicions flooded the web like a rampant infection, and the blogosphere was soon identifying Miami as the epicenter of a real zombie apocalypse.5

Just one day later, this time in New Jersey, 43-year-old Wayne Carter barricaded himself in his Hackensack home and threatened to injure himself with a knife. The two police officers who arrived on the scene ordered Carter to put down his weapon, but instead he "allegedly cut out his entrails in front of [the] police and then threw bits of his flesh and intestines at ."6 0fficers used two cans of pepper spray and a fire extinguisher in failed attempts to subdue Carter, who eventually had to be pinned down by a 6-foot fire ladder.7 Then, on Tuesday, May 29, Alexander Kinyua, a 21-year-old Morgan State University student, admitted to murdering his roommate Kujoe Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie. Kinyua "allegedly confessed a shocking

D4D revelation: not only had he killed Agyei-Kodie by cutting him up with a knife and then dismembered him, [but] he [also] ingested parts of the victim's brain and all of his heart." 8 Later, during the first weekend of June, Carl Jacquneaux, a 43-year-old Louisiana man, entered the yard of his neighbor, Todd Credeur, in Lafayette Parish. Angry over an unspecified domestic dispute, Jacquneaux attacked Credeur and bit a chunk of his face off.9

The increasingly alarmed and paranoid internet posts resulting from these incidents inspired an official release from the Centers for Disease Control firmly denouncing the existence of real-life zombies or any zombie-like plague. In the past, the CDC has openly embraced the zombie paradigm, using the trending popularity of the monster to market serious-if notably tongue-in-cheek-emergency preparedness plans. In fact, part of the agency's Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response website currently features a "Zombie Preparedness" section, which includes a discussion blog and promotional posters.10 Now, however, the CDC has been forced to be : zombies don' t exist. In an email to The Huffington Post, agency spokesperson David Daigle stated unequivocally that the "CDC does not know of a virus or condition that would reanimate the dead (or one that would present zombie-like symptoms)."11 Yet despite the CDC's categorical dismissal, "zombie sightings" continue, and those who believe in the plausibility of a real-life zombie apocalypse are hardly placated by any federal declaration. As reader George Broad way declares, "Right, government denies it . . . so honey grab the kids[;] we're heading to the mountains for the rest of our lives!" 12

What exactly is going on here? Are the walking dead really appearing among ? Or does the recent flurry of sensational headlines merely underscore the fact that we as a global community cannot help but "see" zombies everywhere? Over the past ten years, one monstrous subject has bound our collective imaginations more than any other across different cultures, generations, languages, and disciplines-the corps cadavre, the walking dead, the zombie. This fascinating creature emerged from obscurity eighty years ago, moving from Haiti to Hollywood, rising from folklore figure to film icon, and now it has 050 invaded every corner of popular culture. Once simply the star monster of B-movies and drive-in theaters, the zombie can now be found not only on stage and screen but also in books, on mobile devices, on bumper stickers, in museums, and even on the sides of our children's lunch boxes. And the zombie isn't just part of the entertainment industry or the liberal arts academy anymore; its metaphorical and allegorical power has transcended fiction and narrative to become a part of almost every discipline: political science, economics, business, medicine and health care, and the sciences.

For the past decade, zombies and the narratives told around them have been more popular than ever, with films on both the big and ,;inall screen; video, board, and card games; fiction, non-fiction, and ~·ven children's books; action figures, plush dolls, and other collectibles; _ind a host of colorful metaphors and academic appropriations. In my attempts to explain this renaissance, I have explored the fundamental nature of zombie cinema through not only its singular origins but also its relationship to post-9 I 11 cultural consciousness. Building on an essentially "New World" and relatively recent folkloric tradition, the zombie has evolved and matured into a ubiquitously recognizable figure, joining the hallowed ranks of other, more established supernatural monsters-and perhaps even transcending them. On the one hand, zombies graphically represent the inescapable realities of an untimely death (via infection, infestation, or violence), but on the other, these creatures afford us with powerful-and increasingly popular­ allegories by which we attempt to address and explain the tensions and anxieties associated with our twenty-first century environment.

In other words, what was once relegated to our movie screens, television sets, and video game consoles has greatly expanded its presence and influence. In the past, zombies, walking corpses, raging cannibals, and apocalyptic landscape could only be found in the safe zones of narrative fiction. Recently, however, images of deserted metropolitan streets, stray human corpses, gangs of lawless vigilantes, and face-eating drug addicts have become more common than ever, appearing on the nightly news even more often than on the Silver Screen. Every year of this new millennium has seemed to bring with D6D it a new viral contagion or infestation scare, and survival manuals, training retreats, and even governmental apocalypse contingency plans are soberly appearing with more frequency. Because the aftereffects of terrorism and natural, political, and economical disasters so closely resemble the scenarios of zombie narratives, the images from such fictions not only shock and terrify a population that has become jaded to more traditional horror genres, but they also provide the audience an outlet, a vehicle through which they can cope.13 Zombies represent our greatest- and most timely-fears, and through their appropriation by popular culture, the academy, and real life itself, we are learning to take control of our insecurities.

Our current insistence to see zombies almost everywhere in the world around us should come as no surprise as the walking dead are, with all deference to the CDC, real. Rather than simply being born in the mind of an inventive Gothic novelist, the zombie has its noteworthy origins in what to many in the West would be considered folklore, but to the practitioners of the vodou religion would be considered reality. When I first began down the dark path of "zombie studies" in 2002, I was drawn to learn more about this largely overlooked monster for two key reasons. The adaptation scholar in me was obsessed with finding a movie monster that was more-or-less unique to film; that is, a creature that didn't originate in a European novel. Vampires, reanimated Golems, and ghosts can be traced back to specific literary traditions, and even the werewolf is arguably just a variation on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The zombie, on the other hand, comes from nonfiction accounts and travel narratives, not from fiction. In addition to being enthralled by the unusual origins of the zombie, the Americanist in me was fascinated by the idea that the walking dead, unlike most other Hollywood monsters, was essentially and fundamentally invented in the New World, sired by the colonial struggles of Haiti and brought to the world's attention through US authors and filmmakers.

Perhaps most importantly, the zombie is such an important and relevant figure for our modem culture, and one that continues to interest me as an object of close study, because of its powerful role as a diverse and multifaceted allegorical figure. All monsters should be 070 read metaphorically, of course-the vampire, for example, could be the poster child for allegory, as it has variously been used to represent anti-Semitic paranoia, sexual promiscuity, lesbianism, Communism, sexually transmitted disease, and-most recently and inexplicably­ abstinence. I argue the zombie has even more mutability and potential for application, as the zombie has been appropriated as needed by different groups, generations, and agendas over the past eighty years to represent a variety of things, from enslavement to colonial racism to miscegenation to political subversion to violence and death to the Civil Rights Movement to Cold-War anxieties to cultural materialism to terrorism to STDs to addiction to illegal immigration to general malaise. The key to understanding the contemporary significance of this "multiplicity of zombies," not to mention their current explosion in popularity, is to identify the primary types of zombies at work across our culture. Although Kevin Boon has established a rather liberal taxonomy including nine disparate kinds of zombies,141 limit my focus to just five: the vodou zombie, the puppet zombie, the Romero zombie, the agent zombie, and the "real" zombie.

The first type of zombie for us to consider in this taxonomy is the folklore zombie, the "walking dead" monstrosity created by vodou ritual and magic. This kind of zombie has been a terrifying part of vodou culture, particularly that found in the post-colonial nation of Haiti, for over a hundred years now. According to ethnographers Hans W. Ackermann and Jeanine Gauthier, many West African and Congolese mythologies describe the zombi as a "corpse" or a "body without a soul."15 This ancient belief was amplified when abducted black slaves were exposed to the Christian concept of resurrection-a body returned from the grave-and the ideologies of colonial enslavement-bodies lacking freedom and autonomy. As a result of this cross cultural fusion, the Haitian zombie was born: a reanimated human lacking a soul or a mind. Of course, these New World zombies aren't dead, flesh-eating monsters but rather the victims of mystic bokor priests who transform their into mindless slaves. Ethnobotanist Wade Davis claims these mystics use thei.r knowledge of plants, poisons, and natural sedatives to concoct a "zombie powder" -called

080 coup poudre-that makes its victims appear clinically deceased.16 After a quick burial and brief period of entombment, the oxygen-starved and thus brain-damaged victims are dug up and revived by the bokor for his own nefarious purposes.

Thus the real-world vodou zombie isn't a monster to be feared, but rather a tragic victim to be pitied. Instead of being used to populate massive armies of the undead, these poor souls are taken from their families, sold to unscrupulous plantation owners, and forced to work the sugar fields in abject misery for the rest of their days. Such creatures were hardly of interest to horror movie producers, but they did receive the attention of anthropologists and ethnographers. Perhaps the first to write about theses pathetic zombies was William B. Seabrook in his 1929 travelogue The Magic Island. Seabrook describes the zombies he saw as plodding brutes, "like automatons.... [ with] the eyes of a dead man, not blind, but staring, unfocused, unseeing. The whole face .... was vacant, as if there was nothing behind it."17Years later, in 1938, Zora Neale Hurston gave a more analytical account of the Haitian zombie. In Tell My Horse, Hurston narrates her encounter with the zombie named Felicia Felix-Mentor, who had a "blank face with ... dead eyes. The eyelids were white all around the eyes as if they had been burned with acid."18 Although these creatures are not necessarily monsters, they are nonetheless monstrous-the difference is that, in Haiti, one is not afraid of a zombie but rather of becoming one.

Whereas the original zombie is quite literally a slave, the first fictional zombie-the puppet zombie-performs a similar function on a purely metaphorical level. Loosely adapted from the vodou zombies, the original film zombies are the feckless victims of evil voodoo witchdoctors, especially white, female victims. Thanks to the popularity of Seabrook's largely unsubstantiated reports of Haiti as a backwards country of pagan magic and primitive superstition, the zombie that finally made its way to general US audiences was one deeply (mis) informed by ignorance and imperialist racism. The first of many films to feature this kind of zombie is Victor Halperin's 1932 production White Zombie. Clearly designed to take advantage of the popularity of Universal's Dracula (1931), Halperin's film is dark, brooding, and D9D overtly Gothic, focusing primarily on the maniacal actions of an evil voodoo master and mesmerist, "Murder" Legendre, played with melodramatic relish by Bela Lugosi. Films such as White Zombie abuse Haitian folk.lore to manifest the greatest fear of a white, imperialist audience: that the subservient, black "Other" would rise up and enslave their former oppressors. The true "monster" of these "voodoo zombie" films are not the shambling and clumsy zombies themselves but rather those who create them; in other words, as with real vodou, these zombies are most frightening because of fear of enslavement rather than a violent death.

From the very beginning, then, the zombie does its important cultural work primarily as an allegorical figure. In addition to epitomizing colonialist slavery, Halperin's zombies also draw parallels between slaves and capitalist proletarian workers. As the first zombies to appear on the movie screen, Legendre's slow-moving, dim-witted, and essentially dumb creatures have established the conventional and expected "look" of the zombie. On the one hand, the dark-skinned zombies would have reminded contemporary viewers of black slaves and a recent, imperialist economic structure. On the other, however, Halperin's macabre cast would have no doubt emphasized for his audience the toiling working class or the hopelessly unemployed who shuffled almost as aimlessly in Depression-era bread and soup lines.19 For viewers in the United States, the idea of being turned into literal slaves might have been far-fetched, but the thought of being enslaved to a tedious job, a bleak economy, or a helpless government was an immediate reality. This trope of losing one's independence to a greater power continued to manifest well into the post-World War II era, with science-fiction films such as Invisible Invaders (1959), The Earth Dies Screaming (1964), and even, to some extent, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). These Cold-War variants, while not zombie movies in the true sense, nonetheless build on Halperin's initial idea of enslavement, but with the added fear of invasion and domination.

Xenophobic fears of Communism set the stage for the third kind of zombie, the one that has come to dominate popular depictions of the monster: a horde of cannibalistic, walking dead ghouls, invented 0100 almost single handedly by George A. Romero with his 1968 film Night of the Living Dead. In his low-budget attempt to adapt Richard Matheson's I Am Legend to the screen, Romero drew from a variety of literary and cinematic influences to create, perhaps inadvertently, the modem zombie. As I discuss in detail in my article "Assemblage Filmmaking" from 2010, Night of the Living Dead is a clever amalgam of images and tropes from the early zombie films, popular alien invasion movies, rural siege narratives- most notably Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 film The Birds-and vampire movies such as Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney Salkow own adaptation of I Am Legend, The Last Man on Earth (1964).20 Most importantly, perhaps, Romero was inspired by another mythical fiend: the ghoul-a creature that haunted graveyards to eat the flesh of human corpses. Like vampires, Romero's monsters feast on human victims, but they eat the body, not just the blood. To up the stakes even further, the monstrous condition is contagious-being killed by the ghouls of Night of the Living Dead means becoming one of them as well.

Rather than being converted to the army of walking dead by a maniacal voodoo priest or invading aliens, Romero's victims become subject to "living death," a condition that strips them of both intelligence and natural life to make them infected, contagious, and horrifically violent killers. Suddenly everything about the zombie changed: the zombies themselves became the unequivocal monsters to be feared, being both slave and enslaver in one; and rather than having a group of humans fighting a single foe, as in Dracula, the scenario became a multitude of "them" versus a dwindling number of "us." As Romero redefined-or, perhaps more accurately, reinvented-the zombie forever, he helpfully provided viewers with a clear set of "rules" that would come to dominate most depictions of the zombie to follow. Using the media as a mouthpiece, Night of the Living Dead establishes these simple yet fundamental basics: recently dead humans have returned from the dead to attack and eat the living, anyone bitten by one of the creatures- or killed in any other way-becomes one of them, and the only way to destroy one of the monsters is by destroying its brain. Furthermore, the slow moving ghouls are only really

0110 dangerous en masse because, as Sheriff McClelland (George Kosana) famously states, "Yeah, they're dead. They're all messed up."21

With Romero, then, the metaphorical force of the zombie expands into a broader analogy, one that addresses violence, death, mortality, cannibalism, invasion, and infection, not to mention sexism, racism, the collapse of the nuclear family, and even incest. Released in the midst of the Vietnam War, Night of the Living Dead forced viewers to face the morbid realities of violent death: rotting corpses, dismembered bodies, and bloody bullet wounds. Released without a rating, the film's violence was all the more horrifying not only because of its raw brutality-clawing hands and rending teeth with cannibalistic results- but also because it often occurs between family members. This familial barbarism can be read as a kind of symbolic incest, and it draws attention to the general disintegration of the traditional family structure of the 1950s. Night of the Living Dead depicts the literal siege of a family home, and the zombie plague results in a young couple dying in an explosion, a brother killing his sister, and a young girl feasting upon the flesh of her murdered mother. In addition, the supernatural monstrousness of the zombies is mirrored by the more realistic atrocities committed by the human characters, including violent acts against women, a domineering patriarchy, and a racially coded lynching. Romero's movie can be read in a variety of ways, depending on one's prevailing fears.

Most fans and scholars consider the zenith of the 2Q1h-centry zombie movie to be Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978), the film that most overly brought the central analogy of the "new" zombie to the fore: they are us. By shifting the focus of the action from the farm house to the suburban shopping mall, Romero redirects his critical lens as well. The metaphor this time is less worried about war and civil discord as it is about economic instability and unchecked consumerism. The relentless "mall zombies" of Dawn of the Dead criticize humanity as mindless victims of their implacable drives and desires, people whose overwhelming need to shop and consume will motivate them even after death.22 Instead of suggesting that humanity has something to fear either from the zombies or about becoming part of their insatiable army, 0120 Romero's second zombie film frightens audiences by revealing how everyone is potentially a kind of zombie in real life already, mindless drones infected with irresponsible capitalistic desires. The zombies relentlessly clamoring to enter the shops of the Monroeville Mall are decidedly pathetic, once again cast in the role of victims. And as the cast of heroes learn over the course of the film, anyone can join them in their fate.

The contagious, flesh-eating monster of the zombie invasion narrative enjoyed a measure of success-almost exclusively on the movie screen-for over a decade, but in the middle of the '80s, this kind of zombie suffered a notable decline as the narrative genre shifted into its parodic and comedic phase. The beginning of the end came in 1983 with the release of Michael Jackson's epic Thriller music video, a film short that features dancing and jiving corpses drawn from their graves. Rather than serving an allegorical purpose, Jackson's zombies are kitschy, exaggerated, and decidedly non-frightening. A showdown of sorts was brewing between the serious and the comedic, and it reached a tipping point in 1985 when Romero's third zombie movie, Day of the Dead, went head-to-head with Dan O'Bannon's revisionist The Return of the Living Dead at the box office. In terms of sheer revenue, the clever and irreverent "zombedy" won the contest, with the brain­ eating zombies of The Return of the Living Dead making $4.4 million the film's opening weekend compared to Day of the Dead's $1.7 million.23 After 1985, the traditional and "serious" zombie narratives all but disappeared from the scene, replaced by lighter fare such as I Was a Teenage Zombie (1987), Dead Heat (1988), and Peter Jackson's Braindead (1992). The truly horrifying zombie went into a period of incubation, sustained primarily by video games such as CapCom's Bio Hazard (1996).

However, the serious zombie returned on the scene ten years ago, reentering mainstream consciousness in the wake of September 11 primarily thanks to Danny Boyle and his 28 Days Later (2002). Although not technically a zombie movie-that is, the "infecteds" of Boyle's film are living, breathing humans who have simply been infected by a "rage virus"24 -28 Days Later nonetheless reignited the zombie invasion narrative. Once again, an isolated band of disparate survivors are on 0130 the run from a seemingly endless horde of bloodthirsty cannibals, but this time the creatures move with lightning speed and infect their prey in mere seconds. More importantly, Boyle's living zombies reinstated the allegorical power of the monster. Released at a time when the shocking images of a devastated New York City were fresh on viewers minds, 28 Days Later's sequence of Jim (Cillian Murphy) wandering aimless around the deserted streets of London, picking up scraps of useless paper money and pondering a vast street shrine with photos of the dead and missing can clearly be read as a cathartic restatement of the horrors of terrorism and natural disasters. As the film progresses, it offers sober commentary on the risks associated with blood-borne viruses, such as AIDS, and the dangers of an excessively empowered military. By 2003, the zombie, it appeared, could once again be taken seriously.

The second key narrative in the burgeoning zombie renaissance was Paul W. S. Anderson's adaptation of the successful Bio Ha zard games, Residen t Evil (2002). Like Boyle's film, Resident Evil appears to be more science fiction than horror, but its monsters are unequivocally zombies-although amazingly quick and powerful ones. Anderson's film does offer an indictment against corporate greed and unethical scientific practices, but its relevance in helping to get the zombie back on its feet, as it were, comes from making the monster both terrifying and popular again. Resident Evil raked in almost $18 million its opening weekend and went on to gross over $100 million worldwide.25 0ther producers and filmmakers quickly took notice, and it suddenly seemed as if any script with zombies in it was greenlighted and rushed into production. Over the next few years, major Hollywood studios were eager to produce and distribute a host of adaptations, sequels, and remakes, including House of the Dead (2003), Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004), and Zack Snyder 's Dawn of the Dead (2004), not to mention sophisticated zombedies, such as Shaun of the Dead (2004), and even a new Romero zombie film, Land of the Dead (2005). The zombie was suddenly relevant again, and the creature at last had the financial support it needed to become a real box office star.

D14D Over the last decade, the zombie as a cultural icon has also broken its cinematic , multiplying and spreading throughout almost every form of media in a manner not unlike its own infectious pandemic. Clearly speaking to and resonating throughout a shell­ shocked post-9 / 11 generation, the zombie monster incited fans of all kinds to push the boundaries of the traditional narrative and to I find new applications for zombie images, tropes, and structures. I Media analyst Henry Jenkins calls this kind of broad mutation and dissemination "convergence culture," a dynamic merging of media, fans, and technology that "represents a cultural shift as consumers are encouraged to seek out new information and make connections among dispersed media content."26 Whereas the zombie of the twentieth century was almost exclusively limited to cinematic depictions, then, in the new and tumultuous twenty-first century, it was suddenly possible for an author to get a zombie book published-and even reviewed! Zombie video games and graphic novels left the margins and went mainstream, and, before anyone knew it, zombies could be found in card games, on iPhone apps, on the radio, in television shows, and all over the toy aisles at Toys R Us.

Convergence culture, however, is about more than just wild variation-it's also about consumer consumption.27 Building upon the newfound financial solvency of zombie cinema, the zombie renaissance is seeing similar prosperity in all kinds of media. Max Brooks pushed the literary zombie into mainstream culture with his hugely successful The Zombie Survival Guide (2003), followed by his more traditional novel, World War Z (2006), and even Stephen King entered the fray with Cell (2006). The videogame market has exploded with new additions such as a host of Resident Evil sequels, Left 4 Dead (2008), and even ~ Plants vs. Zombies (2009). Not surprisingly, zombies are enjoying solid f success in the comics industry, with examples such as John Russo's Escape of the Living Dead (2005), the irreverent comic mash-up Marvel Zombies (2005- ), and the Eisner Award-winning iZOMBIE (2010- ). In addition to proliferating across different media, the zombie has also experienced rapid mutation. Some zombies remain traditionally dead, whereas others are alive; some only eat brains, whereas others eat

0150 anything they can get their hands on; some zombies merely grunt and moan, whereas others may have an eloquent command of the English language-and, of course, some are slow and others fast. In fact, some zombies have even transcended their roles as monsters.

Many diehard fans of the zombie longed to be able to root for these misunderstood creatures, wishing to elevate them from monstrous antagonists to sympathetic protagonists; as a result, the fourth type of zombie, what Craig Derksen and Darren Hudson Hick call the "agent zombie,"28 was born. This transformation should come as no surprise; after all, Anne Rice did the same thing for the vampire back in the 1970s, and things have never been quite the same since. Of course, this latest change to the zombie started long before the current renaissance. Romero himself introduced the idea of a "hero" zombie in Day of the Dead with the landmark character of Bub (Sherman Howard), a sympathetic figure who appears able to recall behaviors and mannerisms from his former, human existence.29 An even more sophisticated zombie character arises in Land of the Dead in the form of "Big Daddy" (Eugene Clark), the former gas station attendant who leads a zombie army against the humans of Fiddler's Green. Big Daddy seems to teach the other zombies to communicate, and he insists they overcome their zombie instincts to focus on a concerted task and to even use tools and weapons.30 And one of the most charming zombie protagonist in recent years is Fido (Billy Connolly), the unlikely hero and father figure in Andrew Currie's 2006 film of the same name.31 But each of these somewhat likeable creatures is still essentially dead, dumb, and less intelligent, sympathetic primarily because of their lingering and remembered humanity.

Other manifestations of the zombie protagonist alter the fundamental characteristics of the creatures even further-and, in my mind, more illogically- by giving them the power of speech and the ability to think and feel. This "Ricification" of the traditional zombie is a radical change from the mindless, silent horde originally envisioned by Romero, and even farther afield from the brain-damaged victims of vodou enchantment. The so-call "conscious" zombie has its most influential origin in O'Bannon's The Return of the Living Dead, 0 16 0 particularly in the tragicomic duo of Frank Games Karen) and Freddy (Thom Mathews), who narrate the painful process of transforming into the walking dead. The other zombies can speak as well, uttering the now famous line of ''Brains!" and the lesser known "Send . .. more . . . paramedics!" 32 Not surprisingly, speaking, thinking, and feeling zombies have mostly been relegated to comedies, such as the Ed Helms web video Zombie-American (2005), the clever film Wa sting Away (2007),33 and S.G. Browne's romance novel Breathers: A Zombie's Lament (2009). To depict a conscious zombie realistically in a serious narrative would require major alterations to the fundamental characteristics of the zombie, but films such as the micro-budget Colin (2008) do a decent job of showing how a zombie could "star" in its own narrative by using a sympathetic, first-person POV and careful acting and directing.34

Whether zombies can talk, think, feel, or even remember their former lives, today's zombies are clearly more diverse and thus even more broadly useful for analogy. One of the primary reasons the convergence of the zombie renaissance was even possible was the world's collective fears and anxieties about terrorist attacks and global pandemics. Because zombies look like our former friends and loved ones, they represent the plain-clothed terrorist or the brainwashed extremist. Because zombies attack relentless in apocalyptic numbers, they represent an invading army, or at the very least, in the case of Land of the Dead, masses of illegal immigrants. Because zombies can infect anyone suddenly and incurably, they mirror our collective fears about anthrax, the bird flu, mad cow disease, and every other perceived infection. As with the films of the twentieth century, our new-era zombies allow us to continue our struggles with race, gender, and sexual identity, not to mention ongoing critiques of failed political policies and a collapsing economy. Perhaps more importantly, as we allow ourselves to sympathize with these tragic monsters, we can use the zombie and the stories told around them to explore our more philosophical questions about life and death. Or about or inability to live life to its fullest. Yes, zombies are us, but we are also already them .

The most pervasive and successful example of what I have been talking about is the ever-expanding text system of The Walking D17D Dead. This brain child of began life as an Eisner Award-winning comic series (2003-) about a noble deputy sheriff, the protagonist , and his attempts to keep his rag-tag group of family, friends, and allies alive in the midst of a global zombie apocalypse. Kirkman's series has become one of the most successful comics of all time, topping the bestseller lists for graphic novels in 2011, including those of The New York Times and Amazon.35 Just two years ago, Oscar-nominated writer and producer Frank Darabont worked with Kirkman to bring the tale to the small screen, and the AMC series is rewarding the network with its highest ratings ever; in fact, The Walking Dead "ranks as the top-rated show in cable history among the adult demo."36 More recently, The Walking Dead has been adapted into two board games, a serialized iPad app game, and a social-media game on Facebook. Perhaps most impressively, in a hands-on example of cultural convergence, The Walking Dead will be the centerpiece of this year's Universal Studios' "Halloween Horror Nights," which will use actors and interactive mazes to put "real people in incredibly horrific situati.ons where they [will] experience true, raw fear." 37 This narrative cluster, in all its various iterations, is the ideal case study for the importance of the zombie: powerful allegorical figures and tropes that converge across our contemporary culture.

To me, Kirkman's comic book series is most important for the development of the zombie subgenre because it does something few, if any, other stories have managed to do-it tells us what happens next. The problem with zombie cinema, even the canonical films of Romero, is that their narrative arcs are limited to only a couple of hours of screen time. The audience may see the beginnings of the zombie plague and follow a few survivors through an ultimately tragic siege or assault, but then the story just ... stops, often abruptly. What a serialized narrative can do is track the adventures of a cast of beloved characters over a long period of time, following them through not just a few sensational moments of crisis but also along an extended chain of experiences. In his introduction to the first trade collection of The Walking Dead, Kirkman shares his view that "the worst part of every zombie movie is the end. I always want to know what happens next ... I just want it to

0 18 0 keep going."38 With The Walking Dead, Kirkman has realized his own dream, giving fans a story that, to date, is still going, still developing. With each issue, readers learn what comes "next." This verisimilitude makes his comic series more tangible and realistic, and it allows us to explore what life, culture, and society after a zombie apocalypse might actually look like.

Another key function the zombies in Kirkman' s The Walking Dead comic series perform is they force us to explore the difference between monsters and monstrosihf As I argue at length in my forthcoming essay "Battling Monsters and Becoming Monstrous,"39 Kirk.man's allegorical zombies operate in tandem with the beleaguered human characters to warn us against violent, atavistic behavior. Over the course of The Walking Dead, readers come to realize the zombies are simply acting according to their nature. They attack and feed upon humans because that's what they do-rather than think and plan and plot, zombies just follow their instinctual, "natural" drives. The human characters, on the other hand, while not technically "monsters," may in fact behave much more "monstrously." Scott Kenemore clarifies these differences between zombies and those they ceaselessly pursue: "Humans-unlike composed, unflappable, focused zombies-fight with one another. They are jealous. They are manipulative. They care about things like other people not having sex with their wives."40 0ne of the best lessons we can learn from Kirkman, then, may have nothing to do with the zombies at all; instead, the human protagonists stand as figures of caution and warning.

Because everyone can-or, more likely, will- become a zombie, narratives such as Kirk.man's powerfully blur the lines between the living and the dead, the humans and the zombies, the "good guys" and the "bad guys." According to Brendan Riley, Kirk.man's key narrative question is "What happens to our humanity when we do inhumane things?"41 After all, how could one possibly survive a zombie apocalypse? By being passive? Kind hearted? Selfless? No. Kirkman demonstrates, sometimes painfully, that nice guys don't survive-it takes something like a monster to survive a world filled with monsters. The sinister Governor who rules the outpost of Woodbury understands 0190 the dangerous connection between the zombies and the surviving humans: "The thing you have to realize is that they're just us-they're no different. They want what they want, they take w hat they want and after they get what they want-they're only content for the briefest span of time. Then they want more."42 Initially, Rick is coded as the proverbial hero in the white hat, but, as the series progresses, he is forced to make increasingly difficult decisions. Although he tries to reestablish the law and order of US society, he comes to realize new rules are required to survive, to get him what he wants-rules that permit violence, murder, and even torture, just as long as such rash actions keep Rick's people "safe."

Rick's behavior on the AMC television series The Walking Dead is also becoming increasingly domineering and dangerous, but the TV show also underscores the need for viewers to see both the living and the dead as our sympathetic kin. Yes, everyone will eventually become a zombie, but that means each zombie was also once human-a human just like us. In the second episode of the television series, "," Rick soberly ruminates on both the zombies and those killed by them. He sees the creatures in strikingly sympathetic terms, recognizing them as once part of humanity, as tragic victims rather than raging monsters. Before dismembering a corpse to use its stench as camouflage, Rick removes the dead man's wallet to learn something about him. "Wayne Dunlap," Rick tells the survivors gathered around him. "Born in 1979. He had $28 in his pocket when he died ... and a picture of a pretty girl. ... He used to be like us, worrying about bills or the rent of the Super Bowl. If I ever find my family, I'm gonna tell them about Wayne."43 Kirkman makes a powerful move here, one that forces us to empathize not only with the human protagonist, in which we naturally see something of ourselves, but also with the dead and the walking dead. We are them, yes, but they are also us.

Narratives such as The Walking Dead base the power of their allegorical message on the similarities between zombies and humans, and vice versa, and, it seems, these similarities have come to transcend the world of fiction. As something of a coda to my discussion, I will briefly explore the fifth kind of zombie: "real" zombies. I'm 0200 not talking about the literal walking dead here, despite what the blogosphere would have us believe, but rather a passionate affectation of zombies and zombie scenarios in our daily lives. Experiencing a zombie holocaust vicariously through movies, books, and video games is simply not enough for some people; instead, they want to live the apocalypse first hand. College campuses around the country are hosting zombie tag games, called "Humans vs. Zombies,"44 and corporate paint-ball retreats have been replaced by zombie fantasy camps and survival courses. Many cities and communities host annual "zombie walks" to raise money for charity, and a new kind of "Run for Your Lives" obstacle course race includes staff dressed up as zombies to chase-and thus motivate-the runners.45 0n the one hand, enthusiasts want to play the role of the survivors, proving to themselves and others they have what it takes to survive a real zombie apocalypse, but on the other, many increasingly enjoy dressing up and acting the part of the walking dead as well. Zombie festivals, zombie raves, and zombie walks have gone mainstream, and people enjoy the escapism that comes from trading one's concerns and responsibilities for the mindless lumbering of the zombie. Zombies are now big business, and not just as part of the entertainment industry.

With zombies invading virtually every part of our social and culture existence, we can finally come out of hiding and admit, publically, "My name is Kyle Bishop, and I love zombies." Why? Because zombies matter. Although some may still disparage "popular culture" as being too common or low brow, the truth is that anything with pervasive popularity needs to be taken seriously, and the current zombie renaissance is a textbook example of why literature, art, and even popular culture is so important to understand. Tony Magistrale, in his influential Abject Terrors, explains how the "art of terror, whether literary or celluloid, has always addressed our most pressing fears as a society and as individuals.... [Horror] is nothing less than a barometer for measuring an era's cultural anxieties." 46 In other words, when horror popularity increases, we need to figure out why, because such changes in our culture indicate tensions and fears that may not be readily apparent otherwise. And the zombie certainly represents

0210 the horreur de la jour. Peter Dendle, the pioneer of modern zombie studies, reminds us that "the zombie holocausts vividly painted in movies and video games have tapped into a deep-seated anxiety about society, government, individual protection, and our increasing disconnectedness from subsistence skills,"47 and understanding these anxieities will teach us more about all aspects of our contemporary, modern world.

Zombies are the great metaphorical monster because they are so closely allied with humanity-they aren't so much supernatural monsters as they are our collective fate made flesh. Rick makes this kinship clear in Kirkrnan's comic series: "We are the walking dead,"48 he declares-we are the same; it's just a matter of time. Because of this intimate, unavoidable bond, zombies can be tailored and applied to almost any culture, epoch, or situation, and people see in zombies what they need to see. As I say in my book American Zombie Gothic, zombies, be they exploring the horrors of slavery; depicting an apocalyptic, infectious invasion; or acting as metaphors for the latest scientific or cultural development, have clearly proven themselves as timely, popular, and relevant figures. Because their stories "so overtly and directly deal with the trauma associated with enslavement, infection, death, and decay, they operate as revealing lenses turned upon the heart of our social and cultural anxieties. Initially, zombies shocked audiences because of their unfamiliar appearance; today, they are even more shocking because of their familiarity."49 Zombie narratives, games, and other allegories allow us to face the paranoia and anxieties we feel about infection, death, destruction, and the inexplicable m ysteries of our cultural and natural world. We purge our anxieties through the catharsis of apocalyptic narratives, exorcise our destructive tendencies through violent videogames, and verify our ingenuity and resourcefulness through survival scenarios and exercises. By participating in zombie walks, we (with cunning irony) raise money for food banks, and by giving our children stuffed zombie dolls, we prepare them to face the realities of mortality. Zombies matter, and they aren't going anywhere.

0220 Notes

I read a preliminary version of this essay at the "Invasion Montreal!" First International Conference on Zombies on 5 July 2012, and I wish to thank the organizers and participants for both the opportunity to speak and the beneficent feedback that made this more complete articulation of my ideas possible.

1. Neal, '"Bath Salts' Possibly Behind Recent 'Cannibal' Attack."

2. Clary, "Miami 'Zombie' Face-Eating Attack Victim Ronald Poppo Has Long Road Ahead of Him, Physician Says."

3. Guzman and Brown, "Naked Man Killed by Police near MacArthur Causeway Was 'Eating' Face off Victim."

4. 1337133713371337, "Join the Discussion."

5. Paul, "Miami Face-Eater and Victim Identified-No Zombies!"

6. Campbell, "Wayne Carter Threw Intestines at Officers after Stabbing Himself, Police Say."

7. Quirk and Sudol, "Man's Tossing of Intestines at Police in Hackensack Called a Cry for Help."

8. Campbell, "Alexander Kinyua Ate Kujoe Agyei-Kodie's Brain, Heart in Maryland, Cops Say."

9. Campbell, "Carl Jacquneaux Bit a Chunk of Face off Victim Todd Credeur in Louisiana, Cops Say."

10. CDC, "Zombie Preparedness."

11. Campbell, "Zombie Apocalypse: CDC Denies Existence of Zombies Despite Cannibal Incidents."

12. Broadway, "Post a Comment."

13. Bishop, American Zo mbie Gotlzic, 11- 12.

14. Boon, "And the Dead Shall Rise," 8.

15. Ackermann and Gauthier, "Ways and Nature of the Zombi," 468.

16. Davis, Serpent and the Rainbow, 83.

17. Seabrook, Magic Island, 101.

0230 18. Hurston, Tell My Horse, 195.

19. Russell, Book of tl1e Dead, 23.

20. See Bishop, "Assemblage Filrnmaking," for a lengthier discussion of Romero's adaptation process.

21. Romero, Night of tl1e Living Dead.

22. Romero, Dawn of the Dead.

23. "Box Office/Business for Day of the Dead (1985)" and "Box Office/Business for The Return of the Living Dead." Day of the Dead actually made three times as much money per screen as The Ret11rn of the Living Dead, but the fact that Romero's film had such a limited release only underscores the shift in audience interest to comedic zombie films.

24. Boyle, 28 Days Lnter.

25. "Box Office/Business for Resident Evil."

26. Jenkins, Convergence C11/f:11re, 3.

27. Ibid, 16.

28. Derksen and Hick, "Your Zombie and You," 15.

29. Romero, Day of the Dead.

30. Romero, umd of the Dead.

31. Currie, Fido.

32. O'Bannon, The Rehm1 of the Living Dead.

33. Released on DVD in the US as An34. ah! Zombies!!

34. Price, Colin.

35. "'The Walking Dead' #100 Tops 380k in Sales." Notably, the series' "milestone 100th issue ... instantly sold out of its 383,612 initial orders on July 11th, the same day it was released, effectively becoming the best-selling comic book in initial orders for any publisher since 1997" ("'The Walking Dead' #100 Tops 380k in Sales").

36. Hibberd, "'Walking Dead' Finale Draws Record Ratings."

37. "AMC's The Walki.ng Dead Featured at Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights."

38. Kirkman, Days Gone Bye.

0240 39. My essay is slated to appear as a chapter in the forthcoming Monstrous Culture in tl,e 21st Centun;: A Reader, edited by Marina Levina and Diem-my Bui, from Continuum Press.

40. Kenemore, "Rick Grimes: A Zombie among Men," 189.

41. Riley, "Zombie People," 92.

42. Kirkman, Best Defense.

43. MacLaren, "Guts."

44. See "What Is Humans vs Zombies?"

45. See "A Zombie Infested SK Obstacle Course Race."

46. Magistrale, Abject Terrors, xiii.

47. Dendle, "Zombie as a Barometer of Cultural Anxiety," 54.

48. Kirkman, Best Defense.

49. Bishop, American Zombie Gothic, 36.

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