NOTEBOOKS Esteve Foundation 42 Television fiction viewed from the perspective Medicine in Television Series of medical professionals House and Medical Diagnosis. Lisa Sanders Editor: Toni de la Torre The Knick and Surgical Techniques. Leire Losa The Sopranos and Psychoanalysis. Oriol Estrada Rangil The Big Bang Theory and Asperger’s Syndrome. Ramon Cererols Breaking Bad and Methamphetamine Addiction. Patricia Robledo Mad Men and Tobacco Addiction. Joan R. Villalbí The Walking Dead and Epidemics in the Collective Imagination. Josep M. Comelles and Enrique Perdiguero Gil Angels in America, The Normal Heart and Positius: HIV and AIDS in Television Series. Aina Clotet and Marc Clotet, under the supervision of Bonaventura Clotet Nip/Tuck, Grey’s Anatomy and Plastic Surgery. María del Mar Vaquero Pérez Masters of Sex and Sexology. Helena Boadas CSI and Forensic Medicine. Adriana Farré, Marta Torrens, Josep-Eladi Baños and Magí Farré Homeland and the Emotional Sphere. Liana Vehil and Luis Lalucat Series Medicine in Television Olive Kitteridge and Depression. Oriol Estrada Rangil True Detective and the Attraction of Evil. Luis Lalucat and Liana Vehil Polseres vermelles and Cancer. Pere Gascón i Vilaplana ISBN: 978-84-945061-9-2 9 788494 506192 42 NOTEBOOKS OF THE ESTEVE Foundation Nº 42 The Walking Dead and the Collective Imaginary on Epidemics Josep M. Comelles and Enrique Perdiguero Gil If Mad Men and Breaking Bad are the two series that have taken the cable channel AMC to such great heights as its competitor, Premium HBO, this post-apocalyptic tale based on a Robert Kirkman comic depicting a world populated by zombies is the show that has brought it audiences in the millions, greater even than many free-to-air productions. Premiered in 2010 with over five million viewers, it has managed to multiply this figure threefold in its recent seasons, approaching fifteen million viewers. Such a favorable reception enabled AMC to try its luck with a sequel set in Los Angeles, Fear the Walking Dead, a strategy that so far has shown fairly good returns. Though series such as Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Epiphany of the undead Fargo and True Detective scooped the major in- In 1943, Jacques Tourneur directed the film ternational awards, in the light of data from coun- I Walked with a Zombie, shortly after publication tries that publish audience levels, The Walking of Voodoo Death,1 a foundational article, based Dead is the most-watched series on cable TV. on ethnographic sources, regarding the physio- The same occurs in Spain. Is this a further ex- logical mechanisms related to voodoo death. ample of viewers’ preference for action and vio- lence over complex and convoluted storylines? The living dead and psychosomatic medicine Perhaps, but the truth is that the series tries to were broached in a centuries-old debate on the go beyond the horror-series stereotype, and aims capacity of witchcraft and spellcasting to sum- to analyze how far human beings will go when mon and condemn souls to wander the earth. struggling to survive. The Walking Dead has not An example is the myth of the Santa Compaña just earned viewers’ applause, but also garnered (“Holy Company”), a procession of the dead that academic interest. Theses, monographs and winds through the woods of Galicia, prompting dozens of articles in science journals focus on villagers to lock their doors after sunset and erect the walking dead and its groups of survivors. Un- cruceiros (calvary crosses) at crossroads to ex- der the umbrella of such success, zombies and orcise them. the undead are once again clamoring for atten- Tourneur managed to conjure the mystery of tion, since The Walking Dead is another link in the the border between life and death, the intimate chain of audiovisual products focused on such relation between reality and psychotherapy, by figures. In these pages, we highlight some of the employing visual ellipsis prodigiously and ele- cinematic milestones related to the living dead, gantly regarding a beautiful undead woman. He their close relationship to the collective imaginary knew how to visually represent the mystery of the on epidemics and how this tradition crystallizes in Santería religion in a clinic for psycho-neurotic the series, along with its peculiarities. disorders. Prior to and even more ably than in 1 Written by Walter B. Cannon in the magazine American Anthropologist, in 1942. -61- The Walking Dead and the Collective Imaginary on Epidemics Ingmar Bergman’s The Magician (1958), he de- lently invaded the cities, carrying the Black Death. picted the contrast between the beliefs and cul- The Flying Dutchman, a ghost ship, still haunts a tural practices of magic, and medical rationalism. collective imaginary that builds on the experience This is because, in contrast to the Swedish direc- of sailing ships adrift which, an epidemic having tor, he speaks of the present, not of a figure of killed both crew and passengers, roam the seas the past. at the mercy of wind and wave endlessly seek- The undead, lost and wandering souls, form ing peace. A barquentine is likewise the improb- part of an ancient collective cultural imaginary, able mode of transport in the 1940s by which the which drew new life from the romanticism of protagonist of I Walked with a Zombie reaches the Brothers Grimm and folklorists, Washington his destination in the British West Indies (a visual Irving’s Tales of the Alhambra (1832), many of homage to Murnau?). This ship, however, is not Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories, Gustavo Adolfo plagued by any rats, undead or epidemic, since Bécquer’s Leyendas (1854–1864) and the recov- the witchcraft is on the island and forms part of ery of Oriental folklore.2 Bishop (2010) considers, a world that clashes with the rationalism of the erroneously, that zombies in film correspond to clinics. highly idiosyncratic aspects of twentieth-century American culture. He does not take into account A cinematography of wandering souls the genealogy of the undead in European litera- ture and film. Spirits that become flesh populate Murnau’s and Tourneur’s visual magic has per- stories retold beside the hearth, while the wind haps faded over time and from the tapestries of moans outside and rain batters the shutters. At memory. After the Second World War, film recov- the height of positivism, Allan Kardec (1804–1869) ered Dracula the vampire, but not zombies. It is wished to bring them to life. Clustered around tempting to imagine that Tourneur raised the bar the lamp, believers invoked their presence, drafts so high in terms of sophistication and narrative el- without a source wafted the curtains, and the liv- egance that later creators dared not follow in his ing were carried off into trance by spirits. In The tracks. Yet the British film company Hammer gen- Canterville Ghost (1887), Oscar Wilde wrote ironi- erated extraordinary interest in “Draculas”, Chris- cally about Americans who made fun of British topher Lee playing the role, in which he explored ghosts, and in Dracula (1897), Bram Stoker invit- the vampire’s sexual and erotic dimensions. Be- ed the undead into Victorian drawing rooms as if tween Murnau’s neo-Romanticism, Nosferatu’s they were an epidemic vector. Yet filmic epiphany monstrousness and Christopher Lee’s Gothic yet of the undead should be attributed to Nosfera- very British elegance, there was, however, narra- tu (1922), by F.W. Murnau. It is a palimpsest of tive and visual continuity. And so it was, until in the Bram Stoker’s work, and an extraordinary visual year of May 1968, with Vietnam escalating and recreation blending expressionism and neo-Ro- race riots erupting in Pittsburgh following Martin manticism. Nosferatu emerges from his coffin in Luther King’s assassination, an unknown film- the bilges of a barquentine swarming with rats, maker named George R. Romero directed Night on which no souls remain alive, to alight in a ro- of the Living Dead (1968). In the midst of the Cold mantic Bremen. Rats, sailing ships, quarantine, War, decaying corpses return to life, stepping, like epidemics... After the First World War, the deadly Lazarus, from shattered tombs in all their rotting “Spanish flu” revived a fear of the plague in the glory. For reasons never fully explained, they make western cultural imagination, a scenario in which the same gestures as Nosferatu, and feed on the rats arrived by sea in the holds of ships and si- living until their brains are destroyed. 2 Lafcadio Hearn (1904) saw this in Japanese culture. Some of his stories evolved into a film masterpiece on the un- dead, the episode “The Woman of the Snow” in the marvelous Kwaidan (literally “strange stories”, 1964), by Masaki Kobayashi (1964). -62- NOTEBOOKS OF THE ESTEVE Foundation Nº 42 MEDICINE IN TELEVISION SERIES If, in Nosferatu, the narrative makes a link be- curse turned them into waxy damsels or anemic tween the plague and vampires, playing on the youths, Romero’s walking dead are rotting Laza- cultural imaginary, epidemics were not perceived rus types who take over the world.3 as a threat in 1968, but the apocalyptic context Now enthroned in the pantheon of popular of radioactivity certainly was. Dracula’s elegance, culture thanks to Romero’s genius and the ev- midway between bourgeois and aristocratic, from eryday life he portrayed to depict the tragedy, Bela Lugosi to Christopher Lee, and his capac- the undead have become an icon of postmod- ity for manipulating social relations to reaffirm his ern society. That society has also digested the own power and feed on the blood of the living, phenomenon, once more imbuing it with mean- is absent from these putrefying, twisted, bleed- ing and, to a certain extent, shedding any crit- ing and dirty corpses that move by mere instinct.