Purdue University Purdue e-Pubs Open Access Dissertations Theses and Dissertations January 2015 Race. Nation. Zombie: Imperial Masculinities Gazing at the Undead Adryan Glasgow Purdue University Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/open_access_dissertations Recommended Citation Glasgow, Adryan, "Race. Nation. Zombie: Imperial Masculinities Gazing at the Undead" (2015). Open Access Dissertations. 1456. https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/open_access_dissertations/1456 This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact [email protected] for additional information. Graduate School Form 30 Updated 1/15/2015 PURDUE UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL Thesis/Dissertation Acceptance This is to certify that the thesis/dissertation prepared By Adryan Glasgow Entitled RACE. NATION. ZOMBIE: IMPERIAL MASCULINITIES GAZING AT THE UNDEAD. For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Is approved by the final examining committee: Shaun Hughes A. Sagar Chair Marlo David Alfred Lopez W.J. Palmer To the best of my knowledge and as understood by the student in the Thesis/Dissertation Agreement, Publication Delay, and Certification Disclaimer (Graduate School Form 32), this thesis/dissertation adheres to the provisions of Purdue University’s “Policy of Integrity in Research” and the use of copyright material. Approved by Major Professor(s): Shaun Hughes Approved by: Nancy Peterson 7/13/2015 Head of the Departmental Graduate Program Date i RACE. NATION. ZOMBIE: IMPERIAL MASCULINITIES GAZING AT THE UNDEAD A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of Purdue University by Adryan Glasgow In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2015 Purdue University West Lafayette, Indiana ii For my family who can now officially tell people I’m a doctor. For the many wonderful scholars who inspired me professionally, academically, intellectually, personally and spiritually. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ v CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 2. DOMESTICATING THE HORRORS OF COLONIALISM: WHITE ZOMBIE (1932) ................................................................................................................ 31 CHAPTER 3. ‘WILD WORK’ AND THE MONSTROSITY OF WHITENESS IN MATHESON'S I AM LEGEND ........................................................................................ 81 3.1 Last Man on Earth ......................................................................................... 107 3.2 Omega Man ................................................................................................... 123 CHAPTER 4. RACE, GENDER, AND THE DEADLY LOGIC OF LOOKING IN NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD .................................................................................... 145 4.1 Introduction ................................................................................................... 145 4.2 Review of Scholarship .................................................................................. 154 4.3 Politics of Production .................................................................................... 164 4.4 Visuality, Masculinity, and Nation Building ................................................ 177 4.5 Home, Nation, and the Survivor Community ............................................... 185 4.6 Audience Identification, Social Scripts, and Death Order ............................ 191 4.7 Women amongst the Undead ........................................................................ 204 4.8 Windows and Cellars .................................................................................... 213 4.9 Car Culture and the Mobile Gaze ................................................................. 219 iv Page 4.10 Barbara and the Revenge of Barbara ............................................................ 229 CHAPTER 5. WILL SMITH IS LEGEND: THE POSTRACIAL, NEOLIBERAL HERO OF THE WAR ON TERROR AND THE WAR ON DRUGS ........................... 241 WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................. 279 VITA ............................................................................................................................... 302 v ABSTRACT Glasgow, Adryan. Ph.D., Purdue University, August 2015. Race. Nation. Zombie: Imperial Masculinities Gazing at the Undead. Major Professor: Shaun Hughes. This dissertation argues that zombie narratives have always been about white masculinity and that colonialism is the true living dead monster. The zombie is not the load-bearing signifier in these stories. It is the white men who act as representatives of empire that embody tropes and evolve. This dissertation examines the survivor masculinity in zombie films over time to see how hegemonic masculinity has adapted to a range of national crises. I argue that the failure of white masculinities in these films and novel is rooted in the limited ways of knowing inherent in the Imperial Gaze. Starting in the 1930s, zombie films have attempted to recruit the double consciousness of black men to assist white men in their domination of colonial subjects. Each chapter thus juxtaposes race conflicts within the nation with our imperial actions on the global scale. 1 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION Zombie scholarship is a relatively new field. While zombie narratives have been in popular circulation since the 1930s, it was not until George Romero’s 1968 Night of the Living Dead that the zombie was taken seriously as a monster that can reveal deeper currents within our culture. After the unrelated, but popularly linked correlation between the 9/11 attacks and the release of 28 Days Later (2002), scholars began to take notice, much to the simultaneous delight and dread of long-time fan communities. However, as the internet has grown, so have as the horror fan blogosphere, with countless online publications churning out insights, interview, reviews, theories, and the occasional screed. With an informal peer review process that occurs after rather than before publication, these fan communities have generated a considerable body of work. For scholars looking to work on zombies within the academic publishing industry, the challenge looms of how to say something new when an enormous horde of hungry fans have been chewing over the material, comparing notes, and always seeking to outdo one another in making the next big argument that will redefine how we talk about zombies going forward. In an ideal world, what scholars of the zombie have to offer that the fan culture cannot is disciplinary methodologies, the rigor of peer review, and a culture of intellectual integrity that values changing an argument based on evidence over the 2 prestige of winning an argument or the gratification of analyses that affirm our values. However, academic publishing is still a business. Titles that include either “zombies,” “undead,” “living dead,” or “walking dead” are almost guaranteed to enjoy cross-over success as scholars look for new ways to tie their own research to popular interests and the zombie fan blogosphere checks to see if professional intellectuals are as insightful as our degrees claim. As a result, when it comes to scholarship about zombies, and the same is true of many other areas within popular culture studies, publishing an idea first is often prioritized over traditional criteria such as rigorous research, contribution to the field, and even soundness of argument. Cross-over presses are mimicking the undead themselves, consuming any zombie scholarship they can get their hands on. For example, McFarland has published three anthologies, the only broadly conceived single author book, two encyclopedias and Gary Rhodes’s White Zombie: Anatomy of a Horror Film (2006). Furthermore, as a new field, zombie scholars have not benefited from a sustained discussion. There is no zombie scholarly cannon, with the possible exception of Kyle Bishop. Because of this, the new insights in the field are not measured against time-tested scholarship. The best zombie scholarship must borrow almost all of its research from other fields. While reducing the zombie to merely a mutation of the vampire has certainly produced wonderful scholarship such as Gregory Waller’s The Living and the Undead (1986, 2010), each monster taps into a completely different source material. Indeed, for a time in the fall of 2014, the Wikipedia page on zombies was subject to an intense debate over whether the zombie is a uniquely Caribbean monster or the natural evolution of the European ghoul that had been smuggled across the Atlantic under the guise of the vampire and assumed a new identity once here. Furthermore, as the Wikipedia debate has 3 made quite clear, territorialism within the field of zombies is a significant barrier to meaningful intellectual engagement. Whether it be fans fighting fans for an ideologically pure definition of zombies, or fans and scholars fighting over who gets to control the meaning of zombies, or scholars themselves fighting over the professional accolades of publishing cross-over scholarship, or the vast overlap of fan and scholarly communities that allows such conflicts to occur even within the same writer, the lack of authorities on the subject has created an expert vacuum and the