Like millions of Americans I have gotten wrapped up in the AMC phenomenon The Walking Dead. A number of factors had to coalesce to even make this possible. I usually don’t get too involved in weekly “serial” type shows. Way too much happens from Sunday to Sunday in my real life to maintain any empathy with the characters, and I usually have to spend the first 10 or 15 minutes of each new episode trying to remember why I cared about them in the first place. Another challenge was the nature ofTWD itself. Seriously--and if you have ever watched it you know what I mean--you can’t have this show on if there is any chance at all that the kids are going to even walk into the room. Just when you think you have seen the most horrible thing you can imagine, TWD comes back from commercial and THEN you see the most horrible thing you can imagine. And it’s been like that for going on four full seasons.
Enter Netflix and the TV binge. Now I could sequester myself in the basement with tin cans tied on strings at the top of the stairs to warn me of approaching children and watch episode after episode commercial free. This is how TV was meant to be viewed! I am a pretty addictive personality type anyway- if a little is good, a lot is great after all. But this! Total emotional immersion. Fantastic!
Suffice it to say, any long term psychological damage aside (it really is a brutal show), in short order I was a TWD genius. I knew how “walkers”, the common euphemism for the zombies on the show, would behave, where they were likely to be found, and the most promising blunt object in view to dispatch said walker. I was intimate with the still- human cast. Their foibles, strengths and weaknesses, their strengths that became weaknesses in their dystopian world, and vice-versa. The characters were like family; even the ones I hated. Because-- after all – there weren’t many people left, so even the bad ones were special.
And then it happened. It was in the aftermath of the State of the Union Address when our President was giving his speeches about the Affordable Care Act; speeches about agenda items that even he no longer pretended would have the support of the American people like environmental policy and immigration. The president said he would, “get things done” and not worry about Congress; and the crowds cheered. Without even consciously doing it, I thought…“walkers.” I looked at those crowds and listened to the pundits and reacted as viscerally and instinctively as I would to zombies. This involuntary reaction made me very uncomfortable; I was clearly watching too much TV and maybe binge TV watching wasn’t any healthier than all those other binges which are traditionally not so great. How could this be?
After much soul searching I started to come to grips with the idea that it wasn’t my reaction to the behavior I witnessed that was the problem – it was the behavior itself. I wasn’t in trouble because I thought many of my countrymen resembled – at least metaphorically, the undead. I was in trouble because they did.
What is a zombie? At their base they are a creature that resembles a human being, that produces or contributes nothing to society, yet will collect in groups and relentlessly pursue those in society who do still have something to offer, the Living, until they catch them, devour them, and often in the end make them a zombie as well. See what I mean – the resemblance to certain political movements in modern America is almost spooky right? But there is more: zombies employ no rational thought to this process. They merely know that the living have what they don’t have, and they want it. Badly. (What is “it”? In the metaphor it is life, or brains, or living flesh. In real life, “it” is anything. Money, wealth, comfort, power, you name it. Often it is what some demagogue tells them they were deprived of by those that do have “it”.) The zombie must consume the living. Period.
Let me pause at this point to say, I absolutely do not believe the writers, actors, directors etc. of The Walking Dead are trying to make some objectivist point with their work. If history is a guide, many in Hollywood would fit in this metaphor more on the zombie side. The point I am trying to make is more that the zombie ethos just happens to fit as a metaphor, not that the TWD folks are trying to employ the metaphor. It is just an interesting illustration.
Knowing that there are very few new ideas in the world I even Bing’d “Zombies as political metaphor” to see who had thought of this before me. As it turns out, there is rather extensive scholarship on the subject. The surprising thing is that much of it is the other way, meaning, many believe that the zombie fable is actually a commentary by liberals on the ills of society.
The “birth” of the modern zombie is commonly attributed to the 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead by George Romero. First, there is racial commentary, by casting a black American as the lead in the film (the commentary, perhaps coyly, denied by Romero). The character’s corpse is eventually dragged away for disposal by white police with dogs – not terribly subtle. Also, “Night” was generally thought to be a reference to the carnage of the Vietnam War and the people of the nation turning on one another. Romero’s second zombie offering, 1978’s Dawn of the Dead, was set in a shopping mall, and was considered by many to be an outright attack on Capitalism in general, and consumerism in particular. There are other examples, but they all follow along the same lines. The masses are brainless and if you aren’t careful you will be too.
“TWD” represents something different. Metaphor, perhaps unintentional, on the evils of socialism. Unintentional or not the metaphor is stark. Not just the obvious as in the many (perhaps the 99%) literally feeding on the few. There are ideas in “TWD” which, at least to me, seem to represent what have traditionally been thought of as “conservative” ideas.
The sacredness of life is paramount throughout the series. Bad people that really should be dispatched right away, according to the fans like me screaming at their TV’s, are kept around alive. Life is just too precious to squander in this new world. Every life has value and a chance at redemption. Right up until it becomes a matter of self-defense at which point it’s safeties off fire-at-will! Does this not fairly represent the oft referred to dichotomy of Pro-life/Pro-death penalty? Many conservatives are criticized for opposing abortion while supporting the death penalty. As if there is some sort of moral disconnect here. As if the life of the innocent unborn is equal to that of a mad dog psychopath. TWD handles the issue with elegance, everyone is assumed to have value – until they prove they don’t through their own actions. No more disconnect.
The 2nd amendment? If The Walking Dead does not convince you of the value of a properly maintained and employed side arm, nothing will. The use of guns in TWD is, almost, exclusively a pure demonstration of the right of self-defense. Remember, you cannot reason with a zombie. You can’t talk them out of eating your brains. They want what you have and they will stop at nothing to get it…ready…aim…fire. And before anyone tries to attribute a call to actual, real-world violence to this, please don’t. Look up “metaphor” and take a deep breath.
Family too holds a vital place in the story arc of TWD. Countless sacrifices are made not only to keep family members alive but Living. It is not enough to simply eat, sleep and breathe. Great pains are taken to raise the young characters to not just survive, but to maintain some semblance of goodness, of humanity, in a world that has become overtly and carnivorously inhuman. Nicely put-is there any more “conservative” message? We are not put on this Earth to simply exist and neither are the characters in TWD. It is necessary to be something more. And often, in TWD, this idea is conveyed by fathers, mothers, husbands and wives – families.
At the end of the day, any metaphors in the show are probably in my head. That is the way our world has become. All of us are looking for meaning in places that meaning probably wouldn’t have anything to do with – like TV shows about zombies for instance. For my part, it may be important for me to find some validation in what TV has always been and should probably remain, just an escape. To see something that says, however accidentally, there is value and nobility in not “feeding” on others. There is something great about fighting the good fight. To hope against hope there is still a part of the American viewing public that, maybe subconsciously, recognizes we were not meant simply to take what others have but to make something ourselves. Maybe there is some code written into stories like this that, as Americans, we are uniquely receptive too. That life is sacred, worth fighting for, and family matters. Or maybe it’s just a show.
Already, I have caught up to the series, and so I wait from Sunday to Sunday to see what happens. No more binging. The empathy wans and I wonder if the metaphor will be less apparent. I hope not. In all honesty I really liked the metaphor. But if it does there is always the reality that the metaphor represents to contend with. Maybe I could get more involved in the debate going on all around me in real life. The debate we are having as a country and a culture. Whether to be Living or Undead? To be a nation of consumers or producers again? To value life and respect the accomplishments and acquisitions of one another or to take what we are told was gotten illegitimately in the first place. Maybe I will fight the good fight.
Then again, Netflix does have every episode of Star Trek: Enterprise.
Special thanks to Michael Cremin, IV for editing support.
