Other folks in this class seem to be
starting off their blog posts with the story of how they chose to
sign up for this course. I can't do that. Why not? Because in our
community, I am a zombie. Zombies don't care about studies or
education. Those are luxuries for the soft, weak humans to discuss
over the campfires as they huddle together in the ruins of their
decadent civilization, humoring the children with fantasies of a
rebuilt society in order to keep them from revealing their location
with sobs of despair. This is the zombie's world now. All that
matters is getting past the barricades and feasting on the human
flesh inside.
With that in mind, how can a zombie
relate to the materials that we've studied so far in this class (to
keep this post from devolving into endless repetition of the word
"braaaaaiiins", I'll assume that the zombie horde gathering
outside the Home on the Brainge has at least some agency and capacity
for strategic thought)? It seems to me that the overarching theme of
everything we saw and read, including "Spoiler," "The
Walking Dead," and "You Zombie and You," was humans'
emotional reaction to zombies. It's much more complicated, and much
more problematic for a human survivor, than I would have imagined.
Since the real-world zombie craze is so widespread, and so many
people have gotten obsessed with it to the point where the Hornady
corporation is actually manufacturing "zombie" ammunition,
it seemed to me like some people were excited about the idea
of getting to run around an empty world, blasting the undead without
the unpleasant moral implication of shooting live human beings.
No, seriously, I'm not making that ammo
thing up. It's right here:
http://www.hornady.com/ammunition/zombiemax
But the article "Your Zombie and
You" and the clip from "The Walking Dead" paint a much
grimmer picture. As is often the case for fans of post-apocalyptic
literature, everyone assumes that they and their loved ones will be
among the survivors. Nobody wants to imagine their merry, bloody,
zombie-killing spree being cut short by seeing an undead family
member shuffling their way. Because once that happens, it's
impossible to push away the doubt. Even the slightest possibility
that some of the victim's personality might be buried inside is
enough to cloud their mind. Morgan has no problem shooting zombies at
point-blank range to save a stranger. But when it's his wife's face
in the scope, he loses his edge and can't go through with it. As
Derksen and Hick would say, he's worrying about Uncle Rege. It's also
important to remember that, since humans tend to overthink these
things (not that I care, it only makes their braaaaaaiiiins softer),
accepting that a part of Morgan's wife is still inside the zombie
would mean more than just killing her. It would also mean that
he had already killed people who had once been friends and family to
others. Essentially, it would make him a murderer. Perhaps there is
an airtight solution to this ethical problem, but it's not easy to
find, and Morgan finds himself trying to unravel a philosophical
dilemma while simultaneously holding off a horde of zombies closing
in on his house. The painfully (or hilariously, if you're a zombie) ironic
thing about his situation is that while he struggles to figure out
whether zombies have rational agency, his own rational agency is
making it harder to stay alive.
So, fellow zombies, what lesson can we
take from this? Fear and doubt are powerful weapons against those
still burdened with emotion. Whenever the humans charge into battle,
there will always be that little voice in the back of their heads,
whispering that they might be murdering other humans. They will
hesitate. They might even back down. But whatever the case, some will
hold back out of ethical uncertainty, and we can use this. When we
rush the fences of the military compound where they hide, let's make
sure that anyone who used to live in this geographic area before
being bitten, is on the front line. We'll increase the chances of a
human soldier seeing the face of someone he or she used to know, and
that second of hesitation may be all we need.
Which brings me to "Spoiler."
Many of the same points are brought up that film; the ethics of
killing an infected family member, rational agency, etc. But there
was something else I noticed, something that could make for a very
dark sequel. The apartment complex in "Spoiler" was inside
what appeared to be a gated community with state-of-the-art security
and quarantine systems. So...what's outside that community? I find it
hard to believe that every single person on the other side of the
gate is a zombie. How could a small community sustain that kind of
lifestyle in total isolation? A more likely scenario is that they've
closed their doors to anyone outside and made some very tough
decisions about resource distribution and population control. There
could be thousands of poor, desperate survivors camped out in the
wastelands just beyond the gates, always looking for a way in, while
the ones inside live every day knowing that their loved ones could be
locked into a small room and incinerated by the ever-present police
force at a moment's notice. That kind of ruthless, authoritarian society can't last
forever. The threat of zombies is likely the only thing keeping them
from turning on each other over political differences. In fact, "Your
Zombie and You" referenced the film "Land of the Dead,
which is a perfect example. The rich live in a high, safe tower while
the poor are in the gutter, first to go when the undead break
through. As intelligent as those zombies may have been, it was a
human rebellion that lit the powderkeg which brought down the city.
As zombies, let's fan the flames a
little. We all love to eat human flesh, but why should we have to do
all the work of killing it first? Let's let the humans pick up some
of the load. Instead of making endless, pointless attempts to break
through the walls, we should pull back and spread out. After all, we
have to face facts: sneaking past complex security systems just isn't
our area of expertise. Humans, on the other hand, are great at that
kind of thing. So let's fan out and overrun the countryside. Let
rumors spread that the compound is no longer under attack, and then
go after the ones left outside. Drive them to the fences until there
is another horde clamoring to get inside, only this horde isn't
dragging their rotted body parts, it's crying and shouting and
holding up children, begging for shelter. What will the military do
then? Shoot them? If they do that, it will shatter the community. The
civilians will be outraged; they'll turn against the defense forces,
and the ruling council will have to take sides. In the end, there
will either be a civil war that will leave the humans decimated and
weak, or some will try to escape. In both cases, they'll be playing
right into our cold, dead hands.
In conclusion, my rotting comrades, we make them choose between their humanity and their survival. Even if we could feel guilty, there's no need to. I've already shown that braaaaaiiiiiins make life more difficult for the humans, so we're really doing them a favor by getting rid of them.
Great post! I’ve really never imagined “life” from a zombie’s perspective and I think you certainly give it justice. Your first paragraph did a wonderful job reminding me that the only thing that zombies think about is BRRRRAAAIIIINNNSSSS. They have no desire for education and there is certainly no negotiating with the undead. I also found the part about Uncle Rege to be significant in my own thinking about zombies. I couldn’t even imagine having to kill my sister, even if she was a stinky zombie like you. I know zombies are different and would happily eat their loved ones, but I guess that what makes people so scared of you!
I really enjoyed how you mention that fear and doubt are controlling forces to humans. I feel as if this is the biggest advantage that zombies have over the humans. There is no hesitation when a zombie it trying to eat a human, it's just instinct. This also reminds me of a later episode of The Walking Dead where Shane is teaching Andrea to shoot a gun and he is describing how when you kill a man, it is instinct. You can't hesitate.
The film Land of the Dead was ehhhhhh, but it had some interesting ideas. As you said the zombies only took the movie so far, it was the human rebellion that broke the camels back. As soon as you see the disparity between socio-economic classes you know there is going to be anarchy....Sometimes the living are more dangerous than the dead. We see this throughout the series the Walking Dead (especially in season 3). Zombies act as a catalyst for the self destructive qualities of man to surface. Even though their should be a sense of camaraderie among the living, some sort of internal strife always appears, pitting man against man...leaving the zombies in the background just scratching their rotting heads.
Brothers and sisters in brains (my fellow zombies) -
First and foremost, great post, Kevin. I'm all for trying to raise any kind of critical consciousness out of the zombified masses. Because, really, we're not quite dead; but we're not exactly NOT dead right? I mean, that's kind of our whole deal. But a lot of what you're speaking to in this post seems to hint at a kind of zombie solidarity, the development of a kind of classical Marxist (zombie) class consciousness. Time and again we as zombies have been exploited by the living, from our earliest full-length appearance on screen (White Zombie, 1932), in which zombification is clearly aligned with human slavery and mind control, up to the reading we were assigned just the other day, which discusses the idea of "corporate zombies" and the proliferation of the zombie metaphor in legal proceedings (almost all of which pit us as slaves to substances, big corporations, or our 'caretakers'). Just because we have historically been denied any form of cognizance doesn't mean we are incapable of possessing or developing one. And indeed, contemporary zombie narratives such as Romero's Land of the Dead do seem to be gesturing towards such possibilities.
Really I think we're just... misunderstood. For what is the zombie but the (formerly) linguistic subject reduced to a pre-linguistic state? We as zombies have lost our ability to communicate, with the living, and more importantly, with one another (in the sense that, prior to zombification, some kind of critical consciousness would have at least be theoretically possible between us in life). Is it so far-fetched to think that it is not at least theoretically possible to achieve the same kind of critical group awareness post-mortem? That is, as zombies? Obviously to the world of the living this would appear an impossibility. Yet we consider that, as undead, we inhabit a domain that is fundamentally unaccessible, UNKNOWABLE to the living, I believe that the possibility cannot be ruled out entirely. Simply, as re-animated beings, we need to learn to 'speak' a new language, to negotiate and inhabit a new order outside the boundaries of the symbolic order we knew in life.
Soooo... zombie consciousness raising workshops anyone?