After our recent class debate over the "Zombality" of the 28 Week Later zombies, I pondered the qualifications of being a Zombie, a member of the "living dead". After much thought, I'd like to make the case that although these 28s (pre-"turn") do not consistently experience the animation of death, they do undeniably "turn"; losing their agency and only "existing" in our physical world to eat. They no longer occupy a mental state where they recognize a self due to chemical reactions suffered in their brains which destroy "the mental". This is to say that someone who is infected in the 28s lore, does die.
So I'm saying,
LIVING DEAD!!!
...
But more importantly, what do you think?
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I think that while one might not necessarily be "dead," they can certainly not be living. There is a distinction. It happens even now, without a looming zombie apocalypse - during a discussion about my ex-boyfriend, my friend told me that I was literally mourning someone who is dead, because the current asshole he has become has no semblance of the nice boy he used to be. While not entirely the same, this is how I picture the people from 28 Weeks Later. Though they may not have died in the traditional sense of the word, I believe we cease to live when we lose all that makes us, "us." The person they was were is no longer alive, as the memories, personality, feelings that made them unique individuals are gone.
I absolutely agree, the moment when personalty, feelings, emotions,..the "Us" becomes only a violent, subsistence-level need to feed, then that person is gone. The 28-weeks/days "zombie" is an interesting example only because of their ability to technically die. The Rage virus isnt some form of reanimation as it is in the walking dead. Instead it operates by totally stripping the host of the self and replacing it with the violent hunger, effectively making them the walking dead. That said, 28-days later also enriches that understanding of humanity/death/agency with the presence of the British soldiers. Their survival is based on a perverted humanity/violent-agency which is founded almost entirely on basic needs, ie. food, protection, and reproduction. So at what stage do the soldiers also represent inhuman agents? What does that say about the survival of the "us" identity in a post-apocalyptic setting?
Or am i just grasping at straws?
Although I haven't seen 28 Weeks Later in quite a few years, I do agree that although they may not have technically died that are not the people that they once were. They lose all of their sense of agency and seemingly no longer possess the feelings and emotions that they once had. M. Sturges also brings up an interesting point about the soldiers and their transition to functioning only on the level of fulfilling their basic needs.
The 'living dead' has always been my favorite term for designating those hordes of flesh-eating monsters that wander the streets and the countrysides of our imagination. Something about the apparent paradox I think has always appealed to me. One of the defining characteristics that we seem to be attributing to the zombie this semester again and again is the idea that the living dead "are not who they once were." That is, who they were before they 'turned,' whether that turning is the result of death or infection or other means. Yet perhaps, in a way, part of what (certain) zombie texts confront us with is that these undead figures are exactly what we/they were/are in life, that we are all too much the people we once were after we've 'turned.' Considering how many zombie texts seem to level a critique of the meaningless existence of the masses (eat, breed, repeat), perhaps it is fear of dying (as a 'nobody,' having accomplished nothing) and coming back as effectively the same thing is part of what scares us so much about the living dead. Dawn of the Dead (1978) seems exemplary here, as the four survivors seeking refuge in the mall recreate a more or less precise replica (albeit somewhat, er, 'different') of life under consumer capitalism, replete with shopping sprees, dining out, sport, and the like. The fact that the undead are flocking to the mall all the while seems gesture towards the idea that, despite their re-animation, their behavior has not *really* changed (except for the whole, you know, desire for ACTUAL FLESH as opposed to the repressed violence inherent to the capitalist system).
This, I believe, is an extremely terrifying prospect for many: the idea of life ad infinitum, never ceasing, never ending, FOREVER MEANINGLESS. In this sense, it seems that, read a certain way, the zombie scenario encapsulates the existential crisis par excellence.