In “Zombies
Are Us,” the locus of fear is stated to be pain. In zombie-lore, however, the
greater fear seems to be “loss.” A human in a zombie apocalypse can experience
loss in a number of ways. First, any human is in a constant struggle not to
lose their life. However, in zombie-lore, typically a human is not only losing
their life in death. A person killed by a zombie loses everything that makes
them human in the first place. Sure, some muscle memory or basic instincts may
remain, but emotion or agency is void, at least in the human way, for a zombie.
A human in a zombie apocalypse does not seem to fear the physical pain of a
zombie biting into his flesh. In the “Walking Dead,” for example, Rick does not
hesitate to turn his pistol on himself under the tank. The pain is not the
problem. The greater fear, which lies in any zombie apocalypse, is the fear of
humanity.
In the most
obvious way, a zombie bite will quickly remove any humanity from a person. Quickly,
the person will degrade into flesh eating, decaying, members of a horde. Even
for the living, however, there is a constant struggle to retain humanity. In
the beginning of the “Walking Dead,” Rick walks into his house convinced that
his wife and son are still alive. When the other man asks how he knows, he
points to the picture frames. The man sighs and states that his wife did the
same thing. As he was gathering survival gear, his wife was collecting the
photo albums. The man says this like it’s a bad thing. Focusing on gathering
memorabilia of, what is now, a past life is less necessary than collecting
water or weapons. For the wife, however, desperately clutching to the life that
was normal only hours before is of dire importance. These memories, now
artifacts, are what will keep her human in days to come. Of course, this is
easily negated by the fact she turns into a zombie.
Throughout “The
Walking Dead,” however, there is a constant theme of a person struggling with
their humanity. In the beginning, Rick is appalled when the other man kills a
zombie. He calls the “walker” a person. For the man, killing zombies is a part
of life. For both Rick and the man, however, it is a different matter when the
zombie is someone loved or that should be protected. The man cannot kill his
wife, even though he knows it is necessary for his survival. Just like his wife
needed to collect physical memories, this man could not kill this walking
memory of his wife. How much of his wife was left in there? Considering the man
killed other zombies without a second thought, he must believe that they were
no longer human. Yet, he cannot let go of his sentimentality. For Rick, this
moment manifests when he faces a little girl zombie. The little girl slowly
walks towards him and quickly switches to attack mode. Still, Rick is horrified
and cannot help trying to save her at first. By reverting to killing what, in
the past life was innocent, Rick needs to sacrifice some of his humanity.
As a leader
of my community, this struggle is of crucial importance. What is the point of
running a community of people that have completely sacrificed their humanity?
Sure, unlike the wife, my members have let go of their past lives. The world
today is completely different than the one before. My focus, however, is to
create a community where humanity can foster. The survival of humankind is only
important if humanity survives as well. Any zombie community will face that
constant struggle, allowing the emotion and sentimentality of humans grow while
living in constant fear of loss. A community that is an example of this is the
one present in “Spoiler.” Even though everyone knows the family will probably
all be exterminated, the outsiders try their hardest to save the man and the
baby. The safety of the rest of the community demands the death of the husband
and wife, but they are not sacrificed in vain. A post-zombie apocalypse will
never be the same as the old world; children can look outside and see their
neighbors go up in flames. On the other hand, there is a semblance of normalcy where,
at least in some way, humanity has survived.
Hmm... this raises two questions for me: 1) where is the line beyond which we won't be satisfied that we (and our civilization) really is surviving? 2) We haven't talked about cannibalism yet. I wonder why that is? In any case, we need to talk about the use of cannibalism in zombie mythology and the fear(s) that expresses in our culture, and in our beliefs about ourselves.
This definitely raises the question of what it really means to "survive." Is it worth it, if everyone you know is dead? What if their deaths were your fault? What if you're alive because you sacrificed other people? Sure you haven't lost your life, but have you lost much more? And when do those loses become more significant that the loss of life. It's true that in zombie lore, a character's choices that try to stick to their humanity more often than not get them killed, or at least very close to being killed. It raises the point that the most dangerous enemy is one who has nothing to lose. If we've already lost everything - our loved ones, our humanity - then what do we have left? Do we keep fighting? Or do we become our own biggest enemy?
When thinking of zombie apocalypses, I too often think of what the world would look like. Is it worth surviving if you are in a constant state of fear like many of the Zombie movies and TV shows present characters in these situations? How would you remain hopeful in a situation that seems so hopeless? It seems the scariest thing to me about zombies is not that you have a chance of your brain being ripped out and torn to shreds by chomping teeth, but rather knowing a person you may have known is now that flesh eating zombie who has nothing human about them left. For me, the scariest thing about a zombie outbreak would be seeing the people I know and love turn into something without any humanity, something without life.