Zomb-tonomy (Blog Post 1)

I have encountered zombies in films, such as Wild Zero (1999), Shaun of the Dead (2004), Død snø (Dead Snow, 2009), and, of course, the franchise of The Evil Dead (1981, 1987, 1992, and we'll pretend that the 2013 one doesn't really exist for the sake of everyone's happiness).  I have also run into, controlled, and slain many zombies in video games, such as in Silent Hill, Diablo 3, and Guild Wars 2.  There are also many books which delve into the zombie culture, like those of Max Brooks.  Despite my experience with the undead in these works, zombieism did not catch my attention until this class started.  This is because I was much more focused on the living human characters.  I was always rooting for the badass with the chainsaw in the films or books, and I was always mindlessly killing the risen in the games.  Never did I wonder: are the zombies were autonomous? Do they have memories? Could I kill an undead close one if I were squared off with them?

We've tried to answer such questions to AMC's The Walking Dead, although we have only seem clips from the show in its infancy, so the conclusions we came up with were open-ended. I would like to apply these questions Død snø, simply because the entire movie is available on YouTube:

(Sadly, there is no English subbed version. There is a dubbed version on YouTube, but it's terrible.  In the parts I look at, though, understanding the dialogue is not important.)

Død snø is set near Øksfjord, Norway, where eight medical students on vacation in a small cabin up in the mountains. Seven of the students travel together via vehicle, while one opts to go on foot by herself (she ends up dying in the first scene). The other seven arrive at the cabin first, and just after they have settled in, they find themselves having to face off with Nazi zombies who are bent on retrieving and protecting a box of valuables that was looted during World War II.

This immediately raises the question of whether or not the zombies can remember things, since they continue to protect the box of loot, killing anybody who takes even one coin. This question of memories is important, because if zombies do indeed remember their past life, then perhaps they still hold on to a shred of humanity or agency. Zombies with humanity or agency pose a threat for two chiefly reasons: it impacts whether or not you are more conflicted in killing one who had a connection with you, and it makes the zombies more threatening (because they would then have the ability to strategize against you). Since the risen in Død snø are Nazis, there is no concern of the members of the group having to face off with someone with whom they have a connection with (some of the members of the group are bitten, but none of them return as undead). Determining whether or not the zombies are autonomous beings in this movie, then, is done to establish how threatening they are.

In Derksen and Hick's essay, "Your Zombie and You," they discuss the Lockean view of personal identity, which posits that a person is the same person as they were last week or last year if they “maintain the right sort of psychological relationship with that individual” and if they “participate in the same stream of consciousness” (18).  The zombies' remembrances suggest that they are the same people in their undead form as in their living form, but Derksen and Hick argue that Locke's view of personal identity cannot hold for zombies, because when the Nazi soldiers died, they “ceased to have psychology,” so there was “no mind to be psychologically continuous with” (18, their emphasis). However, the zombies' protective nature over the treasure in Død snø seems to suggest that they have a memory of the treasure existing, that it means something to them, and that they must protect it.

However, in our class discussion, we asked if zombies' habitual actions are purely muscle memory or if the actions bear sentimental value. It the actions are just muscle memory, then it's less arguable that their behavior is indicative of them being autonomous beings. The zombies in Død snø, though, are commanded by a zombified Standartenführer Herzog, whose actions seem to be performed with serious intent. After the big fight scene where the remaining survivors kill off a number of Herzog's soldiers, we see Herzog standing defiantly (1:17:04), appearing to be utterly livid that his soldiers were killed (again). He then calls out for more soldiers. This is an action of memory, as he remembers his position of authority among his soldiers, and, what's more, this shows that he is still capable of strategizing. As argued in the Derksen and Hick essay, this is indicative of the zombies having agency, as Herzog “seeks optimal ends and optimal means to those ends” (15). Herzog does this by organizing his undead soldiers in order to sniff out his treasure. When the last remaining survivor realizes this, he runs back to the cabin while being chased by Herzog in order to dig out the treasure. When Herzog sees the box (1:21:30), he halts, because he recognizes it. Again, this is suggests that zombies have memories, as recognition requires recollection. The survivor hands the box to Herzog, and he's allowed to leave. Herzog's allowance of the survivor walking away is indicative of rationalization, as Herzog got his treasure, so there is no reason for him to chase after the survivor. That is, until Herzog realizes that the survivor had one forgotten piece of loot in his pocket.

While it's unlikely that my community will come across Nazi zombies at our military school located somewhere in the midwest, this kind of establishment of whether or not zombies have autonomy is critical for the survival of the living members of Home on the Brainge. Død snø posits that the undead do indeed have agency, and if we follow the zombie world set up by this movie, having a better understanding of the zombies' threats, intents, motivations and mannerisms will aid in our preparedness and strategizing, similar to how the last survivor in the movie nearly managed to escape the Nazi zombies altogether by determining what Herzog wanted.