For those of you who are sports fans (football fans in particular), the name Hines Ward may ring a bell. This name may also ring a bell if you’re a Dancing With The Stars fan. If you’re not a fan of either of these things, the guy I’m talking about was really good at catching a ball and dancing. Anyway, I was reading the paper the other day and read that Hines Ward, the retired-soon-to-be-Hall-of-Famer football player and former Dancing with the Stars champion, will make his acting debut in the newest episode of The Walking Dead airing this Sunday. As a big Walking Dead fan and an even bigger sports fan (Dancing With the Stars not so much...) this was really exciting news, and it got me thinking about the connections between a zombie infested world and the world of sports. As a zombie scholar (we’re zombie scholars, right? Yeah I’m gonna go with that) and an athlete, I was interested in finding some (if any) parallels between these two very different yet extremely prevalent components of our society.
I’ve always envisioned that what I would fear most in a zombie apocalypse is not actually being bitten. Now, that's not to say I wouldn't be scared of that, because I'd be terrified of that happening. However, what would be even scarier to me is knowing what would happen to me once I was bitten. The thought of it is one thing, but being able to see it as well - a mindless, decaying zombie, knowing full well that it was once a person like you and me, and that it could happen to you or me - is a crippling fear. Knowing I could turn into that and never be me again would scare me more than anything.
So, in thinking about this particular type of fear I began to search for parallels in the sports world. As an athlete I can attest to fears that I and many other athletes confront in the midst of an athletic career, and I can say with a lot of certainty that those same ideas of decay, collapse, spoil, and descent - all of which are prominent fears in any zombie related story - are very real and very frightening realities to an athlete. I can understand that a lot of people would be skeptical about this claim; after all, any sport is just a game, right? Comparing it to a zombie apocalypse is night and day, apples and oranges, life and death (literally.) A zombie apocalypse is a much more dire situation, and that can't be disputed. We often talk in class about losing your "self" when turning into a zombie. When you're munched by a zombie, the "you" that all of us have is gone. Your body is still there and you're still a physical being, but you are not you, and you will never be you again. I want to argue that this same fear is very real to an athlete. Yes, it's just a game. Yes, the troubles of an athlete can seem trivial and nonsensical when compared to real world issues and tragedies. But all athletes lose their "self," which they have crafted and sculpted and molded and honed for years, at one point or another, and the thought of that is scary as hell. The thought of your body decaying, of your abilities crumbling, of the things that once made you special beginning to fade - all of which happen to the victim of a zombie bite - is a very real and very scary thing for an athlete.
A day will come for every athlete when they can't do the things they used to. The tricky part is in not knowing when that day is going to come. It's all about continuity. It's about taking it one day at a time. It's about doing the necessary things needed to keep yourself from decaying. It's about endurance. It's about constantly being afraid of that day coming yet using that fear as motivation to do what's necessary to continue on. It's all about survival. Kinda sounds like a zombie apocalypse, huh?
I am a huge football fan so when I read the first sentences of your post, I had to continue to read. The connection you make between a zombie apocalypse and the carrer of an athlete is great. I never would've thought about this on my own. I agree that many people see the issues of an athlete as trivial, but they don't acknowledge that they have similar issues in their life. For an athlete, physical ability is what enables them to keep their job. Not only is being on a sports team their job, but it is also their identity and a huge part of their life. If they lose that too early, then they lose a huge portion of their life. This is exactly like a person getting transformed into a zombie. Well, except that once the person is a zombie they may or may not have memories of being human. In that case, wouldn't it be worse to be the athlete and remember what life was like? Just a thought.
ReplyDeleteI was very skeptical when I started reading this post, since I tend to have very little sympathy for people who get paid millions of dollars to play a game. But you've made a really good analogy that can be applied to a lot of different situations. Artists, musicians, actors, politicians, etc, deep down they're all terrified of losing their glory and going back to being a nobody. In an actual zombie apocalypse, any kind of creature that wants to kill you would be quite terrifying. But in terms of zombie literature and film, the "conversion" process is definitely what makes zombies uniquely scary. They don't just kill you, they steal what makes you YOU. A horde of zombies coming at you is scarier than, say, a stampede or a tornado, because it doesn't just represent death, it represents the end of everything we value as a culture: individualism, intelligence, progress, and self-control.
ReplyDeleteRight / yes / spot on / exactly to the end of Kevin's post. Thinking about this analogy between the zombie and the professional athlete (and we might extend it, as Kevin does, to include professional musicians, actors, artists, politicians, etc.) provides a really excellent framework for thinking about zombification and the loss of individuality. The fear here isn't just that they take away your 'you', but that in doing so, 'you' become one of THEM. In the professional athlete/musician/painter/etc., what we have are exceptional individuals -- 'somebodys' -- whereas in the zombie horde we have an army of 'nobodys.' As Kyle points out, what greater fear is there for the professional actor/athlete/accordian player than losing the name they have made for themselves?
ReplyDeleteYour guys' comments are great, I'm pretty relieved the analogy made sense to more people than me haha. But yeah, I think athletes are just one of many types of people who fear losing their identity's. Regardless of the profession, losing an identity you spent your life developing and maintaining is really scary and I think it's definitely relatable to a zombie infestation
ReplyDeleteHines Ward was also the only football player [MINOR SPOILER ALERT] to survive Bain's football stadium attack in DARK KNIGHT RISES. (He's uncredited in the film, but check the IMDB page.)
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