Abstract
I was supposed to be in Berlin. But there was something about “severe weather” in the Midwest (in May?! What is that but a harbinger of the climate crisis?), and an airport control tower on fire in Chicago, and a vision of the kind of chaos that ensues when society breaks down. At the airport, there was a two-hour long line to wait in, full of irritable would-be passengers, and at the front, barely an apology from the overworked airline employees, tasked with the unenviable job of informing all those booked on cancelled flights that delays were on the order of days, not hours because (and here’s our old friend capitalism rearing his ugly mug), the airlines had all, according to common procedure these days, overbooked their flights. Sure, they could get me to Europe, but not for several days, and by that time, I would have missed my reason for going: to see German zombies run.
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Notes
- 1.
The reference here is to Hannah Arendt’s important article “Eichmann in Jerusalem,” The New Yorker, February 16, 1963. A television commercial for Sprint Unlimited that ran in the US featured a zombie; so did one for Starburst candy.
- 2.
For books devoted to the zombie in cinema, see Kyle Bishop’s American Zombie Gothic (2010) and Peter Dendle’s Zombie Movie Encyclopedia Volumes I (2000) & II (2011), as well as Jamie Russell’s Book of the Dead (2005) and Glenn Kay’s Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide (2nd ed. 2012). Several other book collections of late have provided similar studies of the zombie either in cinema or in various media: see especially Greene and Mohammed, The Undead and Philosophy; McIntosh and Leverette, Zombie Culture: Autopsies of the Living Dead; Moreman and Rushton, Race, Oppression and the Zombie: Essays on the Cross-Cultural Appropriations of the Caribbean Tradition.
- 3.
The association between zombies and capitalist critique has been deeply entrenched since Dawn of the Dead (1978). In his book Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan (1986) Robin Wood wrote that Romero’s “zombies represent, on the metaphorical level, the whole dead weight of patriarchal consumer capitalism, from whose habits of behavior and desire not even Hare Krishnas and nuns, mindlessly joining the conditioned gravitation to the shopping mall, are exempt” (Wood, 118).
- 4.
See, for one example among the many scholars that discuss the significance of this line, Kevin J. Wetmore Jr. in Back from the Dead: remakes of Romero films as markers of their times. McFarland & Co., Jefferson, NC, 2011.
- 5.
See my essay in Better Off Dead: the evolution of the zombie as posthuman. Eds Deborah Christie and Sarah Juliet Lauro, Fordham UP, New York, 2011.
- 6.
See for example, Peter Dendle’s description of the film Zombie Self-Defense Force (Japan, 2005) and Zombies of Mass Destruction (Japan, 2008) and the episode of Masters of Horror called “Homecoming,” (Showtime, 2005). In general, Dendle’s Zombie Movie Encyclopedia, (McFarland & Co., Jefferson, NC, 2001 and 2011) in two volumes, is a fantastic source for the zombie film enthusiast.
- 7.
More than one company has made a shirt bearing this slogan, but see for example, one sold by Hot Topic, http://search.hottopic.com/clothing/If-Daryl-Dies-We-Riot Accessed 15.6.2014
- 8.
This disturbing product has since been taken off the virtual shelf, but reports about it can still be read online. See for example, the MSN news write-up of 17.5.2013, “Did NRA ban zombie targets that resemble Obama?” <http://news.msn.com/us/did-nra-ban-zombie-targets-that-resemble-obama>
- 9.
Canavan, Gerry. “We ‘Are’ the Walking Dead”: Race, Time, and Survival in Zombie Narrative Extrapolation (University of Texas at Brownsville); Fall 2010, 51(3).
- 10.
See Seabrook, William. The Magic Island. Harcourt, Brace & Co, New York, 1929.
- 11.
See Russell, Book of the Dead. FAB Press, Surrey, 2005.
- 12.
See Kordas, Ann. “New South, New Immigrants, New Women, New Zombies: The Historical Development of the Zombie in American Popular Culture” in Moreman and Rushton, eds. Race, Oppression, and the Zombie: Essays on Cross-Cultural Appropriations of the Caribbean Tradition (McFarland & Co., Jefferson, NC, 2011).
- 13.
See Andrew Whelan, Ruth Walker, and Christopher Moore, eds. Zombies in the Academy: Living Death in Higher Education. Intellect Press, Bristol, UK, 2013.
- 14.
A few examples can be seen at <http://www.zazzle.com/zombie+baby+clothes> Accessed 15.6.2014.
- 15.
A cursory internet search reveals that many states have their own zombie run websites (like Florida, Connecticut), but that other sites, like 5kzombierun.com, zombierun.com, and thezombiemudrun.com aggregate events in various places. There is also a very popular app called “Zombies, run!” that prompts runners to imagine themselves as having to outrun imaginary zombies, as an aid to their fitness routine. See <https://www.zombiesrungame.com/> All accessed 15.6.2014.
- 16.
See RuptlyTV’s live streamed post dated 18.5.2014 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW5wehw_gTs> and Bim Telkin’s post of 18.5.2014 at <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUoH10OEcgU> Both accessed 15.6.2014.
- 17.
An excellent collection of essays on the show is Dawn Keetley’s ‘We’re All Infected:’ Essays on AMC’s The Walking Dead and the Fate of the Human McFarland & Co., Jefferson, NC, 2014.
- 18.
On zombie survivalists, see the essay by Christopher Zealand “The National Strategy for Zombie Containment: myth meets activism in post-9/11 America” in Generation Zombie: essays on the living dead in modern culture. Stephanie Boluk and Wylie Lenz, eds. McFarland & Co., Jefferson, NC, 2011.
- 19.
Keetley, Dawn. ‘We’re All Infected:’ Essays on AMC’s The Walking Dead and the Fate of the Human McFarland & Co., Jefferson, NC, 2014, p. 10.
- 20.
“Stand Your Ground ” allows citizens who feel threatened with bodily harm at any place and time to use force (even force with a deadly weapon) to defend themselves, but what constitutes a “threat” is not specified. According to the website findlaw.com, 23 of our 50 states have passed such legislation. This is different from “castle doctrine” which allows a person to defend himself by any means he deems necessary in his own home or on his property. <http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-law-basics/states-that-have-stand-your-ground-laws.html> accessed 14.6.2014.
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Lauro, S.J. (2016). Preface Zombies Today. In: Carrington, V., Rowsell, J., Priyadharshini, E., Westrup, R. (eds) Generation Z. Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-934-9_2
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