My
Favorite: The Walking Dead, A Meet
Topic
John
James Crowley
Popular
Culture, HUMN 240
Professor
Harlan Schottenstein
Oct.
19, 2014
My
Favorite
The Walking Dead
is my magnetic television show. It involves ritualistic killing of undead victims
of a fictional Terminus virus. These worse-than-Ebola-like “walkers” are
decaying people. The show unabashedly
panders America’s post-9/11 fears that have injected themselves into the
stereotype of zombies. And our
collective pre-occupation with homeland security, disaster planning and
emergency preparedness. I even think of my FEMA classes as a firefighting/EMT graduate.
There are no incident managers, communication coordination or mass-evacuation
plans in Walking Dead. And we in the
Ebola age fear a nagging truth that such systemic dysfunction might await us
despite CDC’s empty-suit planners’ studies and forecasts.
Lots of this week’s readings encapsulate the
stereotypes, rituals and premises of the show: A reluctant cop; who’s also a
protective father; the brooding survivors; and their evil counterparts looking
to get a leg up amid the carnage. The zombies eat them all, and let God sort
them out. No good or evil, just arms and legs. The zombies exemplify escapism which
lets watchers have a healthy release of contemporary fears. Rituals of mating,
hunting and the bodily need for food and water are interwoven into a complex
soap opera entering its fifth season. If there was a Terminus Barbeque, the
undead could tell their pals to “Meat” them there. It’s cynical, but true.
Former deputy Rick Grimes awakens from a
robber-gunshot coma in an abandoned hospital. As in real life, the public
disappointingly has looked to the CDC. The Centers for Disease Control proves
impotent even in fiction. The show initially centers around CDC efforts in Atlanta.
The CDC, as in the current real-life Ebola scare, botches the job. The
survivalist mindset that ensues is itself a stereotype and a ritual that
reminds me of the Y2K hoax. People hoard weapons, ammo, knives, food and
medicine. And we all begin to let go of burial, other rituals.
The living claw through paranoia amid the
undead-fueled erosion of society. Good/evil survivors are indiscriminately beset by the “walkers,”
who relentlessly feast so they themselves can subsist. Then, in season four, an
influenza outbreak kills survivors massed at a prison. It reminds us of the
initial Terminus pandemic, the ritualistic real presence of flu every fall, and
a reminder that if the zombies don’t get you, life will.
The prison suggests freedom, not its
original purpose. And the fences intended to keep convicts in now keep walkers
out. Life’s inside, death’s outside –
the opposite of a prison in modern America. Symbolic, ironic and yet still true to classic clashes
of those with malice aforethought against the noble who seek hope. Is that like
the perpetual ritualistic feud between liberals and conservatives? Is AMC show
developer Frank Daramont asking us to question our overall life?
The zombies really are along for the story’s
ride, unable to plot, betray or even eat each other. They’re at least
consistent. They inspire fear, but you also feel sorry for these victims of
human arrogance and plague. Bad guys like The Governor are much more lethal to
Grimes’ intrepid and righteous colleagues. To the zombies, it matters not: A
meal’s a meal. Like voters who fear the same gruel on their political plate
regardless of which party is doing the cooking.
As viewers, we are slept along just like Walking Dead’s zombies – or sports fans
berated by psychologist David P. Barash’s “Sports and Society, The Roar of the
Crowd.” We are happy to live through the eyes of Rick and his followers, who
extend “Andy Warhol’s supposed 15 minutes’ of fame” indefinitely. (Barash, pp
363-367) As long as we can be passive, like the zombies in the show, we too can
essentially live “forever.” Walking Dead,
Barash might say, gives us “primitive satisfaction” at “almost lightning speed”
from a “shared, ritual action to a tempestuous sense of expanded self.”
(Barash, 367)
Walking
Dead also is like a 4-season-plus AMC soap opera. There are sexy women and
men, barely contained lust, betrayal and outright deceit. Rick’s wife, Lori, is shot to death to keep her
from re-animating after giving birth to a girl who could be Rick’s or that of
Shane Walsh. He’s Rick’s former cop partner and best friend.
Such
drama is interrupted by blood-smeared zombies eating their way through lovers,
enemies and bystanders alike. The only soap-opera stereotypical ritual missing
is laundry-detergent commercials. Will
all that blood wash out?
Like any good Dad, Rick loves and tries to
shelter his remaining son. Like an old Western movie – the protagonist never
seems to miss or run out of bullets. It’s like Rachel Schaffer’s Six-Gun Mystique (Profiles of Popular
Culture, 117)
Rick’s the formula-conflicted stereotyped law
man, sans star – but with more stopping power. Deep down, he still believes in
truth, justice and a better tomorrow. It doesn’t get any more hackneyed. Thankfully, sidekick Darryl’s crossbow, random
automatic weapons’ fire and interpersonal tension with strong women livens
things up. No damsels in distress, which
keeps it like today’s popular culture. Then there’s Rick ritualistic
long-barreled revolver – like Schaffer’s Six Gun of old. It’s even silver. All that’s missing is a
white cowboy hat. Or a Clint Eastwood squint. There’s the ritual of loading 6 shells,
cocking the hammer, and aiming carefully.
Walking
Dead has lots of guns, mayhem and more than the 5 acts of violence per
hour. That “recipe” is in a 1993 George Gerbner TV-myth article in the Common Culture text. (Gerbner, 119) There
also are plenty of sword-carrying, gun-toting and scowling females who still can
entice the menfolk. I wonder if Walking Dead serves another purpose: To
desensitize us not just to each other as people, but to the ritual of burial.
The
(Cleveland) Plain Dealer in 2003 ran
a story from Powell, Ohio, reprinted in our Popular Culture text. It talked
about Ohio’s estimated 16,000 unrecorded cemeteries. That’s a lot of people to
relocate if you’re a developer. It also means a lot of lost history, according
to writer Liz Sidoti and the Ohio Genealogical Society. (Profiles of Popular Culture,
pp 134-137). What if societally, the ritual of burial must give way to the
exigent circumstances of modern life.
Southern Delaware County also is subject to
lots of development. Included in plans to widen SR 315 and other changes is the
likelihood of discovering unmarked graves, according to The Dispatch and its ThisWeek.
I wonder if Walking Dead is kind of a
way to ease our society into desensitizing how we bury our dead. Because
rampant Ebola would mean mass cremations.
There’s a lot of real estate used by
cemeteries, marked and otherwise. The work on the the Olentangy River as part
of removal of dams has unearthed 1800’s-era riverbank graves, The Dispatch/ThisWeek has reported. We
may have forgo six-foot holes or horizontally placed caskets. Cremations and
the disassociation from burial rituals are inevitable. Ohio’s re-purposing of
land is happening nationwide, Sidoti writes in Popular Culture. (Sidoti, 137). Rituals, stereotypes and public
fears about terror and plagues will give way to monied development.
Walking
Dead may be the kind of dehumanization which could help us prepare for that seemingly
callous treatment of the gratefully departed. In a larger sense, it is a show
that incorporates stereotypes, epic battles and typifies moral dilemmas.
Burials may very well lose their ritualism amid Ebola-fueled cremations. And we
as a people need shows like Walking Dead to help us deal with an overall change
in America. We are no longer presumed always safe, insulated from the world, or
the ravages of disease. Walking Dead
reminds us that we must change our views of rituals, stereotypes and misplaced
faith in a “benevolent” government.
References
Forgotten Cemeteries
Unearth Buried Treasures, (Sidoti, L.)
Petracca, M., Sorapure, M. (2009) Common
Culture: Reading and Writing about American
Popular Culture (7th ed.) Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson
Prentice Hall,
ISBN: 978-0-205-17181, pp 134-137
Formula, Browne,
R.B.(2005). Profiles of Popular Culture:
A Reader, Madison, WI:
The University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN:
0-87972-869-8, pp 115-116
“Residents Concerned
about Plan to Develop Golf Course,”(Preston-Coy, C.)
ThisWeek
(Dispatch) Newspapers, Oct. 11, 2009.
“Sports and Society, The
Roar of the Crowd” (Barash, D. P.)
Petracca, M., Sorapure, M. (2009) Common
Culture: Reading and Writing about American
Popular Culture (7th ed.) Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson
Prentice Hall,
ISBN: 978-0-205-17181
“The Cultural Influences of Television:
Society’s Storyteller: How TV Creates
the Myths by Which We Live (Gerbner, G.)
1993
Petracca, M., Sorapure, M. (2009) Common
Culture: Reading and Writing about American
Popular Culture (7th ed.) Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall,
ISBN: 978-0-205-17181
“The Walking Dead:
Latest Storyline Reflects Past Events, Hints at Next Episode?”
(Burlingame, R.) Nov. 25, 2013.
Comicbook.com
Retrieved from: http://comicbook.com/blog/2013/11/25/the-walking-dead-latest-storyline-reflects-past-events-hints-at-next-episode/
“The Walking Dead,”
Official AMC Website
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