Killable hordes, chronic others, and ‘mindful’ consumers: Rehabilitating the zombie in Twenty-First-Century popular culture

de Bruin-Molé, Megen (2021) Killable hordes, chronic others, and ‘mindful’ consumers: Rehabilitating the zombie in Twenty-First-Century popular culture. In, Embodying Contagion: The Viropolitics of Horror and Desire in Contemporary Discourse. (Horror Studies) University of Wales Press, pp. 159-178. (doi:10.16922/contagion).

Abstract

American zombie fiction responds to discourses on immigration and viropolitics in two main ways. In one strand, the zombie presents a de-humanised metaphor for groups of people considered distasteful to regular citizens (immigrants, enemy combatants, the poor, etc.). In another, increasingly popular strand, we find zombies who are able to contain their otherness, and are partially reintegrated with society. The narrator of the 2010 novel Feed struggles with the discrimination she faces as the carrier a dormant version of the zombie virus. The 2013 film Warm Bodies tells the story of a zombie who unites the dead and the living through his love for a human girl. In the CW series iZombie (2014-2016) a zombie’s ability to absorb the memories of the dead by eating their brains helps her to solve crimes. Each character is a potential disease vector, but each manages to manage their illness and make a valuable contribution to human society.
Drawing on work by Margrit Shildrick and Donna Haraway, this chapter explores how the metaphor of disease is employed in these ‘friendly zombie’ texts to offer a reading of the politics of belonging they articulate. These stories are not only metaphors for living with disease and disability, but also for life in a multicultural world. Rather than dehumanising the other outside the community, horror is directed inward, to a ‘monster’ that cannot be destroyed or ignored.

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Contributors

Author: Megen de Bruin-Molé

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