Zombies have plagued my life for a long time, a genre that really captured my teen heart and endured throughout my twenties. But what’s their appeal (beyond the obvious gratifying splattering of brains..?)
Beneath the distracting allure and glamour of liberating queer vampire stories, zombie media remained a slow, steady interest of mine until very recently when I realised… I’ve consumed a hell of a lot of zombies over the years. From the apprehension of survival based books like World War Z (2006), through ‘zomedy’ movies like Zombieland (2009), Shaun of the Dead (2004), Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009), to the endless video games – Left 4 Dead (2009), Resident Evil (1996), Dead Rising (2006), Last of Us (2013)- zombies have been an ever-present sub-genre in my life.
McFarland (2015) argued “the zombie-image has no positive content whatsoever but rather accidentally registers a profound crisis
in human self-representation” (Cox, 2024). So, why do we choose to return to stories of this type of undead creature? Vampires are opulent and inherently take advantage of the capitalist system and use it to their strength and their free-spirited natures and ultimate control over their endlessness can be very appealing. So why do we keep bringing the zombies as undead creature into film and gaming only to kill them again in gruesome ways befitting their nature? And why is it so satisfying?
Horror in general always treads this fine line between grotesque and abject, as “the human consciousness is both repelled by and attracted to horror, which produces a kind of emotional attachment” Kristeva (1982), in Greene & Myer (2014). The horror that zombies instil in us is not just the fear of death itself or even the fear of our mortal flesh being consumed, but that of being “fundamentally altered, taking form as a collective… a swarm of bodies devoid of individual subjectivity” (McGlotten & Jones, 2014). We fear continuing to exist in a space where our physicality and sense of ‘self’ are at odds; where we have no individual identity, we are unimportant and have no control over ourselves or our actions. We fear joining the horde in their endless hunger and hopeless suffering.
We know that we, and likely our loved ones, would rather be truly dead than join the unquestioning, consuming masses that we could become at any moment. The dread this engages within us drives us forward to kill or be killed, to survive by any means necessary. And we can see now why that might make for some compelling game-play. In our fear of absorption into the mindless collective we also crave the socially-conscious, tight-knit community of a group of trusted individuals; we know that without it we would not survive.
Playing out Zombie fantasies in games
I hear my teen self telling me that the ‘real’ reason we enjoy seeing brains of zombies go boom-boom is because it makes the brain go brrrrr… and that may also be the case of course, but I’d argue by the very nature of enjoying a fantasy where we take the body of a character within a post-apocalyptic world, wear their skin and role-play as someone who has to make split-second and sometimes tough decisions in order to survive, we are embracing that which brings us out of a comfortable, dormant life within late-stage capitalism and makes us feel more in control.
Zombies do not exist in a vacuum; the stories that we tell about zombies often coincide with the challenge of survival in a post-capitalist world while “the zombie [functions] as a mutable, polyvalent metaphor for many of society’s troubled times”. Griffin, 2012. Playing at figuring out our strengths and roles within a tight-knit, trusted community helps us make the mundane into something worthwhile. Greene & Myers (2014) explore what zombies might represent to us and why this relationship between zombies and survival might be pleasing.
“Zombies are a particularly fascinating subset of the monstrous. In contemporary representations, zombies represent…”the capitalist worker, but also the consumer, trapped within the ideological construct that assures the survival of the system.” (Lauro & Embry, 2008, pg.99) This positionality explains why zombies are a recurring theme in horror, as the
zombie representation serves a social function by representing economic and political anxieties (see Becker, 2007).Greene & Meyer – The Walking (Gendered) Dead, 2014, pg.66
World War Z (2006) inspired me as a young person to start to formulate a zombie apocalypse plan; learning about the ways that people from all walks of life handled (or didn’t handle) a zombie contagion 10 years after its introduction to society, made me wonder how I would react in these situations. This was a social ‘game’ that I and many of my friendship groups have played over the years as a way to pass the time. Where would we go once we heard the news? What is the most important thing to do first? Who would take on what role in this new, zombie-infested world?
With this in mind, when we look at zombie shooter/survival games, there is no world in which someone survives entirely alone. In 7 Days to Die (2013-2024) there are traders that imply the presence of other communities surviving out there alongside you; Left 4 Dead 2 (2009) rewards the players when working collaboratively; even the Nazi Zombies feature in the Call of Duty series is made to be enjoyed in co-op mode. To survive alone would be thankless and hopeless; it is both survival and surviving together that is satisfying to us and makes us crave the triumph over the walking dead.
Whether you are ensuring the group gets clean water, foraging for natural resources, quietly searching old buildings for supplies or protecting your settlement from approaching hordes with a Molotov, everyone within this ‘found family’ is important. In this way, how we may daydream about a post-apocalyptic, zombie-invaded world is fundamentally anti-capitalist and anti-patriarchal. A communist utopia within the dystopia, where everyone has a place as a conscious participant in a self-sufficient micro-society.
References
Greene & Meyer (2014) The Walking (Gendered) Dead: A Feminist Rhetorical
Critique of Zombie Apocalypse Television Narrative. Ohio Communication Journal Volume 52 – October 2014, pp. 6.
McGlotten, S. and Jones, S. (2014). Zombies and Sexuality.
Cox, Colin A. 2024. “Still Cool as a Zombie”: Community, the
Zombie Aesthetic, and the Politics of Belonging. Humanities 13: 117.
https://doi.org/10.3390/h13050117
McFarland, James. 2015. Philosophy of the Living Dead: At the Origin of the Zombie-Image. Cultural Critique 90: 22–63
See Also
residentevil.fandom.com. (n.d.). Resident Evil Wiki. [online]
Callofduty.com. (2018). Call of Duty®: WWII | Zombies. [online]
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