Coming back to life

An antidote for the zombie apocalypse

There has never been a cure. Cricket bats bludgeoning, machetes mutilating, shotguns spraying and other cerebrum targeted assault have until very recently been considered the only effective forms of combating the walking dead (that and plants; zombies hate plants, especially peas). But finally there is hope to reclaim those who have succumbed to the zombie plague.

However, one may offer a dismissive ‘who cares?’ in the face of such a miraculous breakthrough in the realm of mythology; the legend itself could be likened to lesser horror based genres, like slasher flicks or other paranormalophilia, playing to the entertainment value of fear. Although it would be a mistake to discard the phenomenon of the zombie apocalypse as mere gore, even though the genre does tend to focus more on the gruesome.

Stories and allegories have forever been employed to educate and form the moral basis of society and within the horror genre there have been two metaphorical strands of note; vampire literature signifying the blood sucking nature of a feudal aristocracy (more recently the elitist plutocracy) and secondly the emergence of the zombie plague, representing a brain dead and contagion proletariat.

It may be a small stretch of the imagination, but perhaps Noam Chomsky had in mind the metaphorical zombie horde when he wrote his magnus opus, ‘Manufacturing Consent’. And while the new dawn of information technology may hold the prospect of decentralized governance, enabling and empowering the ‘occupy’ resistance, this is still as yet a much smaller force compared with the one extending and prolonging the condition of the global precariat (and yes, this may be the first essay ever to speak of zombies and Chomsky in the same breath).

But just as the prospect of hope emerges in the real world, so too does it manifest in the mythology of the precariat. While the pioneering tales of zombie mythology usually began with a small group placed under a voodoo spell, not literally dead nonetheless with all the symptoms of the brain eating variety, the legend matured into what is now recognizable as the standard form of the zombie apocalypse.

The standard form, as I’m sure all the aficionados are aware of, consists of the birth of the disease, either through the wilful doings of a menacing corporate laboratory (Umbrella Corp), some experiment gone wrong, transmitted through animals or through some other comical radiation based or supernatural phenomenon. Whatever the birth may be, the result is unidimensional: the rise of the walking dead.

Here we find one of only two sources of real variation in the standard form, the first variable being the speed of the undead. One may either craft the forthcoming tale based on fast moving zombies or slow ones (brraaaaaiiinnnss). The apocalypse scenario is only really possible through medium or high paced walkers, the slow variety of the undead can be dealt with through the likes of Simon Pegg, radically curbing the potential for the spread of the disease after the initial shock and awe. The other variable is the potential for mutation within the infected resulting in the creation of superzombies and conversely in the evolution of superhuman combatants (Alice), however this advancement of lore as yet holds no possibility of a cure, only the possibility of a diminished human resettlement.

So, the apocalypse has taken hold, civilization as we know it is crippled and the zombie horde comprises the majority of the world’s population. Small groups struggle to survive in isolation, driven by a ruthless ‘survival of the fittest’ paradigm. There is no known cure; the centre for disease control has failed miserably in its attempts to create a vaccine and until very recently, only the legendary Will Smith had been able to demonstrably regress the symptoms of a single zombie with an antidote based on his own immunity to the contagion.

Enter Warm Bodies, the first tale in the mythology expressed from the point of view of an infected protagonist. “The story centers on an existentially tormented zombie who begins an unlikely friendship with the girlfriend of one of his victims and starts a chain reaction that will transform him and his fellow zombies.”

This first glimpse into the inner workings of the undead mind has some resounding repercussions. We can observe that the walkers can think (“what am I doing with my life?”) and to some extent have even formed a fraternal bond amongst themselves in their shared dilemma; they don’t do it because they like to, they do it because they have to (also eating their victims brains is the only way they can feel emotion and connect to their once human self). There exists a clear divide between these and a second type of undead, the Bonies; the vicious hunters consumed by the madness of the hunger with no trace of humanity left in them, therefore beyond salvation.

The human settlement has vaulted itself shut in a fortress against the impending attacks from the walker community, again with a survival of the fittest mentality guiding them. While on a gathering expedition, leading lady Julie (Teresa Palmer) comes under attack from a zombie hunting party, where ‘R’ (Nicholas Hoult) the protagonist comes to her rescue (after eating her boyfriend’s brains of course).

To cut a long story short, the now deceased boyfriend’s memories cause R to sympathize with Julie and after spending some time together the mutual empathy manifests as love. Here’s the interesting bit; love not only begins to revive R’s vital organs and human sensibilities, but also more profoundly impacts the rest of the zombie fraternity through resonant empathy. Cheesy as it may be, love and empathy are the cure.

The implications for the modified allegory are quite noteworthy, especially when the applied metaphor is translated to the real world precariat. Mutual empathy is the scalable elixir for reviving society and civilization, the bridge between protected humanity and those adapted to the undead role of the proletariat. Perhaps someday soon we will be able to overcome the dominant mechanisms of manufactured consent into a new age of empathic communication and democracy, until then as the metaphor goes, we can take heart in knowing that now there is a cure…at least for most.