Rising From the Dead
Investigating the rise of the dead’s popularity.
An infection has begun that has taken over popular culture, as well as the minds of America. Zombies, ghouls, walkers whatever they may be called, they are present in all cultures, either in old tall tales or new blockbusters. Zombies have risen to the top of popularity at this time of uncertainty in the world, because a zombie apocalypse embodies the worlds most prominent fears into one pandemic. Zombies are used as a stylized rehearsal for the “end of times.” Americans turn to fiction to explore the end of the world, more specifically they turn to zombies. A zombie apocalypse involves a lethal virus, an enemy that isn’t fully understood, the collapse of society, and end of life as we know it.
Max Brooks is a novelist who has written multiple books on zombies. One of his most famous books, World War Z, follows a U.N. agent who documents different accounts of the war; it is set up as an oral history modeled after The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two (1984), by Studs Terkel. The interviews provide insight for what the war was like for different people. These oral accounts can serve as an act of cultural citizenship, because they provide social criticism. Brooks uses zombies as a vector to communicate the inverse relationship between quality of life and its impact on sustainability of environmental life. Governments have put its own needs at high priority and have given environmental sustainability a back seat. This isn’t only a domestic issue, Brooks emphasizes it’s a global issue.
Zombies have become popular because they are a product of a major cultural citizenship movement. Joke Hermes wrote a book titled, Rereading Popular Culture, in which she defines cultural citizenship as the process, as well as product, of community building through popular culture. Popular culture creates citizenship through the act of discussing common interests, which arise from popular culture. It allows us to consider our hopes and fears for society. Cultural citizenship also allows for implicit and explicit social criticism. When we act as a cultural citizen we build communities, from this act of forging connections comes pleasure as well as reflection.
A further way of explaining how cultural citizenship works is through the concept, “Fictional Rehearsal.” For example, those who read the novel, World War Z, can take away how to survive a zombie apocalypse, but they also take away much more than that. Usable stories can be found in almost every aspect of popular culture. The same situation can be applied to magazines; readers can “exercise their fantasies about problem-solving and coping scenarios for practical and emotional situations that life might land them in…” (Hermes 12). If Hermes and Mepham are correct, that we use popular culture to cope or learn how to live, then why have zombies risen to from the dead and too the top of popular culture? It is because of the outlet they provide, for thousands of years people have wondered how the world might end, people can watch movies, TV shows or read about zombies to understand how the world might end, knowing that in the end it’s all fiction. Max Brooks attributes the popularity of zombies to “… living in very uncertain times, people have a lot of anxiety about the future. They’re constantly being battered with these very scary, very global catastrophes. I think a lot of people think the system is breaking down and just like the 1970s, people need a ‘safe place’ to explore their apocalyptic worries” (Brooks).
The novels is broken up into sections that follow the order of events leading up to and following World War Z. The first section titled, “Warning” gives the reader a possible patient zero. Patient zero is a boy from the village of New Dachang, a remote village in China. The boy and his father were allegedly “moon fishing,” which is a practice that involves diving for treasure among the sunken ruins of the Three Gorges Reservoir. “She finally explained the boy came up crying with a bite mark on his foot. He didn’t know what had happened the water had been too dark, and muddy. His father was never seen again” (Brooks 8). The Three Gorges Reservoir has submerged 13 cities, 140 towns and 1,350 villages [source:http://www.internationalrivers.org/campaigns/three-gorges-dam]. This means that old homes, factories, mines and waste dumps all end up underwater, along with their contents, which most likely includes toxic chemicals. Basically what we can conclude is that patient zero was bitten, by something, and this something is a product of pollution, toxic waste, and mutation. Therefore the ultimate suggestion Max Brooks makes is that humans brought this upon themselves. Humans are the catalyst to their own downfall. The downfall of society begins with gross negligence to the environment.
In the 1970s Americans lived in fear of nuclear annihilation; it was the height of the Cold War. And similar to the 1970s, Americans today fear the collapse of the modern world. In the 1970s the government’s response to the threat of nuclear warfare, was to teach school children how to hide under their desks. Not such an effective maneuver to repel a nuclear blast, but it kept the public’s mind at ease. In the novel, the United States government responds to the threat of zombies in a similar manner. The government pushes a drug, that claims to be a vaccine for the infection, through the FDA. The drug is not a cure and not a solution to the problem. Max Brooks makes it evident that domestic issues are not at the forefront with the American government, they have a history of providing “quick-fix” solutions to complex problems. It seems they work harder to cover up the problem, and quiet the minds of restless citizens, rather than dealing with the issue head on.
Another personal account comes from a mother, who before the war was a typical suburban soccer mom, named Mary Jo Miller. The interviewer asks the interviewee if she had been concerned about all the reports. Mrs. Miller says she was concerned, but for other reasons. She was concerned about her the crack in the pool liner, the dog having worms, her car payments and her husband’s business loan. These concerns were superficial compared to what was happening around the world; they were the worries that reflected the consumerist attitude of America at the time. Mrs. Miller says the family took precautions such as receiving vaccines and purchasing a handgun. “…like smoke alarms and airbags. Maybe you think about it once in awhile, it was always just… ‘just in case’” (66). Mrs. Miller and her family did not take the threat seriously until it was literally at their doorstep. This is a common theme around the world, “Most people don’t believe something can happen until it already has. That’s not stupidity or weakness, it’s just human nature” (32). This account relates to today’s global warming issue; it’s in the news nearly every day, and not everyone is convinced one way or another. A serious habit, that if not broken will one day lead to global catastrophes.
Max Brooks not only presents the issues we face, but he presents a solution as well. In the novel there is an interview with an Israeli, Jurgen Warmbrunn (his occupation is never clarified, but has to do with Israeli government), where he describes a system their government followed in which if nine intelligence agents agreed then it was the duty of the tenth to disagree no matter how ridiculous. This system was created after the Yom Kippur War, in which the Arabs launched a joint surprise attack on Israel, nobody could have predicted it. Brooks emphasizes how important it is to learn from history. Throughout the novel Brooks bases his anecdotes on the historical actions of the country under review.
The reason Brooks chose to write World War Z as an oral history filled with interviews is so that the novel could relate to everyone creating a strong sense of cultural citizenship in association with zombies. In each interview Brooks seamlessly sews in his opinions on social matters; each account provides little nuggets of insight that may be praised or condemned. World War Z is a stylized version of the modern world’s downfall, Brooks chose to use zombies because they are a virus that does not stop spreading, and it continues to infect. If the modern world continues its habits of putting superficial material needs before the well-being of the environment and its people, then become the virus, we are the infection.
Sources:
Brooks, Max. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. New York: Crown, 2006. Print.
Hermes, Joke. Re-reading Popular Culture. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2005. Print.
