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66
leave alone—hence, even as an “unthinking” monster (which this depiction at least
troubles), the zombie is presented as much more complex than a simple eating machine.
Finally, the powers inherent in zombihood need to be examined. Patricia Malloy,
in her essay “Zombie Democracy,” begins to articulate a theory of politically active
zombies in the film Fido and the television movie “Homecoming” (2005).166 My
intention is to extend Malloy’s observations further—both towards other contemporary
zombies that seem to be actively seeking out some form of political participation in living
society but also towards earlier moments of this participation in voodoo-style films.167
That the zombie can be quite powerful—and not just as a cannibalistic adversary—is an
underlying assumption of this project, and I believe that this is a feature of the zombie in
many of its contexts and styles.
For instance, in her narrative of the capture of zonbi for use by Rara bands,
Elizabeth McAlister describes the power these souls have as she details how the Rara
leaders are “harnessing the energies and talents of the community’s recently dead, and
launching spiritual and military campaigns with those energies.”168 In this conception,
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
166 Patricia Malloy, “Zombie Democracy,” The Geopolitics of American Insecurity: Terror, Power and
Foreign Policy, eds. François Debrix and Mark J. Lacy (New York: Routledge, 2009): 197-213.
167 The only real drawback to Malloy’s piece, in my view, is that she argues that zombies before her two
examples are passive; my argument is that there have always been, to some degree, active zombies within
zombie media and that this is, actually, one of the reasons the zombie remains so attractive to U.S.
audiences.
168 McAlister, Rara!, 103.
Object Description
| Title | And the dead shall walk the earth: Zombies and the politics of death |
| Author | Kee, Chera Dezarae |
| Author email | ckee@usc.edu; ckee211@gmail.com |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | Cinema-Television (Cinema Critical Studies) |
| School | School of Cinematic Arts |
| Date defended/completed | 2011-03-08 |
| Date submitted | 2011 |
| Restricted until | Unrestricted |
| Date published | 2011-05-04 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Marez, Curtis |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Kinder, Marsha Hoskins, Janet |
| Abstract | In October 2009, five pale, blood-stained teenagers sat on a curb in Newhall, California. They were not crime victims nor movie extras. Rather, these teens were “zombies,” waiting to participate in a Zombie Walk. These events, where groups of people dressed as zombies lumber through the streets, have been happening globally since 2001 and entice up to several thousand participants for each walk. Zombies are familiar characters in comic books, video games, television and film, but with thousands of people dressing as zombies and taking to the streets, it becomes clear that the kinds of work zombies do in U.S. culture provides insight into how we approach death, try to diffuse its potency, and use it to make political interventions into everyday life. Zombies are critical repositories of social fears and desires related to capitalist wage slavery, race, gender, and the political power of the masses, and as such, they demonstrate how representations and performances of death, in widely different forms, have served remarkably consistent functions in the United States throughout the past two centuries.; This project seeks to show that the zombie, as a creature of both/and—both slave and master, both living and dead, both black and white—is often positioned as that which invades the normative space of the living, a space that is generally conceived of in terms of whiteness, patriarchy, and heterosexuality. In forcing those who exist in this space to face a being who can encompasses both their ideals and that which their society rejects, the zombie can be used to try to support heteronormative ideals and the status quo while also undercutting those same ideals—often within the same text.; Chapter one provides a survey of zombie scholarship and describes the history of the figure in U.S. popular culture. Chapter two places zombies in their historical context, considering their ties to Vodou belief and U.S-Haitian relations. Examining travelogues, magazine articles, and official documents about Haiti circulating in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the zombie is identified as one in a long line of figures used in debates surrounding dependent territories, self-rule, and the limits of U.S. democracy. Early film zombies thus come to symbolize the paradoxes of capitalist democracy in the United States and as such, offer a potentially liberating imaginative escape from dominant systems. However, this idealistic feature of zombies is restricted by racism in early zombie films.; Chapter three considers how the zombie state in film is marked by race and gender, arguing that while the zombie can be terrifying, it also presents a fantasy of escape from white, heteronormative patriarchy. This fantasy state is often racialized, positioning blackness as more attractive than normative whiteness, and female characters frequently offer a point of identification with it. Many zombie films are therefore sites for staging conflicts over non-heteronormative desires, both promoting and punishing the transgressive and non-normative, often within the same text.; The fourth chapter considers the connection between the spectator’s relationship to images of death in 19th century presentations, like phantasmagoria shows and séances, to that same relationship in contemporary zombie video games. Arguing that certain visual technologies can encourage a sort of doubling of consciousness that empowers spectators/players, this chapter maintains that this empowerment, when placed in the context of representations of the dead-come-back-to life, allows spectators/players to enact desires that show death not as final, but as something that can be transcended, which ultimately robs the zombie of some of its inherent political potential.; The fifth chapter examines Zombie Walks. These events present a contemporary example of death being introduced into the world of the living to unsettle assumptions of how public space should be used. Public performances of zombiness disrupt the normative capitalist expectations of the spaces in which “zombies” walk while simultaneously allowing walkers to reject Western beauty ideals by dressing up as rotting, ugly corpses. In this way, zombie walkers offer an important example of the contemporary carnivalesque.; The final chapter of this project illustrates that while the zombie can stand as something that is both comforting and threatening, in either guise, it carries with it the potential of another way of imagining human society, and as such, it can represent the aspirations of any who feel that they are made over as slaves, cannibals, the infected, or the abject by their society’s standards. Thus, often, in the form of the zombie, death is not only made attractive in U.S. popular culture, it is made politically useful as well. |
| Keyword | zombies in film; zombie video games; Zombie Walks; voodoo in film; U.S./Haiti relations; race in film; gender in film; phantasmagoria; spiritualist phenomena; zombies and the carnivalesque |
| Geographic subject (country) | USA |
| Coverage date | 2001/2010 |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m3808 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Rights | Kee, Chera Dezarae |
| Repository name | Libraries, University of Southern California |
| Repository address | Los Angeles, California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Filename | etd-Kee-4414 |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume51/etd-Kee-4414.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 77 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Full text | 66 leave alone—hence, even as an “unthinking” monster (which this depiction at least troubles), the zombie is presented as much more complex than a simple eating machine. Finally, the powers inherent in zombihood need to be examined. Patricia Malloy, in her essay “Zombie Democracy,” begins to articulate a theory of politically active zombies in the film Fido and the television movie “Homecoming” (2005).166 My intention is to extend Malloy’s observations further—both towards other contemporary zombies that seem to be actively seeking out some form of political participation in living society but also towards earlier moments of this participation in voodoo-style films.167 That the zombie can be quite powerful—and not just as a cannibalistic adversary—is an underlying assumption of this project, and I believe that this is a feature of the zombie in many of its contexts and styles. For instance, in her narrative of the capture of zonbi for use by Rara bands, Elizabeth McAlister describes the power these souls have as she details how the Rara leaders are “harnessing the energies and talents of the community’s recently dead, and launching spiritual and military campaigns with those energies.”168 In this conception, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 166 Patricia Malloy, “Zombie Democracy,” The Geopolitics of American Insecurity: Terror, Power and Foreign Policy, eds. François Debrix and Mark J. Lacy (New York: Routledge, 2009): 197-213. 167 The only real drawback to Malloy’s piece, in my view, is that she argues that zombies before her two examples are passive; my argument is that there have always been, to some degree, active zombies within zombie media and that this is, actually, one of the reasons the zombie remains so attractive to U.S. audiences. 168 McAlister, Rara!, 103. |
