Some Kind of Virus: The Zombie as Body and as Trope (Jen Webb and Sam Byrand)

One of the items I have found to inform my discussion and research is an article in the journal Body and Society. Some Kind of Virus: The Zombie as Body and as Trope (by Jen Webb and Sam Byrand) Body & Society June 2008 issue 14 page 83-98.

The article begins with a simple validation of itself, the article is important because of the character of the Zombie being so important and prevalent in modern film and literature. The introduction of Zombies sums everything up nicely; "(zombie's have) become a very familiar character, one that participates in narratives of the body, of life and death, of good and evil, one that gestures to alterity, racism, species-ism, the inescapable, the immutable. Thus it takes us to 'the other side'- alienation, death and what is worse than death: the state of being undead"

A comparison between humans and Zombies follows, one made interesting by the idea that maybe they are scary and unnerving because they are so similar and that darkness is within us. Whilst the comparison is well made unfortunately the horror of us being similar to them is poorly made within a section on Freud and psychoanalysis which is sloppy, confusing and badly written. The comparisons are as follows; "Like humans, zombies aren't social isolates" "they seek well beyond their local region" "there is always something "nearly me" about the monster" "The transmission of the virus between us indicates our 'closeness'" Before the section on psychoanalysis the term zombie is massively opened up to include Golems and Xenomorphs which I do not personally agree are zombies despite similar thematic tendencies.

The psychoanalytical part focuses on drive need and desire however as I previously stated the section is confusing and contradictory. The most interesting thing in the section call back to the idea of our closeness and the bridging of Zombies and humans that occurs with Jim in 28 Days Later (Danny Boyle 2002) and in Bob in Day of the Dead (George A Romero 1984). The lack of a wish of survivors in zombie films to culturally distance themselves from the zombies is another interesting thing that is talked about in both of these films as well as in Omega Man (Boris Sagal 1971).

The next section is a basic but well informed argument about the capitalist themes within the majority of zombie films. The most interesting and basic of points being: "Capitalist competition is visible in its roughest, rawest form in depictions of the average zombie, who spends all of his or her energies in struggling to gain more and more- the perfect consumer, the perfect exemplar of the search for personal advance through self interest." It compares both consumers and capitalism itself to zombieism in the statement "The problem is that capitalism doesn't care, and doesn't weigh human costs. It is simply zombie- hungry, and hence focused on feeding and expanding regardless of the consequences"

In conclusion the article ends by asking why discuss the zombie trope?  It answers by saying than in a world full of internal and external pressures it would be easy to "collapse into zombie status; mindlessly consume and/ or exile from ourselves the capacity to feel, and thus be." however by "Bringing zombieness, the hidden aspects of the self and society into light" we can "consider more reflectively what it means to be 'me'" A really interesting idea and conclusion however it is a shame this idea isn't highlighted in the introduction and more constructively used as a theme and point of the article.