Violence, Wars, and the Possibility of Ethical Life in an Apocalypse: A Kantian Reading of The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead is a popular TV series depicting a catastrophic and violent world. After a pandemic that turns humans into zombies, we witness the collapse of civilization with all its institutions, the depletion of the resources, and the struggle to build a new world in the middle of the wars between surviving groups. It illustrates a world of literal and metaphorical homo homini lupus. Some people choose sheer survival, and others try to build a moral, civil world. In this article, I propose a reading of this series from a Kantian perspective by employing his interrelated ideas on history, ethics, and politics. I claim that The Walking Dead represents the state of nature and the violence it contains, and illustrates the course of history toward a civil society as defined by Kant.

The Discursive Problematization of Death, Dehumanization and Sociocultural identity: An Analysis of 'The Walking Dead'

<p>The zombie is a significant cultural figure which is represented and produced as being symptomatic of and relevant to contemporary concerns about death and dehumanization. This thesis will focus on the ways that death and dehumanization are changing and being negotiated within popular cultural representations and discourses regarding zombies, particularly in Frank Darabont’s television series The Walking Dead. The thesis will consider the way in which the figure of the zombie is representative of issues and discourses that are indicative of a problematization of the category of the human, and the notion of the transcendental. This will involve an examination of the changing narratives of the body, with particular regard to consumerism and the insistence of the body as a major site of the truth and value of the self, in contrast to the horrifying bodily form of the zombie. The thesis will also examine the way that dehumanization is problematized in The Walking Dead, where the human/non-human distinction is shown to be increasingly precarious and difficult to sustain. Further, the thesis will examine how the zombie is represented as manifesting the collapse of identity, as agents become alienated from the social discourses, narratives and values which constitute and categorize the subject.</p>

The Discursive Problematization of Death, Dehumanization and Sociocultural identity: An Analysis of 'The Walking Dead'

<p>The zombie is a significant cultural figure which is represented and produced as being symptomatic of and relevant to contemporary concerns about death and dehumanization. This thesis will focus on the ways that death and dehumanization are changing and being negotiated within popular cultural representations and discourses regarding zombies, particularly in Frank Darabont’s television series The Walking Dead. The thesis will consider the way in which the figure of the zombie is representative of issues and discourses that are indicative of a problematization of the category of the human, and the notion of the transcendental. This will involve an examination of the changing narratives of the body, with particular regard to consumerism and the insistence of the body as a major site of the truth and value of the self, in contrast to the horrifying bodily form of the zombie. The thesis will also examine the way that dehumanization is problematized in The Walking Dead, where the human/non-human distinction is shown to be increasingly precarious and difficult to sustain. Further, the thesis will examine how the zombie is represented as manifesting the collapse of identity, as agents become alienated from the social discourses, narratives and values which constitute and categorize the subject.</p>

Producing zombie television: AMC, The Walking Dead, and the institutional dynamics of green-lighting hard-edged horror on cable

This study documents the industrial conditions that permitted the green-lighting and production of The Walking Dead (2010–present) on AMC, a network that built its reputation through high-brow series like Mad Men (2007–2015) and Breaking Bad (2008–2013) . The findings challenge two major arguments forwarded to make sense of the show’s airing: 1) the diagnostic model which suggests that zombies dovetailed into a zeitgeist-coloured paranoia of Others and the aftereffects of a neoliberalised social order and 2) the reputation model, which maintains that the industry track records of the personnel behind projects significantly enhances the chances of receiving a green-light.

Facing Anxiety through Ego Defense Mechanisms on The Walking Dead: Michonne Movie Game

With the advancement of technology, a newly adopted form of literary work was found, known as a movie game. It is one of the game genres that resembles real movies that provide choices to the players who can actively determine the story, ending, and characters' action. In literary work, a character is one of the intrinsic elements that can be interestingly analyzed from the psychological perspective, including Ego Defense Mechanisms. This study focuses on how the protagonist in a movie game entitled The Walking Dead: Michonne faced her anxiety through her ego defense mechanisms. It aims to identify the types of ego defense mechanisms and how they can help the protagonist cope with her anxiety. The discussion was based on psychoanalysis theory, namely Ego Defense Mechanisms proposed by Sigmund Freud. This study elaborated the description of the protagonist's actions when she faced anxiety through a qualitative method. The analysis revealed that the protagonist adopted the four types of Ego Defense Mechanisms: repression, sublimation, rationalization, and aggression. It was found that aggression was the most frequently adopted mechanism, followed by sublimation, rationalization, and the least was repression. This finding indicated that the protagonist chose aggression to release resentment or dissatisfaction, especially when facing objects or other characters that create anxiety or frustration. It implies that the persistence of aggression, sublimation, rationalization, and repression could reflect the presence of continual threats in the environment from which people should survive.