Dawn Keetley

As a fan of The Walking Dead, both the graphic novel and the show, I thought this essay collection might be a fun thing to read. Turns out "fun" probably isn't the best word to describe this collection; "challenging" works better. It's actually pretty dry and serious. I don't remember what essay I was reading at the time, but I used the book once to put myself to sleep when I was having insomnia.

My favorite essay was the one written by the collection's editor, Dawn Keetley—Human Choice and Zombie Consciousness. I liked Apocalyptic Utopia:The Zombie and the (r)Evolution of Subjectivity, by Chris Boehm, too.

Most of the essays were worth reading. I often felt like I needed a foundation in philosophy or even more specifically, in what philosophers have written about zombies, to understand all the references these writers made.

The essays varied in accessibility; I swear a few of the writers were trying to be as esoteric as possible. Still, there are interesting ideas to explore if you're willing to put in some time and effort.… (meer)

I am a huge Walking Dead fan and I was really looking to reading the essays in We're All Infected: Essays on AMC's the Walking Dead and the Fate of the Human. I have spent hours debating with friends, discussing the meaning of key points on the show, discussing what zombies have to say about our culture, what causes some supernatural entity - whether it's zombies or vampires or werewolves - to become suddenly in vogue. Lots of great topics there and I was hoping for a great series of interesting essays.

This is a dense bit of reading. It's less like reading an essay and more like reading someone's dissertation. I knew as soon as I started coming across passages like this one in the second essay, "Burying the Living with the Dead: Security, Survival and the Sanction of Violence" by Steven Pokornowski, that this would not be easy to plow through:

"Second, I propose that a multidisciplinary perspective informed by biopolitical, posthumanist, and critical race theories can offer a way to resist this representational problematic at the levels of both consumption and production - can offer, in fact, a political and ethical critique that takes into account the role of the social constructions of humanity and race in maintaining sovereignty."

I don't even know what that means, and it certainly doesn't sound like the sort of fun and engaging discussion I was looking for.

There are a couple of high points. I particularly enjoyed P. Ivan Young's essay, "Walking Tall or Walking Dead? The American Cowboy in the Zombie Apocalypse." It goes into great detail comparing the tv show "The Walking Dead" to the 1953 film, Shane. I've never seen the film, but Young calls out instance after instance where the two Shanes (and Rick, as well) face similar circumstances and react in similar ways. There are too many similarities to be simple coincidence.

I also enjoyed "Zombie Time: Temporality and Living Death" by Gwyneth Peaty. It discusses the concept of time in the series - the ways in which time seems to have stopped, and just how important it is for civilized people to have a sense to time, to feel like they are moving forward. Various points in the series - Andrea planning to celebrate her sister's birthday, the watch that Hershel gives to Glenn (and its later appearance in the opening montage), the big digital countdown clock at the CDC - all talk in their own way about the effect of time on the living characters. For the walkers, there is no time. Their death, which should mark the end of time for them, instead marks just a change of form. Although their time should be up, they keep on going, with no end in sight.

I have to say that overall, this was a disappointment. Someone with a more scholarly bent might appreciate it more, but I found most of the essays a real slog. There are many great ideas in this series to discuss and I have read some terrific articles on the various themes of the zombie apocalypse, but these are so weighted down with jargon and obscure references (do I think it is significant that Dale drove a Winnebago and Shane drove a Jeep Cherokee, both cars named after Indian tribes that are not native to the region? No, I do not) that I couldn't really enjoy them.… (meer)

Although not a big fan of the show, I found the essays in We're All Infected: Essays on AMC's The Walking Dead and the Fate of the Human" intriguing, especially since I am always interested when academia discusses popular culture. Indeed, this collection is academic in tone, and some of the subjects are more interesting (and believable) than others. For instance, one essay discusses the image of the American cowboy as illustrated in The Walking Dead while another essay draws parallels between real life law enforcement and the new law dictated in the world of AMC's hit show.

As I mentioned before, I'm not a big fan of the show, but there were two sections of the book that I really enjoyed, and both sections dealt with the historical presence of zombies in folklore, history, and popular culture. The last part of the book titled "Bye-Gone Days: Reflections of Romero, Kirkman, and What We Become" is an especially insightful look at how The Walking Dead fits into the history and popular culture of zombies.… (meer)

A collection of essays on "The Walking Dead", but also on zombie movies in general. The authors are all academics; lecturers, associate professors, a couple of PhDs and one criminology lecturer. Several of the essays discuss the Haitian mythology that zombies come from and the change that happened once the zombie began to appear in American and Western European movies.

Because the essays are written by and possibly, originally, for academics, many start out as dry as sawdust. Some continue that way. But they all have one or two unusual points about TWD. I think the most interesting discussions were about the characters of Rick and Shane, two men who are co-workers and friends, who are very much alike when life is normal. Then the zombie apocalypse happens and Rick does everything he can to remain a compassionate lawman while Shane quickly adopts an us-against-them mentality and they compete for the role of leader.

Some of the arguments made are ridiculous: that the show is racist because the role of T-Dawg wasn't as big as Rick or Shane's, that Rick used Morgan, or that it's misogynistic because Carol is doing the laundry and Andrea is meant to look stupid when she accidentally shoots Daryl. It seems like some of the authors are trying to find anything new to say, even if it's blatantly wrong. Another problem is that more than half the essays went over the same territory of the Center for Disease Control episode, using the same quotes from the show, so the reader was being taken repeatedly over the same situation.

I found myself aware that I was sifting through sentences written to impress highly educated nerds, but when they stopped showing off and just discussed the show, it was enjoyable.… (meer)