In a blog post at theCBR.com website, Peter Foy suggests we are living in a historical moment that is inevitably going to find expression in future works of fiction within the postapocalyptic zombie genre.
“Art is heavily influenced by catastrophe,” Foy says, and so it is likely that the experience of the Wuhan Pneumonia pandemic will shape the zombie narratives that will be written by survivors of this ongoing pandemic. Popular entertainment products in these genres will reflect the experiences and emotions of those who have undergone quarantines—voluntary or otherwise. These fictions will be told by those who have witnessed people sickened or killed by the unknown strain of coronavirus that brought misery to China before spreading to worldwide and making a fool of Western assumptions of preparation.
To support his argument, Foy notes that the Zombie Renaissance (using Kyle William Bishop’s term) followed immediately after the horrific 9/11 terrorist attacks in the USA and subsequent nightmarish scenarios such as Hurricane Katrina and the “Great Recession.”
Foy sees in the changing nature of films produced some 10 years after the 2001 terror attack, works such as Outbreak, the influence of expanding time and the shortening of the public memory. Time is like that proverbial train in the titular Tom Waits song: it looks smaller the farther it goes from the station. With more distance from the events of 9/11, zombie narratives become less socio-politically relevant, seeming to “lose interest in commenting on the world at large.” Foy’s criticism specifically aims at The Walking Dead, a show that builds on displays of viscera but lacks “the gravity” of an earlier zombie narrative such as 28 Days Later.
My own argument is that the changing influence of American presidents also shaped the zombie narrative, and a film such as Outbreak reflects not so much the years grown long and memory fallen short after the terrorist attacks, but the experience of a new potentiality inherent in the Obama Administration’s successful selling of the “Keep Hope Alive” campaign theme. I also confess that even the visceral appeal of The Walking Dead cannot completely hide some of the show’s strong sociopolitical and metaphysical commentary.
So, how might the current pandemic reveal itself in future postapocalyptic zombie narratives?
Foy says zombie films are “likely to be even darker in the future, but they might strive for more attempts at realism.” I’d have to agree with Foy’s argument if he is suggesting another wave of nihilism is on its way. The zombie genre has always been nihilistic, although the “Obama zombie” offered variations on the degree of nihilism displayed in the narratives. I believe we are already seeing the rise of the “Trump zombie” in films such as Patient Zero, which portrays the zombie as a new race committed to making the world a better place through aggression. Even the zomcom Zombieland sequel displays a loyalty to the idea that the enemy of the future is not the zombie, but the pacifist-artist.
What does Foy mean by his suggestion that post-pandemic zombie narratives will attempt to attain greater “realism?” Apparently he is expressing the same argument made by the investors who forced George Romero to add something to Night of the Living Dead explaining why the dead were rising. As Foy says: “While today's zombie fiction occasionally touches on biology, for the most part, creators haven't expressed too much interest in giving scientific explanations for what makes the dead reanimate and attack the living. Perhaps future zombie shows and movies will apply more medical jargon to make the uprisings feel more palpable.” Perhaps.
Right now the most horrible consideration has been how life echoes art, with people displaying many of the unstable and aggressive behaviors that postapocalyptic zombie narratives have often portrayed. Here I’m thinking of the housing community in Beijing that blocked entrance to any but those who live there, or the forced removal of infected individuals to quarantine “hospitals” in Wuhan that were little more than warehouses for the dying.
And of course “social distancing” rules and regulated home quarantines have led to a lot of unusual social media activity, the crashing of entire economies, the hoarding of supplies, and even shooting incidents. We have seen all of these in zombie films, haven’t we? And with nihilism being an almost essential quality of the genre, we know that it doesn’t always come out well in the end.
Foy is right in seeing that the Wuhan Pneumonia Pandemic “will eventually pass, but the impact it has on art will likely remain with us for much longer.”
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