Kindle Notes & Highlights
the real story of The Walking Dead is one of family and similar social relationships.
The Walking Dead ups the ante on screen horror by making the characters so well developed, likable, and imperiled.
All the horror action of the television series is sublimated to its primary focus on the family.
This fundamental emphasis on humanity makes the television version of The Walking Dead particularly terrifying.
Ultimately, The Walking Dead terrifies viewers because its extended narrative format allows fans to develop emotional connections with the characters, and these characters are presented with enough pathos to make audience members fear for their physical well-being.
We have become fatally soft, weakened by the technology that has allowed us to conquer the rest of the planet.
In the kind if apocalypse we’re describing, all of those come into play. Sudden shock, a shortage of the kind of information that can help you get your bearings, and shared fear. Now add zombies to the mix.
Zombies are eating people and no one is coming to help. People have scattered and there are fewer and fewer of them. The more people panic, the more bad choices they make; the more bad choices they make, the easier it is for everyone to become totally self-centered savages. In a zombie apocalypse, this is the path to savagery. It’s the one thing that the idealists and the cynics agree upon. That’s how we fall.
In short, a leader. A leader with balls, guns, brains, and a mission. Sanity? Not really a job requirement.
What separates Rick from other characters in the story is that he goes from victim to father/husband/protector, to group leader, to a new kind of warlord.
Characters exhibit behavior based on traditional gender roles—this comes off as strange in a world where the top priority is survival.
people rely on stereotypes in times of crisis—they are a crutch that people cling to, for better or worse.
the male leadership group forward as infallible or even entirely competent.
feminist critics like Smith point to the leadership committee scene in particular as an egregious violation of what a feminist story in a world of zombies would look like. In theory, the zombie apocalypse is the ultimate meritocracy, a do-over for humanity in which survival skills—whether they belong to men or women—top other traits such as race, gender, and class.
There are few people in the survivor group to do vital everyday tasks, so it seems a huge waste to assign all the women the menial domestic work.
The scene reveals a kind of sisterhood salon that allows women a sanctuary in the midst of what has suddenly become for them a very hard life.
There are other examples of women breaking gender barriers—as Basque notes, exceptions—and important ones at that. The creators of The Walking Dead give vitally important gun and sword skills to two female characters in a world in which such skills are needed most—a move that flies in the face of many stereotypes of women in postapocalyptic fiction. Normally, it is women who need saving and men who do it.
Andrea and Michonne have much in common, but they aren’t friends. They rarely interact, and when they do, it’s tense.
This distrust and skepticism between strong female characters highlights another facet of gender roles of concern to feminist critics. In many ways, it is the dark side of the Bechdel test. If women talk to one another about something other than a man but do so only in the context of confronting or competing with one another, is that really progress?
But if gender stereotypes can be bad for women in The Walking Dead, then they most certainly can be for men, too.
In his personal blog, libertarian writer Will Wilkerson identifies some of the issues men have with feminism and pushes for gender equality: “Men aren’t angry and confused because they don’t know what women want. They’re angry because they want what their fathers or grandfathers had and they can’t get it. They’re confused because they can’t quite grasp why not.”
when the group arrives at the Centers for Disease Control building at the end of season one, Shane corners Lori in the library and attempts to sexually assault her. In the comic book, Shane’s struggle with masculinity is subtler. Shane starts out as Lori’s savior, lover, and likely the father of her second child, but he feels threatened when Rick returns.
Wilkerson talks about: Shane’s attitude is one of entitlement. He sees Lori as an object, something to be possessed, but Lori—both in the comics and the television show—doesn’t go along with Shane’s plan. In both situations, he becomes violent.
Domestic violence, like racism and sexism, doesn’t go away when zombies take over.
Carol’s groveling for forgiveness in the aftermath of Shane’s beating is an uncomfortable moment for viewers. She’s desperate to hang on to Ed despite the fact that he mistreats her.
For all the objections to the depictions of race and gender in The Walking Dead, these critics, to some degree, are missing the point. Racism and sexism exhibit themselves every day in a world without a zombie apocalypse; we shouldn’t expect these problems to disappear when humans are fighting for their very survival.
writers are free to explore whether racism and sexism exhibit themselves because of civilization or in spite of it.
Much like the world in which we live now, the postapocalyptic zombie world of The Walking Dead isn’t always good for women. Women are portrayed as victims of sexual assault, trapped in situations of domestic violence, and subject to stereo-typical attitudes about gender roles.
But an alternate way to interpret these depictions is that the creators are aware of what they’re doing—they’re not just sprinkling racism and sexism into The Walking Dead by accident or because they’re biased themselves; depicting sexism or racism is not the same as endorsing it.
