In Defense of Zombies

Research output: Contribution to specialist publicationArticle

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many have turned, perhaps counterintuitively, to films and television series about plagues, contagions, and zombies. The zombie genre was booming before the pandemic, but with even more attention to tales of the undead should we be concerned that all those zombies might rot our brains?

In a 2013 Political Violence At A Glance post, Joseph Young writes that the zombie genre encourages reductive, Manichean thinking: “us,” the humans against “them,” the unhuman. Manichean thinking simplifies the complex realities of conflict and violence, which never break down into anything so neat as a battle between good and evil.
Original languageEnglish
Number of pages5
Specialist publicationPolitical Violence at a Glance
Publication statusPublished - 14 Jul 2020
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • COVID-19
  • Breonna Taylor
  • George Floyd
  • George Romero
  • Joseph Young
  • Manichean
  • Night of the Living Dead
  • Pandemic
  • Police
  • Zombie concept
  • zombie studies

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