The Politics of Race, Gender and Sexuality in The Walking Dead

The Politics of Race, Gender and Sexuality in The Walking Dead PDF Author: Elizabeth Erwin
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476634769
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
From the beginning, both Robert Kirkman's comics and AMC's series of The Walking Dead have brought controversy in their presentations of race, gender and sexuality. Critics and fans have contended that the show's identity politics have veered toward the decidedly conservative, offering up traditional understandings of masculinity, femininity, heterosexuality, racial hierarchy and white supremacy. This collection of new essays explores the complicated nature of relationships among the story's survivors. In the end, characters demonstrate often-surprising shifts that consistently comment on identity politics. Whether agreeing or disagreeing with critics, these essays offer a rich view of how gender, race, class and sexuality intersect in complex new ways in the TV series and comics.

The Politics of Race, Gender and Sexuality in The Walking Dead

The Politics of Race, Gender and Sexuality in The Walking Dead PDF Author: Elizabeth Erwin
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476634769
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 201

Get Book Here

Book Description
From the beginning, both Robert Kirkman's comics and AMC's series of The Walking Dead have brought controversy in their presentations of race, gender and sexuality. Critics and fans have contended that the show's identity politics have veered toward the decidedly conservative, offering up traditional understandings of masculinity, femininity, heterosexuality, racial hierarchy and white supremacy. This collection of new essays explores the complicated nature of relationships among the story's survivors. In the end, characters demonstrate often-surprising shifts that consistently comment on identity politics. Whether agreeing or disagreeing with critics, these essays offer a rich view of how gender, race, class and sexuality intersect in complex new ways in the TV series and comics.

Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Post-Apocalyptic TV and Film

Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Post-Apocalyptic TV and Film PDF Author: Barbara Gurr
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137493313
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
This book offers analyses of the roles of race, gender, and sexuality in the post-apocalyptic visions of early twenty-first century film and television shows. Contributors examine the production, reproduction, and re-imagination of some of our most deeply held human ideals through sociological, anthropological, historical, and feminist approaches.

Badass Women and Hashtagged Zombies

Badass Women and Hashtagged Zombies PDF Author: Allison Christina Budaj
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476691576
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
In its evolution from graphic novels to a sprawling multimedia universe, the impact of The Walking Dead cannot be understated. Beyond its narrative roots, a passionate community of viewers use social media to delve deeper into the anxieties and social issues portrayed within the narrative universe. This book uses fan discussions on social media platforms to analyze the series' appeal and its ability to provoke discussions about survival, societal norms, and gender roles, leading to a significant online presence and discussions about the characters' actions and societal issues portrayed. Viewers perceive and champion unconventional actions, especially as the leading female characters defy traditional gender roles. With the introduction of more diversity, the progression of characters within The Walking Dead and its spinoffs continues to disrupt stereotypes. Focusing on analyzing audience engagement with AMC's The Walking Dead and its spinoffs through social media, this book highlights how fan-based interactions in creating a participatory culture around the series highlight societal issues presented, offering interpretations, theories and personal connections. By integrating fan commentary into the analysis, fans act as active collaborators in understanding the impact of The Walking Dead universe as a meaningful popular culture artifact.

Reading the Bible with Horror

Reading the Bible with Horror PDF Author: Brandon R. Grafius
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1978701691
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 163

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Book Description
In Reading the Bible with Horror, Brandon R. Grafius takes the reader on a whirlwind tour through the dark corners of the Hebrew Bible. Along the way, he stops to place the monstrous Leviathan in conversation with contemporary monster theory, uses Derrida to help explore the ghosts that haunt the biblical landscape, and reads the House of David as a haunted house. Conversations arise between unexpected sources, such as the Pentateuch legal texts dealing with female sexuality and Carrie. Throughout the book, Grafius asks how the Hebrew Bible can be both sacred text and tome of fright, and he explores the numerous ways in which the worlds of religion and horror share uncomfortable spaces.

Queering the Family in The Walking Dead

Queering the Family in The Walking Dead PDF Author: John R. Ziegler
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 331999798X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 127

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Book Description
This book traces how The Walking Dead franchise narratively, visually, and rhetorically represents transgressions against heteronormativity and the nuclear family. The introduction argues that The Walking Dead reflects cultural anxiety over threats to the family. Chapter 1 examines the destructive competition created by heteronormativity, such as the conflict between Rick and Shane. Chapter 2 focuses on the actual or attempted participation of characters such as Carol and Negan in queer relationships. Chapter 3 interprets zombies as queer antagonists to heteronormativity, while Chapter 4 explores the incorporation of zombies into the lives of characters such as the Governor and the Whisperers. The conclusion asserts that The Walking Dead presents both queer alternatives to and damaging contradictions within the traditional heterosexual family model, helping to question this model and to consider the struggle of queer American families. Overall, this study holds special interest for students and scholars of queerness, zombies, and the family.

Imperiled Whiteness

Imperiled Whiteness PDF Author: Penelope Ingram
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 149684551X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
In Imperiled Whiteness, Penelope Ingram examines the role played by media in the resurgence of white nationalism and neo-Nazi movements in the Obama-to-Trump era. As politicians on the right stoked anxieties about whites “losing ground” and “being left behind,” media platforms turned whiteness into a commodity that was packaged and disseminated to a white populace. Reading popular film and television franchises (Planet of the Apes, Star Trek, and The Walking Dead) through political flashpoints, such as debates over immigration reform, gun control, and Black Lives Matter protests, Ingram reveals how media cultivated feelings of white vulnerability and loss among white consumers. By exploring the convergence of entertainment, news, and social media in a digital networked environment, Ingram demonstrates how media’s renewed attention to “imperiled whiteness” enabled and sanctioned the return of overt white supremacy exhibited by alt-right groups in the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in 2017 and the Capitol riots in 2021.

Beyond the Living Dead

Beyond the Living Dead PDF Author: Bruce Peabody
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476642621
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
In 1968, George Romero's film Night of the Living Dead premiered, launching a growing preoccupation with zombies within mass and literary fiction, film, television, and video games. Romero's creativity and enduring influence make him a worthy object of inquiry in his own right, and his long career helps us take stock of the shifting interest in zombies since the 1960s. Examining his work promotes a better understanding of the current state of the zombie and where it is going amidst the political and social turmoil of the twenty-first century. These new essays document, interpret, and explain the meaning of the still-budding Romero legacy, drawing cross-disciplinary perspectives from such fields as literature, political science, philosophy, and comparative film studies. Essays consider some of the sources of Romero's inspiration (including comics, science fiction, and Westerns), chart his influence as a storyteller and a social critic, and consider the legacy he leaves for viewers, artists, and those studying the living dead.

Willful Monstrosity

Willful Monstrosity PDF Author: Natalie Wilson
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476637261
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
Taking in a wide range of film, television, and literature, this volume explores 21st century horror and its monsters from an intersectional perspective with a marked emphasis on gender and race. The analysis, which covers over 70 narratives, is organized around four primary monstrous figures--zombies, vampires, witches and monstrous women. Arguing that the current horror renaissance is populated with willful monsters that subvert prevailing cultural norms and systems of power, the discussion reads horror in relation to topics of particular import in the contemporary moment--rampant sexual violence, unbridled capitalist greed, brutality against people of color, militarism, and the patriarchy's refusal to die. Examining ground-breaking films and television shows such as Get Out, Us, The Babadook, A Quiet Place, Stranger Things, Penny Dreadful, and The Passage, as well as works by key authors like Justin Cronin, Carmen Maria Machado, Helen Oyeyemi, Margo Lanagan, and Jeanette Winterson, this monograph offers a thorough account of the horror landscape and what it says about the 21st century world.

Dead, White and Blue

Dead, White and Blue PDF Author: Aaron W Clayton
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476650276
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
Science fiction and horror television shows predict how the world might be different if zombies were real, or if artificial intelligence could develop consciousness. Pop culture critics reveal that these not-quite humans are often proxies for race, and the post-apocalyptic landscapes set the stage for reimagining social and political institutions. This book advances horror scholarship by placing those stories within a long tradition of mythologizing U.S. history. It demonstrates how Disney's Zombies reenacts the civil rights movement, how The Walking Dead fulfills Thoreau's fantasy against the backdrop of founding a new nation, and how Westworld permits visitors to experience the Old West while bearing witness to Indian Removal. Each of these narratives imagines a future that retells the past. The chapters within look at that tradition in order to understand the present.

Reading the Great American Zombie

Reading the Great American Zombie PDF Author: T. May Stone
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476648263
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Challenging the human understanding of life and death, the zombie figure represents a fragmentation of personhood. From its earliest appearances in literature, the zombie characterized a human being that was no longer an indivisible whole, embodying the ontological debate over which elements of personhood are most uniquely human. Through its literary evolution, the zombie's missing element gradually approached a finer definition, as narratives moved beyond highlighting metaphysically opaque concepts like "soul" or "will." Studying over a century of American literary history, this book explores how zombies translate cultural concepts and definitions of personhood. Chapters detail how literary zombies have long presented narratives of American cultural self-examination.