First it was vampires, now it seems as though American culture is obsessed with zombies. Countless movies and television shows have premiered centered around these undead beings, but one seems to be the most prevalent. The Walking Dead is based on the ongoing comic book series written by Robert Kirkman. This horror drama plays on AMC, a channel known for it’s darker, and also extremely popular shows such as Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and The Killing. The show, which is currently finishing it’s sixth season, is the most popular show on television bringing in over 22 million viewers each week. An in depth look into the content of the show proves that it’s popularity is well deserved, and that it is not just another gory addition to the zombie genre. …show more content…
Darabont has experience working with darker subjects; he has credits for the screenplays of The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. Zombies, or in the show’s case, “walkers” are not a new subject matter, which is why it was imperative that Darabont find a way to make The Walking Dead stand out from the other additions to the genre. The first episode of the series, “Days Gone Bye,” has very few zombies until the very end when the audience sees thousands of walkers populating the destroyed streets of Atlanta. The Walking Dead stands out from other zombie shows because of it’s focus on the characters’ survival. While the walkers are an enormous part of the show, the real focus rests in how the characters maintain their humanity during the apocalypse. This idea has not been explored as extensively in other members of the zombie genre, and it is refreshing to see a television show with such a violent premise where the gore and violence is not at the forefront of every …show more content…
While the television show does not explicitly follow every single detail of the comics, it does come very close. The show helps build The Walking Dead into a franchise, now there are t-shirts and action figures and other zombie-shaped paraphernalia selling out in stores across America. An element that lacks in the show is the explicit use of product placement. In a destroyed world it would be superfluous to show a giant neon sign advertising Coca-Cola, the show keeps true to it’s tone by not explicitly placing large logos in the background. Instead, the characters will reminisce about their “Benz” or using their “Maytag” instead of saying “washing machine”. It’s much more subtle product placement than most other shows on television, but this newer technique uses product placement in a way that is consistent with the show’s overall
Death is calling to him. The prisoner is anxiously waiting to be strapped to a table. He wonders what could be on the other side of the living. Is it God waiting for his soul to be judged? Or is it plain darkness? The guards finally escorted him to the chamber where his fate lies within. A very fine needle is inserted deep into his vein and what the vile tubes contain are sodium thiopental and pancuronium bromide. Once injected, these chemicals will shut down the body completely. After a steady rhythm of the heart monitor declined, there was a long flat beep sound. A doctor examines the body and the prisoner is pronounced dead.The U.S currently have 2.3 million people locked up in a prison or jail (Mass Incarceration) . Majority of the States have the death penalty for criminals with violent offences. However, There’s a lot of controversy surrounding capital punishment. Both sides of the argument are consistently trying to persuade the population whether it’s right or wrong. The movie, Dead Man Walking, is based on a true story that centers around a death row inmate Matthew Poncelet. Sister Helen, a nun, is called to help him for an appeal to escape the death penalty. The film illustrates both factions of the argument by demonstrating the usage of the persuasive techniques like pathos, ethos, and logos.
The article “My Zombie, Myself: Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead,” written by Chuck Klosterman, discusses the reasons behind zombies becoming so popular. Klosterman writes that rise of popularity of zombies is different than that of vampires. He states that most monsters are initially created as representations of fear. Similar to that of Frankenstein or vampires, Klosterman explains that zombies could be viewed in the same light; however, zombies are better explained as an allegory for our day to day existence. Rather than some innate fear, Klosterman highlights this fact to be why zombies have risen to such high popularity.
In reading, the articles by Phillip Simpson and Christine Heckman, the routine story of blood and gore is interpreted as a reaction to our interest in the post-apocalyptic world. Simpsons article, “The Zombie Apocalypse is Upon Us!: Homeland Insecurity” was featured in a collection of texts regarding the Walking Dead. Following, Simpson directed the essay for the intended audience to be American citizens who watch or are wanting to learn more about The Walking Dead. Simpsons essay is a factual, persuasion and academic based essay. This is a factual essay because Simpson uses facts based from the show and information from other published texts. Heckmans article, “Roadside ‘Vigil’ for the Dead: Cannibalism Fossil Fuels, and the American Dream” also was featured in the same book of collected essays. The collection
I chose to write about “The Walking Dead Opens Its Season in Lively Fashion”, by Mark Dawidziak because, I personally love this show which is the purpose of my choice! “The Walking Dead” is a TV series that is currently beginning its 8th Season this October. This show is based on an apocalypse that takes place following some government experimenting. Their experiments go terribly wrong and zombies are the end result. The author of “The Walking Dead Opens Its Season in Lively Fashion” really pulls in the heart of the story by being so passionate with his own descriptions of the series.
Cold blood, cold facts, hot topic. The banning of the book In Cold Blood from many school's curriculum has been widely based on the violence, sexual content, and profanity contained in Truman Capote's novel. However, based on a true story, this novel helps showcase the indisputable issues in society. Although In Cold Blood includes savage violence that can be damaging to students in younger grade levels, the novel should be included only in upper level advanced placement curriculums because it fosters safe and open discussions about violence, profanity, and sexual content in literature.
The Walking Dead is an American horror drama television series, which is based on the comic book series of the same name. It tells the story of a small group of survivors living in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse. The plot focuses on the dilemmas the group faces as they struggle to maintain their humanity during the daily challenges of surviving in a hostile world. Which includes battling
Ever since the first zombie movie was created in 1932, there has been a constant rise of zombie appearances in popular media. Like with all monsters, the majority of zombie media aimed to represent a certain aspect throughout the society in question. Whereas vampires represented romanticism and Dracula represented how a certain social group was viewed during a certain time period, zombies in Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” aimed to create a situation whereby a group of people had to survive a night together, despite their racial tensions between one another. Being the founder of all subsequent zombie films, “Night of the Living Dead” provided a guideline for zombie behavior. As time passed, more and more versions of the zombie came out, whereby zombies stopped being a plot device and turned into the focus of the film itself. The Walking Dead, currently standing as the fourth most popular TV series, took a turn from this progression and decided to imitate Romero’s take on zombies. By including zombies which simply aimed to sustain themselves by consuming the flesh of the “live,” the creators of The Walking Dead caused the remaining survivors to gather together and rely on primitive human instinct to survive. Even though the zombies in this series run rampant, they play a very minimalistic metaphoric role. Instead, by presenting the zombies as a plot device, the characters in this series were able to demonstrate their true prejudiced view on society, ultimately revealing
One American belief that has been consistent throughout the history of the country is perseverance. In John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s speech “The Inaugural Address” and Frank Darabont’s series “The Walking Dead”, the idea of perseverance is well represented. Kennedy wanted to show people how it may take time to fix our country, but we must keep pushing through the hard times, there is a light at the end of the tunnel we just need to keep walking. Darabont’s show, meanwhile, depicts a very diverse group of people surviving a zombie apocalypse. Although Kennedy and Darabont express their thoughts on perseverance through different ways, but it is ultimately the same.
When analyzing this piece of writing it is clear that the purpose is not to entertain or persuade. The purpose, instead, is to inform and give a new perspective on zombie movies in a simple way that an audience of all ages can understand. In Andrew Cooper and Brandy Blake’s, “George Romero Zombie Films: A Plague of Meaning,” the authors walk the reader through how as time changed zombie movies changed with it. The authors further explain how zombies in many movies represent the time and culture. The writers inform the reader through their use of information from past zombie movies and analysis of the events of the times they were made.
Not only is it far and away television’s most popular show among the highly coveted 18-to-34-year-old demographic, it has almost single-handedly refuted every one of the ideas laid out in my opening paragraph. Where most serialized dramas create a world and, over time, spread out into it, adding characters, nuance, and layers, The Walking Dead has a guillotine where the story engine should be. It has no interest in saving the world or curing the zombie outbreak. Instead, it sets up base camp in the crushing moment when most dystopic movies end, sinking into the heartbreak, violence, and loss. “Everything is fucked,” isn’t a traditional TV starting place, but, then again, The Walking Dead isn’t a traditional series. Its remarkable proficiency in areas often considered ancillary — sound design, visual effects, editing, and casting — has helped sustain it, even when the plot veers decidedly into a sort of sadistic nihilism. And, in a perverse way, the bleak consistency of The Walking Dead — no matter what else is going on, someone’s getting bitten every week — is precisely what saves it as a TV show. At this point, the constant, gruesome suffering has become as dependable as a laugh
The Walking Dead is a horror television series that premiered on Halloween of 2010. This series is based on
The popularity and appeal of the undead has greatly increased in the past few years with the rise of the popular television show, The Walking Dead. The show began in October 2010, and is still on the air today. Before the show was created, there were The Walking Dead comic books that were first published in 2003, and continue to be published today with over 148 issues. The fascination did not begin with The Walking Dead, though. Many movies were produced, and many books published before The Walking Dead was even thought of. An extremely influential individual to note is George Romero. Romero is an American-Canadian screenwriter, film producer, film director, and editor. He is best known for his series of apocalyptic films, beginning with Night of the Living Dead in 1968. Romero has been nicknamed the “Godfather of the Undead.” Some other works of fiction and film to note include 28 Days Later, I am Legend, Pride and Prejudice Zombies and The Zombie Survival Guide, also by Max Brooks. Our cultural fascination with “the return of the dead” can be traced back to the events and the general morale leading up to World War Two, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
The Walking Dead universe does not use the term zombies, but “walkers” instead. The premise of the game revolves around the main character Lee Everett and a little girl named Clementine, who he meets at the beginning of the game and is set to protect her at all costs. On the way to find a better place or escape for survival, they meet several people and survival groups who may leave or die due to decisions that the players make. The main storyline does not stray too much and the choices that the players make affect more on character development and how the other characters in the game perceive Lee.
Is it possible to kill an idea when it is undead? Classic movie monsters tend to fade in and out of popularity as audiences grow bored and move on to fresher concepts. But there is one that has risen up and does not seem to slow down: zombies. Zombies have gone from being a small subgenre of horror film to a staple of popular culture across various media. This paper will explore the rise of zombies in popular culture and why it continues to remain relevant.
The Walking Dead is a televised American drama series about a group of people trying to survive a zombie apocalypse developed by Frank Darabont. The series stars Andrew Lincoln as sheriff's deputy Rick Grimes, who awakens from a coma after the world yields to a zombie plague (Griffiths, 2011). Dazed and confused from months in the hospital he wanders out to figure out why he cannot find anyone alive. He makes his way home only to find his wife and son missing. He sets out to locate his family and finds many other survivors on his journey (Tucker, 2010). The Walking Dead coordinates with many social themes such as