The undead new world: Zombie epidemics’ apocalyptic surroundings and social relations

Abstract

The narratives of zombie films articulate social relations in the context of an apocalyic social environment, indicating unstoppable processes of disease spreading through the omnipresence of zombies as the primary infection carriers, emphasizing discourses of biological catastrophe, that is, epidemics of infectious diseases as a potential means of the end of a modern civilization. As portrayed in movies about zombies, epidemics could be observed as a type of imagined future of the virus, that is, as an advanced stage in infectious disease evolution, which leads to the deconstruction and complete collapse of the existing social system, and then to apocalyptic consequences and the forming of a new social order. An epidemic creates conditions in which previously known institutional organization ceases to exist and shapes individual behaviors that transform social environments to meet the demands of new social and biological discourses. Due to such circumstances, social surroundings are significantly changed, and disease establishes itself as a signifier of social strategies, relationships towards the infected, and the area for the redistribution of social power and livelihood. The aim of this paper is to reveal the ways of social reorganization and social disruption caused by the zombie epidemic, emphasizing the role of the disease in reshaping social groups and relationships, with the purpose of analyzing the ways in which movie narratives metaphorize the efficiency of infectious diseases.