University of Amsterdam
Guns, Zombies and National Security: America’s
Post-9/11 Economies of Fear
! !
! ! Alexandria Brett
! ! MA Thesis Comparative Cultural Analysis
! ! Student Number : 10848541
! ! Supervisor: Jan Hein Hoogstad
“Monsters must be examined within the intricate matrix of relations (social, cultural, and literary-historical) that generate them. “1
Table of Contents
1. Introduction...4
2. Chapter One It’s Hard to Tell Friends(Humans) From Enemies(Zombies)...12
3. Chapter Two Post-9/11: Abjection and Neo-American Gun Culture...26
4. Chapter Three ! Chapter 3: Ambient Fear and Measurable Safety...40
5. Conclusion...51
6. Works Cited...57
! ! ! ! “Zombies, like all things that are feared, are ! ! the products of the culture that shapes them and ! ! bear within their myths the imprint of
! ! existing social conditions.” ! ! ! (100 zombie manifesto)
1. Introduction
As long as I can remember I have always been fascinated with monsters, science fiction and fantasy. I love being simultaneously scared and enthralled in the same moment. As a young child I was considered odd my parents and the school librarian as I loved reading classic horror stories like Mary Shelly’s Frakenstein, Bram Stokers Dracula and watching horror movies like Night of
the Living Dead (1968) and The Evil Dead (1981). I loved to fantasize about the possibility of
fictional monsters somehow being real and as soon as I was old enough, I traveled to Loch Ness, Scotland to look for “Nessie” the alleged Loch Ness monster. I never found Nessie, but that didn’t diminish my interest in the possibility of real monsters. I think that this fascination with monsters and the possibility of real monsters is the root of my current fascination with the cinematic zombie figure. I really appreciate the seeming realness of the post-apocalyptic zombie figure and the way that in the zombie apocalypse no one is safe, we are all equal under the eyes of the zombie. In contemporary times we are bombarded by mysterious medical jargon and real
time tracking of viruses around the globe. The mysterious cause of zombieism makes the zombie seems not like a horror monster, but a real possible outcome for humans. The fact that most zombie stories take place in the present or near future and that in most post-apocalyptic zombie scenarios we never really know what creates the first zombie both lend themselves well to projection. Each viewer can create an origin story that makes the whole scenario seem
completely plausible to them. This is part of why zombies have always intrigued me and I was really excited when in the early 2000s, new zombie films started coming out. The 1990’s were all about Vampires and very few zombie films were made, but it seemed as though the beginning of a new century resurrected the zombie figure. Flash-forward to current times and the zombie figure is everywhere in America. I believe that the events of 9/11 followed by the perpetuation of the national ensuing climate of fear triggered the still growing popularity of the zombie figure in America. This paper is my attempt at trying to form a connection between the events of 9/11 and the current American fascination (including my own) with everything zombie.
! On September 11th, 2001, a coordinated attack against four American targets using four separate commercial passenger airplanes as weapons by flying them into pre-meditated targets was carried out by members of a militant Islamist terrorist organization called al-Qaeda. 9/11 killed 2753 people and caused over $10 billion in property damage (CNN, “September 11th Fast Facts”). This attack was and remains to this day the deadliest and most devastating terrorist attack in the history of the United States. The attacks on 9/11 had a profound effect on American politics as well as the American people. The extensive media coverage of the fact that the
attackers were “foreigners”, but in the United States legally gave rise to new fears and anxieties about foreign nationals or anyone that could be seen as stranger, outsider or Other. The general consensus just after 9/11 as told to us by the 24 hour news systems in America was this: the
population was starting to wonder what other terrorists could come into the country legally or worse yet what kind of terrorists could already be in America (Hannity, “We Are Very
Concerned”). The attacks taking place on American soil caused Americans to reevaluate previous associations to places and people formerly thought of as safe and this resulted in a state of
abjection2_ on a national level and a radical shift in both the political climate and social climate. This shift manifested in a prevailing national climate of fear that continues to thrive and an American obsession with everything zombie3. There were many ways that the resulting post-9/11 climate of fear was cultivated and perpetuated by the dominant power structures in America including legislators, top military leaders and the 24-hour television news stations. By dominant power structures I am referring to a group represented as the entities that produce C. Wright Mills leaders in his 1952, Power Elite; “the military, corporations and politicians” (5). For the purposes of this paper I will be using these entities themselves to define what I refer to as the dominant power structures in America, not Mills assertion that specific individuals within those entities are the dominant powers in America. In this paper I will outline some of the ways the post-9/11 climate of fear was cultivated and perpetuated and how this lead to a national state of abjection and America’s ongoing obsession with zombies. Much like the mysterious contagion or virus that are thought to be able to spread zombieism, in post-9/11 America, zombies are
everywhere. They star in television series such as the mega-hit, The Walking Dead which saw it’s fifth season finale air to 15.8 million (TV-Guide, “Our Take”) viewers and is based on a hugely
2 I will use the term abjection both in the dictionary definition; is a kind of depressed feeling, a bleak and heavyhearted state of mind.
, as outlined by Julia Kristeva in her collection of essays, The Power of Horror.
3 I use the term zombie as described by Daniel Drezner in Theories of International Politics and Zombies; “1. Zombies desire human flesh; they will not eat eat other zombies.
2. Zombies cannot be killed unless their brain is destroyed.
popular comic book series, zombies are the subject of countless bestselling videogames and have inspired many best-selling books such as Max Brooks, The Zombie Survival Guide which has sold 1-million copies (PW- "Brooks's 'World War Z' Hits Sales Milestone").
! Following the events of 9/11 there were many narratives regarding safety and security that the aforementioned dominant power structures in America employed to perpetuate the national climate of fear. These narratives were told to the population through the media and with the passing of costly legislation in the name of National Security. Some of what Arnold Wolfers wrote in his 1952 paper, ”National Security” as an Ambiguous Symbol maybe more true today than it was then, “Today any reference to the pursuit of security is likely to ring a sympathetic chord” and he stressed that the term “national security” “may not mean the same thing to
different people” and the term “emphasizes that the policy subordinates other interests to those of the nation. But beyond this has very little meaning.”(481) America was blind sighted by the events of 9/11 and following those events Americans weren’t told exactly what constituted a risk to the national security of the United States, but in post-9/11, the idea that somehow the security of the United States could be compromised caused the American people to allow themselves to be manipulated into passing costly legislation in an effort to feel “safe”. As professor of
international politics, Daniel Drezner states in his book Theories of International Politics and
Zombies, “During times of national crisis, populations will strongly support their national leaders
in a display of patriotism.” (79) One of the methods I will use to examine the ways in which the dominant power structures in America were able to manipulate the population and the ways the zombie is the quintessential post-9/11 American mirror is by taking a closer look at three
different narratives that were employed to cultivate and perpetuate the national climate of fear. I will also look at how each narrative is utilized within the post-apocalyptic zombie scenario. The
first narrative and the subject of chapter one is what I will call; the friend or foe narrative which essentially breaks everyone down into one of two categories the friend(us)-vs-foe(them). The second narrative which I will discuss in chapter two is the no safe place narrative, the idea of this narrative being that, no one and no where is truly safe, this narrative in particular feeds off of the insecurities American’s had from the attacks of 9/11 being carried out on American soil, which was previously thought of as mostly untouchable to an outside attack of that magnitude. The third narrative I will explore in chapter three, is that safety is no longer an achievable goal. I will call the last one the safety is not achievable narrative and this one really reflects the way in post-9/11 safety is no longer thought to be an achievable state and many people are waiting for what they see as an inevitable decline in the quality of life as well as a direct threat from anyone that could be seen as a potential terrorist. I want to assert that looking closely at these narratives as they appear within the post-apocalyptic zombie scenario as well as within the larger American political and social sphere will provide insight as to how the figure of the zombie has come to embody the fears, anxieties and abjection caused by 9/11. Zombies are the ultimate embodiment of Kristeva’s abjection. In her essay Approaching Abjection, Kristeva describes abjection as “… death infecting life” and “what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules…”. These descriptions of abjection fit perfectly for the events of 9/11 and for the figure of the zombie. That is why the national state of abjection in post-9/11 America has lead to a national popularity of zombie culture. To further examine the ways in which the figure of the zombie is the quintessential post-9/11 embodiment of fear and abjection I want to look at the way the zombie’s body is a permeable boundary where death actually infects life and how situating the zombie as a border figure allows us to make sense of the way zombies seems to disrupt normative categories. As Sarah Juliet Lauro and Karen Embry point out in their Zombie
Manifesto, “…in contemporary incarnations, the zombie has a fluid body that transgresses its
borders by infecting those it bites;” (98) The zombie with it’s permeable boundaries is the perfect hybrid of human and Other causing one to question the whole idea of an Other and how the zombie could be Other whilst simultaneously being not-Other4 as well.
! I would also like examine the role of the zombie as a cultural representation of the national climate of fear using Jeffrey Cohen’s monster theory as outlined in the collection Monster
Theory: Reading Culture. Throughout history societies have produced monsters as entertainment
in many forms from literature, sculpture and painting to film. Cohen states that,!
“The monstrous body is pure culture. A construct and a projection, the monster exists only to be read: the monstrum is etymologically “that which reveals”, “that which warns,” a glyph that seeks a hierophant. Like a letter on the page, the monster signifies something other than itself: it is always a displacement, always inhabits the gap between the time of upheaval and that created it and the moment into which it is received, to be born again. “(Cohen, 193)
As Cohen states monsters are a cultural “construct and projection”. Projections of fear and paranoia give birth to interesting monsters that act as a mirror for the culture that created them and although the zombie was around long before 9/11, the post-9/11 popularity of the zombie and everything it has come to represent makes the zombie figure a very productive monster. Zombies have a rich history from early days of colonization in Haiti and in “Vodoun magic and religion” (Bishop, 197). Although formerly being a symbol of slavery and oppression, zombies in
4 As Sami Shalk’s paper, “Self, other and other-self: going beyond the self/other binary in contemporary consciousness” states, “The binary of self and other is perhaps one of the most basic theories of human consciousness and identity, claiming in short, that the existence of an other, a not-self, allows the possibility or recognition of a self.” (197) This is what makes the zombie so troublesome. The zombie is not human but is human and dead but undead these contradictions make the zombie a perfect figure for blurring the lines between self and Other.
post-9/11 America have become the signifier of the impending apocalypse American’s are preparing themselves for, like some kind of preemptive defense mechanism. Kyle Bishop states in American Zombie Gothic, “Zombie narratives are unique in that they developed directly from folklore, instead of following an established literary tradition, and because they constitute the only major monster- cinematic or otherwise indigenous to the new world.” (216) The zombie figures new world origin makes the zombie the perfect monster to embody the fears of The New
World.
For most of my zombie examples I will look closely at some examples from a popular contribution to the post-9/11 post-apocalyptic zombie film genre, Zack Snyder’s 2004 remake of George Romero’s film of the same name, Dawn of the Dead. In re-making Dawn of the Dead, Zack Snyder took a movie from the 70s and updated it in a way that made it a perfect movie to embody all the fears and anxieties American’s felt after 9/11while still possessing some of the original critiques of American consumerism. Dawn of the Dead is a productive object to read closely in relation to the fear of spontaneous and seemingly unprovoked violence as the film arouses fear of the zombie (as Other i.e. foreigner or immigrant), and anxiety concerning safety, such as formerly familiar and safe places being no longer familiar or safe and formerly familiar and safe people becoming unsafe as well as it is shot in a typical American suburb with a disparate group of survivors familiar in the way that they could easily occupy in any middle-class neighborhood in America. Many times in Dawn someone falls victim to a zombie bite and in turn tries to attack a friend or loved one thus rendering the formerly safe decidedly unsafe. The uncertainty aroused by 9/11 is mirrored in Dawn of the Dead as the viewer has to sit back and watch everything familiar completely fall apart. The major points of national crisis in America following 9/11 all seem to stem from anxiety surrounding abjection, loss of certainty and
permeable boundaries and the figure of the zombie explores all of these themes with it's very being.
2. Chapter One: It’s Hard to Tell Friends(Humans) From Enemies(Zombies)
What was seen in post-9/11 America as the potentiality of terrorism from any foreigner or outsider helped propagate an us versus them mentality that permeated politics and the media post-9/11 and the friend or foe narrative became a standard American narrative driven by fear of the Other. The growing fear of the Other and specifically the foreigner is evident in the rise and still increasingly prolific image of the zombie throughout American culture and shows up in a variety of forms in entertainment and mediums of art in post-9/11 America, most notably in popular media such as literature, film, television and video games that are dedicated to zombies. With the help of the media the government helped popularize the friend or foe narrative, which worked towards the perpetuation of a national climate of fear. It is often difficult to tell friend from foe within the zombie genre and the friend or foe narrative comes to life on the screen in all post-9/11 zombie films including Dawn of the Dead (2004). Over the course of Dawn of the
Dead the friend or foe narrative is explored in various ways as the characters go from battling
each other to battling the zombies. In this chapter I want to explore how the friend or foe narrative works within post-apocalyptic zombie films and how employment of this narrative by the government and the media in post-9/11 America worked and continues to work toward perpetuating a national climate of fear. I will specifically explore some of the ways the
government employed the friend or foe narrative in the media and in legislation and I will use specific examples from the Dawn of the Dead film to examine the friend or foe narrative in zombie films.
In the days following 9/11 American legislators and leaders including then president, George W. Bush promoted the friend or foe narrative in several ways. The most noted display of
this was a now very famous speech by President George W. Bush just days after 9/11 in which he says in an address to a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001, "Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,"5 This speech was translated and broadcast by media stations all over the world and the message was resoundingly clear, America was giving the world only two options- join with Us or be cast out as the Other. One effect of this declaration was not every country was quick to show support and rally to America’s call when after 9/11 America invaded Iraq6, this lead to a strained relationship
with some countries the US had originally considered allies, most notably France. This prompted congressional representative; Bob Ney to suggest in a congressional hearing that the US needed send France a message, even going so far as to suggest that American’s change the name of their beloved “French Fries” to “Freedom Fries”7 officially. The message to be sent to
France was if you are not with us (freedom) then you are with the terrorists.
Another way the government reinforced the friend or foe narrative on a national level is with the reform to existing immigration legislation, namely the passing of the Homeland Security Act8. Whether or not the legislation was a result of the fears and anxieties expressed by the
population or the instigator of those same fears and anxieties will never be clear, but either way the results were the same. The dominant discourse regarding immigration in America changed and immigration became a national security issue, the unknown immigrant becoming something to be feared, something that could harm. Weedon describes discourse as,
5 The address President Bush made on September 20, 2011 has become one of the most famous speeches ever made by a US President.
(White House-“Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People”.)
6 The U.S. 2003 invasion of Iraq started March 19 and started a war that lasted until December 2011. 7 (Wikepedia-"Freedom Fries.")
“...ways of constituting knowledge, together with the social practices, forms of
subjectivity and power relations which inhere in such knowledges and relations between them. Discourses are more than ways of thinking and producing meaning. They constitute the 'nature' of the body, unconscious and conscious mind and emotional life of the subjects they seek to govern.” (108)
The Homeland Security Act or HSA changed the dominant discourse regarding immigration by
challenging many of the ideas Americans had held about immigration and immigrants prior to 9/11 when immigration was still seen as a good thing.
I want to now explore how exactly the HSA successfully changed the language used to describe immigration in America. In the 1990‘s the language used to describe immigration included trade, inclusion and diversity. This language helped to form the dominant discourse regarding immigration during that time, as did the language used when the HSA was written. The language used to describe immigration in the HSA centered on fears of the immigrant as
potentially dangerous and therefore a possible national security threat. Just prior to 9/11 the American government was passing legislation to find ways of letting in unprecedented numbers of immigrants from diverse areas of the globe and there was a policy emphasis on reuniting families. To get an idea of the immigration landscape prior to 9/11 it is helpful to look at the
Immigration Act of 1990. The Immigration Act of 1990 was the most comprehensive immigration
legislation in America since 1964 and has been often seen as a “return to America’s pre 1920’s open door immigration policy” due to the fact that it made new paths to citizenship available to many potential immigrants who would previously have been declared ineligible9. Most
importantly, this act changed the number of immigrants that could legally be let into the United
9 *Statistical numbers were taken from:
States from 500,000 people annually to 700,000 people annually. This act also created 140,000 work visas available for five new categories of workers that were created for work visas of not only skilled laborers but unskilled laborers and the creation of about 50,000 “Diversity Visas” granted to individuals from countries that have had less than 50,000 immigrants or more acquire a permanent residency visa in America. The Immigration Act of 1990 also eliminated the formal exclusions of homosexuals as well as the exclusion of sufferers from AIDS who were previously excluded due to AIDS being on the list of illnesses that deemed one ineligible for immigration to the United States. With the passing of the Immigration Act of 1990 the government clearly showed that social and political climate of the time was open to diversity and immigration.
Now I will describe a few of the key elements of the HSA and describe how through the passing of the HSA the government successfully changed the language that was being used post-9/11 to describe immigrants/immigration to the language of a security threat. With the passing of the HSA the Department of Homeland Security or DHS was created. This new department was charged with “doing anything necessary to keep America safe” and would oversee many departments that had not formerly been associated with possible terrorist threats including but not limited to, ‘U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.’10 The creation of the DHS came with increased federal funding for many different programs including a new program to implement ways of following through with many more deportations. Prior to 9/11 the US didn’t focus on deporting criminals charged with ‘non-violent crimes, previous immigration infractions or drug possession, but new funding helped see a large increase in deportations of every kind of criminal and not yet-convicted-potential-criminal alike. Another
contributor to the increase in deportations is owed to the fact that local law enforcement
agencies, under the direction of the DHS started to be required to share the fingerprints of anyone arrested with the DHS. The DHS then ‘searches the database and if the search turns up an
immigration hold, the arrestee can be detained until federal immigration authorities arrive.’11 Looking at legislation that is passed during a particular time is useful for gaining information on not only political climate but the social climate of a time as well and it also helps one to
understand why certain discourses become dominant over others. If we compare the pre 9/11 The
Immigration Act of 1990 with the post-9/11 HSA we can see that 9/11 radically shifted both the
political climate and social climate of the United States thereby changing the dominant discourse on immigration and adding to the overall national climate of fear.
The events of 9/11 forever changed not only the political culture of the United States, but many American narratives about who the Other is. The friend or foe narrative enforces binary logic and leaves one with only two choices, threat or non-threat. In post-9/11 America the
zombie and the immigrant are both figures are considered a threat to the “American way of life”. This term “American Way of Life” is used in a variety of ways including many derogatory ways. I am using it here to describe attributes that are often associated with America including “Effort-Optimism, Materialism and Progress.”12 Many of the more conservative news channels often discuss varied threats to the “American way of life”. As Drezner notes, zombies are not the first to challenge America’s status quo, “American neoconservatives are very quick to spot threats and conflicts. Over the past decade, they have articulated many such threats to the American Way of Life- including those emanating from Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Al Qaeda, Islam, the
11 (ABC News-“5 ways immigration changed after 9/11”)
European Union, and the United Nations.” (62) The friend or foe narrative can easily be looked at as part of our survival mechanism, you could easily substitute the words threat or non-threat and that’s why if we look at the binary put forth by the friend or foe narrative in a structuralist way one might be able to assert that this binary is the first we identify as humans when we are babies13. If humans must have a point of reference to establish identity than it is easy to see how the binary logic of the friend or foe narrative is part of what makes it really resonate with so many and the fact that this resonates with so many is one of the reasons zombie films continue to be so popular.
The friend or foe binary could easily be substituted for any of the following safe/unsafe, me/other or us/them. The list could go on and on but each is the same. When we use an Other to define ourselves with we then have to establish who that Other is in order to establish whom the self is. As I stated previously the constant bombardment of 24 hour news coverage with an emphasis on the fact that the events of 9/11 took place within America, but the perpetrators of the 9/11 attack were foreigners lead to a generalized fear of anyone that could be seen as foreign or Other. To have an Other you need and established Self and the Other has always been a difficult idea to specify in America. Is the Self the Native Americans that were on the continent first or the Europeans that invaded North America making it their home? If a country is almost solely comprised of immigrants how many generations does it take to become “native”? These questions are just some of the questions that make the issue of the Other so interesting as it pertains to American identities and concepts of Self and Other. Post-9/11 America had a distinct Other, and it became any foreign person trying to enter America after 9/11. The post-9/11 fear of the Other was the driver of the popular friend or foe narrative.
13 Blackburn describes structuralism as”…phenomena of human life are not intelligible except through their interrelations.” (351, Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy 2008)
The fear of the Other is one of the main plot devices that drive the friend or foe narrative within most if not all post-9/11 zombie films and the exploration of this narrative is one of the many reasons American’s are so attracted to zombie films. I want to explore how the fear of the Other is embodied in the post-9/11 figure of the zombie and specifically in the film Dawn of the
Dead (2004). The fears driven by the propagation of the friend or foe narrative are manifested in Dawn of the Dead and in the film the fear of the Other isn’t just fear of zombies, but a fear of the
foreigner, the stranger the unknown. During Dawn of the Dead, as is the case in most post-apocalyptic zombie narratives, the human characters are called upon to question what it means to be human. Zombies are obviously not human, but many of the post-apocalyptic zombie scenarios render some humans barbaric or barely human as they fight to survive. Not every character is able to remain strictly human in the way we have come to define humanity and many zombie films explore scenes of cannibalism by non-zombies14. Thus zombie movies often show characters progressing and changing as they decide what it means to be human. By being
formerly human but also being something non-human; zombies fill the need humans have to feel human by being the Other that humans can measure their humanity against. As such many zombie films explore themes of humanity and ask questions about previous ideas of what being human meant. As Butler argues, “for the human to be human, it must relate to what is nonhuman, to what is outside itself but continuous with itself by virtue of an interimplication in life.” (12) Zombies share an interimplication of life with humans in that they are humans. As the character Peter says in the original Dawn of the Dead (1978), “They're us, that's all” when attempting to explain why hordes of people are returning to the shopping mall after they become zombies. Zombies were human, but when they turn into zombies they become Other at least that is the
14 Much of season 4 in the Walking Dead the group is pursued by cannibals and a few members are actually eaten throughout the season.
case in most zombie films. The degree to which zombies retain any sort of humanity is often debated with characters in some films going so far as to restrain loved ones who have been turned into zombies and keep them as pets or friend of a sort15. In the post-apocalyptic zombie scenario how human zombies are or aren’t, is always up for debate and the answer is always complicated.
Post-9/11 film representations of zombies are uncanny16 as they are fascinating yet disconcerting in the ways they are similar to humans and the ways in which they are dissimilar from humans and this is just one of the qualities that makes them such productive monsters. Zombies being dead and alive and human yet not human makes them dwell at a very productive border. They are both we and not we at the same time, which makes them a contradiction. As Swanson states in his critical analysis of the zombie novel Zone One, “A zombie narrative’s purpose is not to resolve contradictions but to embody and exteriorize them so they can demolish systems of thought in spectacular fashion.” (400) Zombies don’t clarify categories they blur them and to the casual viewer not obsessed reading into the darker undercurrents and agendas of zombie films, who the “friend” is and who the “foe” is in the friend or foe narrative of zombie films might seem obvious: humans vs. zombies. The fact that the friend or foe narrative is often much more complicated in these films is what makes the exploration of this narrative as it exists in zombie films so fascinating. The distinction of the alive human from the un-dead zombie and that distinction as a rationalization for killing is another reason the zombie is such a popular
15 There have been a few instances in zombie films and television where characters have kept family members around after they have been turned into zombies, the most famous of those examples comes from The Walking Dead (2010) in which the character of the Governor keeps his young zombie daughter in a closet in the hopes of curing her of her zombieism and in Shaun of the Dead (2004) where Shaun keeps his flat-mate, Ed who has been turned into a zombie, tethered in a shed outback so that they can still play video games together.
16 Freud, Sigmund. "Das Unheimliche" (1919) "The Uncanny," translation on by Alix Strachey in Sigmund Freud,
figure as one can kill a zombie without the need for feelings of mercy. This allows some humans to live out their darker impulses towards violence on the screen in zombie films and in zombie video games, instead of in their “real lives”. The zombie is the undead and non-human that can infect you and make you undead and non-human rendering the zombie as a contaminator and as such fair game for elimination. In most zombie films including, Dawn of the Dead the distinction of the zombie as non-human and therefore morally and legally grounds for killing, is something that is addressed through the personal journeys of the characters. Each character must decide for themselves how to behave when there are no laws or social protocols to guide them. The
questions the characters face are often about the distinctions that need to be made in order to render the zombie as non-human. For an Other to exist there has to be a Self. If the Self is human than for the zombie to be Other, the zombie has to be thought of as non-human.
The human characters in zombie films often measure and try to gauge their own humanity against each other as often as they do against the zombies. Many post-apocalyptic Zombie films look closely at group psychology and address issues of humanity inside survivor groups. In many films including Dawn of the Dead we see a disparate group of humans trying to survive and not be turned into zombies together. Often the individuals within a group make choices based on what others in the group would do. We see norm cascades towards violence or towards peace within survivor groups, but almost universally the protagonists in zombie films are good guys- trying to hold on to some decency and a humanity that resembles whatever existed before the zombies arrival. Dresden explains the concept of norm cascades as, “A norm cascade functions like peer pressure- as people witness others adhering to a particular standard of behavior, they are more likely to conform to that standard of behavior as well.” (74) Humans are often
stated earlier individuals in the post-apocalyptic zombie scenario have to decide how to act when all that dictates protocol is gone. In Dawn of the Dead many of the protagonists in the mall survivor group go through personal journeys in terms of finding their “humanity” or what counted as humanity before the zombies arrived.
One of the issues of humanity often questioned and addressed in zombie films is the morality of killing someone that has only just been bitten by a zombie and hasn’t turned into a zombie yet. In other words the individuals need to decide for themselves the morality of killing a potential threat. We see this issue come up in Dawn of the Dead twice. The first time this issue is addressed is right when the group figures out that zombie bites are what turn humans to zombies. The group figures out that the character of, Frank has been bitten. The rest of the group gets into a heated debate about whether or not they should shoot Frank before he turns into a zombie in order to protect themselves. After much pleading on the part of Frank’s daughter, they eventually decide to wait until he actually turns into a zombie before they shoot him. The next scene is a sad one with the burden of putting Frank down when he turns into a zombie being given to the character of Kenneth. In the end when Frank finally dies Kenneth looking very stoic, shoots him before he can turn and the scene fades to black.
The second instance in which they address the morality of killing someone who has only been bitten, remains human and is waiting to turn, is with the characters of Andre and Luda. They are a young married couple and Luda has a think accent that marks her as not-American and a pregnant belly that looks as though she could give birth at any moment. A zombie bites Luda when the group first enters the mall and she proceeds to effectively hide her bite from everyone else in the group by simply not mentioning it. Andre finds out that bites cause one to turn into a zombie when he is listening to the group’s debate over Frank and he proceeds to hide
Luda in the baby store for fear the rest of the group will try to kill her. The film shows a montage of the group of survivors passing time by doing different activities in the mall and during the montage Luda is noticeably absent. When we follow Andre who says he’s going to check on Luda we find her in the baby store where Andre has her tied to a bed. Having died giving birth, Luda comes back to life as a zombie and proceeds to give birth to a zombie baby (see fig 1). We see Andre seriously struggle with the fact that he knows he should kill Luda and possibly the baby so they don’t try to bite him and turn him into a zombie, but he can’t do it. When one of the other members of the group, a middle-aged woman named Norma, comes in to see how Luda is, she shoots Luda as soon as she sees that Luda is a zombie. This results in Andre shooting Norma and Norma shooting back at Andre at the same time killing both of them simultaneously. Right before Andre shoots Norma he asks, “ You want to kill my family?” With this question Andre shows that even though his wife and baby are both zombies he still considers them his family and he wants to protect them. Although Andre previously had seemingly no trouble rendering zombies as non-human and killing them, when his wife and baby become zombies he has a hard time making the distinction between human and non-human. When the rest of the group comes to see the cause of the gunshots they find Andre, Luda and Norma dead and Luda’s zombie baby still alive. The group looks to be contemplative then the screen goes black and we hear a gunshot obviously meant to signify the fact that they shot the baby, thus eliminating a potential threat. The fact that Luda is clearly an immigrant with her thick accent and the fact that she is pregnant refers to the fears of the immigrant taking over America through procreation. This scene paints the pregnant immigrant female as the most dangerous of the zombies able to not only infect healthy humans through biting them, but also able to give birth to more zombies looking to eat or infect healthy humans.
! Figure 1: Movie Still of Andre and Luda's zombie baby from Dawn of the Dead.
Many critical papers written regarding zombie research mention something about how the real threat in zombie films and in the post-apocalyptic zombie scenario in general, is the other humans and not so much the zombies. Maybe this has something to do with the way 9/11
signified zombies. In the beginning of zombie cinema, starting with White Zombie (1932) zombie films were about possession and being turned into a zombie was something perpetrated by a practitioner or Voodoo magic17. After George Romero’s original Night of the Living Dead (1968), zombies weren’t possessed humans but humans who had passed away and come back from the dead. In zombie films that came after Night, the scenarios are usually something set in a post-apocalyptic setting with a total societal collapse, the living are often forced to band together and other humans outside the survivor group of protagonists are a serious threat. The interaction
17 Films like White Zombie (1938) used voodoo magic to create zombies. This is not the same as the Vodou religion still practiced today.
between the humans is often the main story line in zombie films and the zombies are almost props. Really these films could be zombies and/or anything that causes a global apocalyptical societal fail, anything that can cause the break down of all that we knew before. One of the main themes in zombie films seem to be that life as it stands now rests in a precarious state with any number of possibilities that could cause a collapse. As Lauro and Embry state;
“As a figure defined by its liminality, the zombie illustrates our doubts about humanity in an era in which the human condition may be experiencing a crisis of conscience as well as a crisis of consciousness.”(91-92)
! Zombies embody uncertainty with their dwelling at the border of life/death (more on the zombie as a boundary dweller in chapter three) and that uncertainty lends itself well to the friend
or foe narrative. In zombie films the post-9/11 national climate of fear is demonstrated by the
telling of the friend or foe narrative over and over again. In this chapter I have attempted to show ways that the government with help of the media in post-9/11 America has made use of the friend
or foe narrative and also examine ways this narrative is employed in zombie films specifically as
depicted in Dawn of the Dead. The friend or foe narrative within the popular depictions of zombies acts as a further driver of the post-9/11 fear regarding immigrants and foreigners or anyone else seen as the Other. The post-apocalyptic zombie figures are the ultimate monster for informing us about the political and social culture in post-9/11 with their uncanniness as the film audience is repulsed by the differences between humans and zombies while simultaneously attracted to the similarities zombies and humans share, thus making the audience uncomfortable and intrigued in the same experience. “The experience of something being both foreign and familiar engenders the emotive responses of discomfort and alienation” (Grotesque, 6). The emotive responses attributed by Justin Edwards and Rune Garulund in the literary studies text,
Grotesque, to anything that can be described by the same word- grotesque- could easily be said
to describe the way American’s felt about foreigners and immigration as well as depictions of zombies in film.
3. Chapter 2: Post-9/11: Abjection and Neo-American Gun Culture
In post 9/11 America, the 24-hour news stations have perpetuated a national feeling of abjection with their constant images of violence and destruction and as zombie scholar Kyle Bishop notes in American Zombie Gothic, “Scenes depicting deserted metropolitan streets, abandoned human corpses, and gangs of lawless vigilantes have become more common than ever, appearing on the nightly news as often as on the movie screen.” (20) The devastating scenes of the 9/11 attacks as well as the aftermath were broadcast on television continuously almost as soon as the 9/11 attacks were happening. The fact that the attacks occurred within the borders of America itself challenged many ontological assumptions American’s previously had in regards to safety and what was to be deemed as unsafe. 9/11 rendered Americans anxious and afraid with resulting themes that nowhere and nothing was truly safe. The post-apocalyptic zombie scenario has found amazing purchase as a validator of those themes. In this chapter I would like to explore the collective post-9/11 themes of abjection, anxiety and fear within the context of their use in driving what I will call the no safe place narrative. I will examine the uses of this narrative within Dawn of the Dead (2004) and in the larger zombie apocalypse scenario. I will also examine ways in which the American government used the no safe place narrative to perpetuate the post-9/11 national climate of fear and exploit the collective American post-9/11 national feeling of abjection, for the purposes of getting funding for different legislative projects aimed at bolstering national security18. As a way of examining the American government’s use of
18 I am using the term “National Security” as described by Arnold Wolfers in ""National Security “ as an Ambiguous Symbol", "Security points to some degree of protection of values previously acquired.” He then uses Walter
Lippmann words to further describe the idea of “National Security” as, “…a nation is secure to the extent to which it is not in danger of having to sacrifice core values, if it wishes to avoid war.” (484)
the no safe place narrative I would like to look closely at the 2006 Secure Fence Act19 which was billed as necessary for the post-9/11 “national security” of the United States and granted funding for what is essentially a giant fence mostly unguarded and still partially constructed between Mexico and the lower United States. The construction of this fence was sold to the public as a way to keep out potentially dangerous terrorists or dangerous immigrants that could enter the U.S. through Mexico. The Secure Fence Act has sparked a rise in armed private citizen militias along the United States/Mexico border, and those militias operate as part of a much larger 9/11 neo-American gun culture. This neo-American gun culture is explored in the post-apocalyptic zombie scenario in a variety of ways using the no safe place narrative as a means of exploration. The American government perpetuated the no safe place narrative in post 9/11 by informing the population that the open border between Mexico and the United States represented a threat to the national security of the United States and as a way to combat that threat legislators proposed and passed The Secure Fence Act that granted a $2.1 billion budget to pay for a fence to be built between the United States and Mexico. The threat an open border poses was easy for Americans to posit as the attackers of 9/11 all entered the United States legally on student visas so a completely open border was easily taken to be a grave risk. In post 9/11 America, Mexico the once friendly neighbor and popular vacation spot became potentially dangerous territory. With The Secure Fence Act it wasn’t just Mexico that was presented to the public as potentially dangerous but people traveling from Mexico into the United States. The ease of travel between the United States to Mexico was formerly thought of as a positive. The Language used in The
Secure Fence Act painted a picture of the border as a danger zone and possible point of entry for
19 The Secure Fence Act of 2006 provided 1.6 Billion in funding to build a wall barrier between the southern states in America that border Mexico.
terrorists. In this way The Secure Fence Act was employed as a way to change the dominant discourse on safety and immigration. Following 9/11 the whole border region of Mexico and the United States became a potential danger zone. Along with building a giant fence The Secure
Fence Act also “authorizes The Department of Homeland Security to increase use of advanced
technology like cameras, satellites, and unmanned aerial vehicles to reinforce our infrastructure at the border.” (Whitehouse Archives) Basically the result is an army of drones operating on the border with assistance from increased national-guard checkpoints along the border to deter possible terrorists. The Secure Fence Act has been proven ineffective and as of 2014 The
Department of Homeland Security stated that the, “DHS continues to have no credible
intelligence to suggest terrorist organizations are actively plotting to cross the southwest border.” (CBS News- “Homeland Security says terrorists haven’t crossed US-Mexico border”). The Secure Fence Act was billed as necessary for safety, but the amount of safety it has achieved can be debated. One thing it did succeed in accomplishing was communicating the no safe place narrative to Americans by informing them of the need to start being afraid of Mexico as well.
The border between Mexico and the United States is approximately 1900 miles long with the US having only what the government calls “effective control” over about 700 miles of it. This 700 miles is controlled in part by the giant barrier fence that was funded by The 2006
Secure Fence Act20. As a result of the barrier fence being only 700 miles long there are many
places in the southern United States such as the states of Texas and Arizona where the border between the United States and Mexico is completely unguarded or under guarded by the various US Border Patrol entities. As a result, there are quite a few armed volunteer citizen militia groups
20 The Secure Fence Act of 2006 provided 1.6 Billion in funding to build a wall barrier between the southern states in America that border Mexico.
Secure Fence Act of 2006. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 23 Sep 2002. Web. 23 Jan. 2015.
that have formed and now patrol these areas. The militias are armed with guns of various types and with their 1st Amendment- “right to peaceful assembly”21 and 2nd Amendment- “right to bear arms”22. Many of the border militia websites state that the various types of guns used by the militia are for protection only, but all of the guns that are pictured on the websites and in outside images taken of the militia groups the guns they favor are the AK-47 and other semi-automatic assault rifles, which are used for shooting from a long distance. The militias state that they attempt to use the psychological threat of the visual display of their firearms to deter immigrants attempting to cross the border illegally. When they can’t deter the potential immigrants with looks alone, according to one interview with the head of the militia group called, Whiskey Bravo, he said, “He and his group would not try to apprehend these individuals. Protocol requires that volunteers contact Border Patrol officers when they see anything.”23 Although the 1st
Amendment and 2nd Amendment make it legal for the militia to operate in the fashion which they do, neither of these amendments make murder legal. The militias are not allowed to shoot or kill anyone unless it is in self-defense.24 Currently what constitutes self-defense different depending on the region in which you live, but self-defense is commonly addressed by laws and enforced
21 The National Constitution Center lists the 1st Amendment in the American Bill of Rights states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
22 The National Constitution Center lists the 2nd Amendment in the American Bill of Rights states, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
23 Barna, Maxwell. “‘It’s an American Problem’: Meet the Militias Patrolling the US Border”. Vice. 31 July 2014. Web. 19 Jan. 2015.
24 The issue of what constitutes self-defense is one currently being questioned in America and I would be remiss not to enter a small note about recent cases that have gone to court regarding American police brutality in the name of self-defense and current cases that have gone to court challenging the “Stand Your Ground” or “Shoot First” laws. These laws first appeared in 2005 with successful lobbying by the NRA and basically when adopted allow that every citizen can protect themselves and their property from harm even if it means using deadly force. Currently 33 states in America have these laws in place.
by the police in a given area. In the post-apocalyptical zombie scenario this issue has to be addressed anew by the characters themselves. As I stated in chapter one the morality of what constitutes self-defense is often addressed through a film’s characters decisions about whether or not to kill a potential threat. This idea of the potential threat is another example of the usage of the no safe place narrative within the post-apocalyptic zombie film genre and in this case in American border politics. If everyone is a potential threat than what place could be safe, but a place without the Other. The drive to keep out the Other is a huge reason the border militias exist. If the dominant power structures in America hadn’t been able to successfully alter the discourse on immigration, than US citizens wouldn’t have been able to so successfully Other potential immigrants coming over the southern border.
The dominant power structures in America’s employment of the No Safe Place narrative has helped to perpetuate the post-9/11 American national climate of fear and this national climate of fear has manifested in American culture as an increase in gun sales every year (see figure 2) since 9/11 and in an overall larger more robust gun-culture25. The post-9/11 gun culture is
represented throughout zombie films
25 Although the United States government doesn't track gun sales specifically, they do track the number of background check requests they receive for new gun sales and every year since 9/11 the number of background checks has gone up significantly. According to the table I downloaded from the FBI website, every year following the events of 9/11 the number of background checks has increased significantly. (See fig 2)
Figure 2: This is the FBI's table that shows that the number of background checks for guns that have incresed since 9/11.
need to have guns and many them, often guns are billed as the difference between survival and becoming a meal for a zombie or possibly even worse- becoming an actual zombie. With guns being so popular in pre-zombie apocalypse America it might be safe to assume that they will be readily available in post-zombie apocalypse America and George Romero and his predecessors films are rife with images of the importance of guns everywhere. As Peter Dendle states in The Zombie Film Encyclopedia,
“One of the most consistent features of the 2000’s zombie movie is its fixation on guns and on gun culture. Zombie movies have replaced war movies and Westerns as the guilt-free shoot-’em-up genre...” (Loc 311)
! In Dawn of the Dead one of the ways the no safe place narrative is employed is the purposeful ambiguousness of the setting. The entire landscape of the film is devoid of almost anything that could differentiate the setting from any other suburban town in America (see fig.X). From the initial shot of the suburb and the shopping mall in Dawn of the Dead it is clear that the fictional town depicted as Everett, Wisconsin could stand in for Anywhere, America. The intro to the movie is an aerial pan shot over a middle-class suburban housing tract with one or two story tan colored stucco covered cookie cutter houses each with a two car garage, all of it appears much like any middle-class suburban housing tract in America. The intro sequence also pans out over the huge empty lot of an indistinct indoor shopping mall and shows a range of shots of the mall so familiar to anyone living in America that they leave the viewer wondering if this is the mall in their own neighborhood. Watching the bland intro images while knowing that in the film spectacular disaster is about to strike starts the film off by inciting anxiety in the viewer that no where is truly safe. 9/11 caused many Americans to reevaluate and scrutinize their previous feelings of safety within their own town or city and the intro shot of Dawn causes the same sort of scrutiny, the viewer might find themselves looking closely to see what kind of horrors the banal landscape can possible hold. The anxiety of the no safe place narrative is also explored throughout Dawn of the Dead in the images shown of the familiar American suburban landscape, where typically safe environments like suburban housing tracks, streets, shopping malls and shopping mall parking lots are choked with zombies and turned into literal battlefields. The no
and the characters negotiate their way through once familiar settings as people they know and people they don’t know who have been turned into zombies try to eat them.
Figure 3: This is a still image from Dawn of the Dead, of the overhead shot of Ana’s suburban tract where ! her home is located.
!
The no safe place narrative is employed starting from the beginning of Dawn of the Dead as we are introduced to Ana who is a young, healthy, hardworking nurse. She gets off of her double-shift at the hospital and goes home to her equally young and seemingly healthy husband. We witness a few moments of them being together in the shower before they fall asleep and are subsequently awoken in the early morning to a neighbor child who has been turned into a zombie and walks into their bedroom to attack and try to eat them. While Ana and her husband are trying to subdue the girl and figure out what could be wrong with her, the girl attacks Ana’s spouse biting him. The bite on Ana’s spouse is quick to infect him, turning him into a zombie and he in turn attacks Ana forcing her to flee her home in her automobile. As Ana flees her neighborhood we see the suburb turned into complete chaos with formerly regular activities like mowing the lawn and walking down the street becoming morbid as most of the inhabitants have been turned
into zombies and the residents who haven’t yet been turned are running screaming through the streets trying to flee. What we see if we examine this scene is how quickly Ana’s whole life is taken away by the zombie Other. Ana wasn’t safe in her house in a comfortable American suburb and this invokes the same fears 9/11 did as people watched familiar American cultural sites like the World Trade Center and the Pentagon attacked. The character of Ana getting attacked in her home in suburban America invokes similar questions such as, if you aren’t safe in your home, where will you be safe? As I mentioned previously we see in this scene again how Ana’s town, the fictional town of Everett, Wisconsin is meant to represent any suburb in America. The cinematography is purposefully ambiguous enough as to render the suburban landscape almost universal. The ambiguousness of the setting works in combination with the real news footage we catch glimpses of throughout the film to create a reality television effect26, where the viewer might believe that the footage was not staged and is in fact real. This exploration of the no safe
place narrative coupled with the real news footage the Dawn mall survivor group watches once
they are inside of the shopping mall, leaves one with a feeling of abjection, then the need to look for some safe place and finally-wondering if one exists. Unfortunately, the news the survivors in
Dawn are able to pickup before the news finally goes off the air, reveals to them that every town
and city shown looks to be in the same condition as their town, and that condition is: complete chaos with zombies everywhere. While flipping through the news channels on the televisions inside the department store in their mall hideout the mall survivors are able to see their world unraveling in a full zombie-apocalypse. We observe them coming to a depressed state or a state of abjection much the same as is invoked by the 24-hour news programs and reality television
26 Reality television is often staged and heavily edited, thus rendering it not very real at all and successfully blurring the line between reality and fiction. As television writer Ray Richmond states regarding reality television, “The editors have grown to become the new storytellers, altering sequences and the course of events and contextual elements to weave together a story that’s radically different from what went down.”
series on American television. Kristeva situates abjection “at the crossroads of phobia, obsession, and perversion--…”(45-something to be scared of) This state of abjection easily describes
America’s obsession with reality TV, the 24-hour news programs, and all media perceived as
real. The characters in Dawn are bombarded by images of violence every time they try to watch
the news, as are Americans everyday as they watch news and fictional television. The images the mall survivors see look remarkably similar to images of New York City after 9/11. The real news footage in Dawn acts as a narrative device in the film that creates for the viewer a general sense of unease and contributes to the anxieties and fears of the larger no safe place narrative at work in the film. These scenes could be anywhere in America and this leads the viewer to the
conclusion that in the zombie apocalypse as in post-9/11 America, no one and no where will be safe.
! With his 1968 debut, Night of the Living Dead, George Romero resurrected the zombie from the confines of Magic and gave the zombie an enigmatical beginning so it could survive retelling after retelling with the one major constant being the zombie’s need to consume the flesh of the living. As Dendle states in The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia, “Romero liberated the
zombie from the shackles of a master, and invested his zombies not with a function (a job or task such as zombies were standardly given by voodoo priests), but rather a drive (eating flesh)”.” (7 evolution of the zombie) With Night of the Living Dead and Romero’s subsequent zombie films,
Figure 4 shows the formula used in most post-apocalyptic zombie scenarios.
George Romero essentially wrote the formula that is used in most zombie films to this day. The formula used by Romero and almost every filmmaker within the post-apocalyptic zombie genre generally looks similar to what is shown in figure 4. As Bishop states, “Romero took a rather insipid two-dimensional creature, married it to an established apocalyptic storyline, and invented an entirely new genre.” (198) Although most zombie films follow the formula above, the endless variations that are illustrated are definitely not all the same. The myriad possible scenarios that derive from this formula are part of the attraction of zombie films and what makes the genre able to sustain a very prolific output. The one component of the formula that truly carries over from post-9/11 American society and that permeates post-9/11 zombie films is neo-American gun culture. The fear invoked by 9/11 gave rise to a huge increase in gun sales throughout America. In an effort to feel safe Americans built home arsenals in the hopes of defending themselves against any further terrorist attacks.27 This theme fits right into the No Safe Place narrative. If there is truly no safe place then keeping a firearm in your home regardless of the relative safety of your neighborhood seems like common sense.
Infected Zombies Trying to Infect and or Eat Everyone +Total Collapse of Civilization
+ Guns
+ Disparate Group of Individuals Mostly Unrelated Working Together = Possible Survival
27 It is noteworthy that a handgun such as the Smith and Wesson that was the most purchased gun in the US in 2002 the year following 9/11 is ineffective at any kind of shooting other than close range.
! Dawn of the Dead addresses the rapidly expanding post 9/11 American gun-culture
throughout the film, but the most productive critique comes in the form of the character of Andy. Andy is the owner and lone survivor in the gun store just across the shopping mall parking lot from the main building of the mall where the main group of survivors is hiding. Andy is a middle aged Caucasian male and appears dressed as a caricature of the stereotypical NRA or National Rifle Association of America28 member in his nonmilitary issued uniform with his military fatigues and army boots. He is stranded on the roof of the building that houses the gun store and manages to sort of make friends with the group of survivors trapped inside the mall utilizing a pair of binoculars and a white board for communication. Unfortunately, as the movie progresses the gun store and surrounding mall parking lot fill up with an ever growing zombie horde thus preventing Andy from leaving the gun store for food or any other reason and the horde likewise prevents anyone from the group at the mall from being able to get assistance of any kind to Andy. Andy spends his days on the roof of the gun store using a sniper rifle to enthusiastically pick off and kill zombies from the horde in the parking lot between the gun store and the mall. Andy has plenty of guns and ammunition but no food and this eventually leads to his death. Andy’s eventual death is inevitable when the group is forced to go to the gun store in an effort to rescue a member who has gone after a dog the group sent over to the gun store in an attempt to get food to Andy. When the group enters the gun store after stocking up on the ammunition and guns they need, they find Andy having been turned into a zombie and they shoot him with a shotgun containing bullets from Andy’s own store. With the use of situational irony around Andy’s death the film makes a statement; there is no safe place and guns alone can’t save you.
28 The National Rifle Association of America is an American nonprofit organization, which advocates for gun rights and has approximately 5 million members.
National Rifle Association. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 23 Sep 2002. Web. 23 July. 2015.
This statement drives the no safe place narrative by harshly judging the importance and trust placed on guns as a means for personal protection in post-9/11 America. All of Andy’s guns do not render him able to protect himself from the zombies that follow the would be rescue dog in through the dog door. Throughout the film guns strike a precarious balance between usefulness and creating deathly situations above the zombies themselves and this balance seems to be a direct response to the huge increase in post-9/11 America gun sales and overall gun culture. The fact that Andy gets trapped at the gun store initially makes his chances of survival look
optimistic, but when Andy reveals that he doesn’t have any food the viewer is reminded that there are many facets to survival and weapons cannot supply the nourishment our bodies need to keep living. No matter how safe one might feel, there is no way to prepare for every option or every emergency and one might be situated in an environment that appears safe, such as a gun store or at your cubicle in a high rise office building in New York City, but still remain
vulnerable to a possible terrorist attack or to the zombie apocalypse. These themes are also part of what drives the Safety Is Not Achievable narrative, which I will discuss in chapter three. Dawn of the Dead features guns prominently as almost every post-apocalyptic zombie film does, but Dawn takes it one step further by often examining the normative roll taken on by guns in American culture now and how that informs the role of guns in the future. In one of the many scenes that examine the use of guns and the post-9/11 surge in gun culture in Dawn of the
Dead, many of the survivors from the mall group are on the mall roof directly adjacent to the
roof of the gun store. The members of the group are looking out over the horde of zombies that surround the mall building and fill the parking lot between the mall and the gun store and the members of the mall group are picking out zombies for Andy to shoot. The members of the mall group relay their choice of target by way of whiteboard to Andy on the roof of the gun store and
Andy looks through the lens of his binoculars and shoots the zombie that has been chosen and indicated on the other whiteboard. This scene is reminiscent of a first person shooter video or arcade game and we are treated to a look at the chosen zombie victim through the binoculars then we get to see a panned out shot of the zombie’s head exploding. In this scene it is clear that everyone in the group has rendered the zombie’s non-human in their minds and decided that the zombies lives are forfeit. This film uses this scene as one of many that grant power over life and death to the gun wielder and then with Andy’s turn into a zombie and death by one of his own bullets the films seems to say, “Live by the gun, die by the gun.”29
29 This is a pun on the famous quote from Jesus in the Bible, "...for all they that take the sword shall perish with the
sword" (Matthew 26:52, King James Version) This quote is often used and translated in contemporary times as, "Live by the sword, die by the sword."
! ! "No place is safe, only safer."
! ! (Max Brooks-The Zombie Survival Guide)
Chapter 3: Ambient Fear and Measurable Safety
! Ambiguity in the form of a threat creates anxiety. If one does not know what to prepare for how can one prepare. This lack of ability to prepare is the reason 9/11 was so devastating. The US had no way of preparing for 9/11 because nothing of that exact nature had taken place in America before that. This unknowing and being caught unprepared is part of the fear that the zombie engenders as well. The zombie is noted to come from a variety of places depending on the specific origin story used for the scenario, but each origin story involves some kind of unknown contagion causing zombieism which is seemingly unavoidable and passed all over the world quickly. I will talk more about possible zombie origins in the next chapter. As Alan Kirschenbaum wrote in, Preparing For The Inevitable: Environmental Risk Perceptions And
Disaster Preparedness, "A basic underlying assumption in the study of disasters is that
individuals and social groups can recognize, assess and act upon what they perceive to be a threat to their well-being. "(99) For an individual or group to properly prepare for a disaster they have to be able to speculate what the disaster will look like. In post-9/11 America the
government passed legislature that altered the dominant discourse on immigration and generated anxiety and an ambient fear with the speculation of vague new threats to national security. The government decided it was necessary to create a system that could alert people to the threat of terrorism on a daily basis and on March 12, 2002, The Homeland Security Advisory System30 was
30 Homeland Security Advisory System. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 23 Sep
introduced by the new Department of Homeland Security with implementation by the office of the US Attorney General. The Homeland Security Advisory System was a “color-coded terrorism threat advisory scale” that was modeled after the color coded system still used by the US Forest Service as a way of identifying the level of threat of a forest fire by assigning it a color based on
! ! !
! ! ! Figure 5: The Homeland Security Advisory System Scale
the on the perceived level fire occurring. The lowest threat on The Homeland Security Advisory
System Scale as shown in figure 5 is green. Green is meant to indicate, “Low risk of terrorist
attacks.” The phrase "Low risk of terrorist attack" is noticeably vague and the scale fails to provide the viewer with any quantifiable data. No where on the Scale does it allow for "No risk of terrorist attack," thus helping to establish the safety is not achievable narrative with it's very existence. The fact that this Scale was to be used on a daily basis establishes a pattern of every
