"People in Hell Want Slurpees": The Redefinition of the Zombie Genre through the Salvific Portrayal of Family on AMC's The Walking Dead

AMC's popular, post-apocalyptic show The Walking Dead follows a clan of survivors as they endure the zombie apocalypse while struggling to maintain their humanity. The characters pursue temporal salvation through four social institutions: family, government, religion, and science/medicine, iden...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Communication monographs 2016-01, Vol.83 (1), p.69-93
Main Authors: Ambrosius, Joshua D., Valenzano III, Joseph M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Content Analysis
Family
Family (Sociological Unit)
Genre
Genre Theory
Social Institutions
Society
Television
Television programs
Theory
Zombies
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Summary:AMC's popular, post-apocalyptic show The Walking Dead follows a clan of survivors as they endure the zombie apocalypse while struggling to maintain their humanity. The characters pursue temporal salvation through four social institutions: family, government, religion, and science/medicine, identified by a preliminary soak. Through content analysis of dialogueic, visual, and nonverbal references to these institutions across seasons 1-3 (N = 35), we find that each respective season proposed, and then rejected to some extent, the redemptive roles of science, religion, and the state-mirroring actual contemporary distrust. Simultaneously, through persistent, underlying storylines, the show reveals a traditional understanding of the centrality of familial relationships to maintaining a liberal society's survival-which we argue redefines the zombie genre away from its leftist roots.
ISSN:0363-7751
1479-5787
DOI:10.1080/03637751.2015.1030683