Zombie Movies: "Survival of the Fittest" Mentality

TW: Mentions of ableism, colonialism, racism, blood, death, cannibalism

Warning: HARK! There are spoilers here, traveler. Take the road less littered with thought.

Why is it that, as an audience, we feel compelled to see society, and life as we know it, manipulated in a very odd and extreme fashion via zombie apocalypse? Why is it that, when the flesh melts, and we witness the last one of the group, barely leaving the scene alive, we feel peace? That somehow we survived a tragic, almost ego-affirming disaster, not even close to coming upon reality's horizon? Placing ourselves, our culture, in a dying, literally cannibalistic wheel of nihilistic destruction, just to survive it?

Well, because it's complementary to our nation's past; the United States was built by violence and perpetuated by systems, spun and spooled by the hands of colonizers, that double-down on massacring missions, still present today; even the legend of the zombie was colonized! Stolen from Haitian folklore and the lore was twisted into movies like I Walked With a Zombie (1943) and The Plagues of Zombies (1966) that criticize the locals' ancestral rights to voodoo and instead characterize their practices as evil. The zombie is then used as a mascot for their racist views of Haitian culture and ultimately abused, by the colonizers, to self-prophesize their own fears, by setting their own standards of annihilation, after themselves.

What do I mean by that? I mean that white supremacy, eugenics, patriarchy, colonialism, and cis-heteronormativity are self-feasting monsters, desperate to feed upon the people both interested in weaponizing these cannibalistic systems and held hostage to it, just trying their best to survive. Hunkering down together, waiting for the army of zombies to pass by.

Recently, after watching It Comes at Night (2017) and 28 Days Later (2002), my mind seemed to fixate on some reoccurring themes that I feel are present in most zombie/virus-centered movies and lies, perpetuated by Western society: individualism, and the choices we make in life, are directly correlated to the outcome of our lives. This, of course, is untrue once we observe the harsh material realities (i.e. poverty, access to water) capitalism and colonialism force upon people's available choices, but when paired with the criticisms of consumerism, greed being painted as a personal flaw, rather than a systematic creation from kings, it's understandable that horror-comedies like Shawn of the Dead (2004) and The Dead Don't Die (2019) would poke fun at the zombies: people previously alive and stupid enough to perpetuate life's mundane greed, falling for its demise.

But what snideful remark does that make about the survivors? That the heroes are heroes merely because they are stubborn? That they out-smarted the virus because they pre-meditatively sacrificed real relationships, their proximity with community members living in easily-spreadable spaces, and cherished their isolated minds? Rewarded for being "above it all"? Being an individual mushroom, cut off from its network, buried beneath the wise, self-talking forest?

"Survival-of-the-fittest" mentality has always sprung up from eugenic talking points and I find it fascinating that some zombie movies (not all - especially not the ones criticizing this) would choose to re-center an ableist's idea of the apocalypse; not everyone can, or wants to live away from community. Not everyone is able to afford a ranch, with unaccessible walking paths, leading toward an unequipped, non-medical-friendly bunker. And I would hate to even suggest, that when asking about disabled people's survival rates during a zombie attack, what some of these zombie-creators' answers might be: it would probably be more accurate, and less triggering, to assume that they don't have one. Not even caring to try to imagine us there, remaining. Staying.

There are, however, two zombie movies (which happen to also be my favorite ones <3) that I do think to imagine some realistic conditions, set upon by survival-of-the-fittest societies, and expose the unnaturalness of individualistic systems through the exaggeration of zombie crisis. Down below I list them:

1. Train to Busan (2016 dir. Yeon Sang-ho)

The feat of having almost the entire movie take place on a train, is refreshing, innovative, and intriguing enough to win over my praise alone. And yet, this movie is far more than just a dynamic and unique setting; regardless of the zombified demands, running amuck on the train, Train to Busan requires a reimagining of hierarchy. The urgent circumstances of the attack, pushed them to re-examine the consequence of stratified roles, folded into the promise of class; CEOS, and higher capitalists, already express their lack of care for people, even without disaster and the likely lengths they would go to keep themselves alive, sacrificing others they so easily stepped on before (i.e. the working class, children, the elderly, etc.) What if we replace zombies with climate? What if we examined the effects of the pandemic, literally disabling people via the rich's need for patented greed? I think what Train to Busan does so beautifully, is that the movie doesn't ask you to prioritize which monster but instead invites you to witness both. Observe how they build. Feed and weave from each others' hollowing and destructive hunger. A mutual, and perverse feast.

2. Night of the Living Dead (1968 dir. George Romero)

The gorgeous filming, the captivating, and grotesque costume/makeup choices, along with the movie's frightening plot, and its subtextual social critiques, are truly what makes NOTLD a legendary and masterful work of art; George Romero said that he didn't intend to make any moving statements by hiring Duane Jones, playing a man named Ben, as the leading hero of the movie. But regardless of the director's intent, many fans, including Jordan Peele, have cited the important racial dynamics Ben and the others exhibit, and what their response to his leadership says about the culture in the late 60s and the bigotry, still current today; Ben has to not only survive a terrifying fleet of zombies, but he must also survive the argumentative and aggravated white survivors, trapped in the home with him. At the end of the movie, Ben does not end up dying by a zombie, but at the hands of the racist police, who see him as a more threatening danger, than the literal mob of flesh-eating monsters; I think Peele, brings up Night of the Living Dead while interviewing for his movie Get Out (2017), and speaking about the inspiration behind Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and his similarities with Ben, sums up Ben's entire motivational arch when saying:

"Ben, in Night of the Living Dead, is a man living in fear every day, so this is a challenge he is more equipped to take on." (VOX, 2017)