The Walking Dead

gamerfuzion

One of my most recent television addictions is AMC’s The Walking Dead. The show is set just outside of Atlanta and explores the lives of the few people who survive a zombie apocalypse thus far. Throughout every episode the viewer explores the high anxiety situations each character is faced with while trying to survive living in an absolute wasteland with little food, and no truly safe place to take shelter.

                There have been plenty of zombie movies within film history. However as of recent, most of them have heavily involved the inevitable apocalypse as well as mass populations being turned into thirsty cannibalistic creatures due to an unknown epidemic. In The Walking Dead, for example, no one knows why exactly everyone started turning into zombies after their death all that is known is bites transfer the disease.

                Another example of this was in the movie I Am Legend, a movie about a scientist who is the sole person left in New York City after nearly the entire earth’s population died from receiving a vaccination that was supposed to be a cure for cancer. Some of the population however, turned into rabies-infected zombie-like creatures who ended up killing any survivors.

From NYTIMES

                Perhaps this recurring theme of the apocalypse is now present in pop culture due to the whole “Mayan calendar 2012” myth. There are many people who truly believe—or at least suspect--that the world will end very soon. The only problem is, if it is supposed to happen, no one is at all sure how. The most plausible way I can think of is something weather oriented and natural, or perhaps there could even be a widespread uncontrollable disease. A zombie apocalypse is definitely the last thing on my mind…or at least it was.

                Hollywood writers could simply be using the fear of the apocalypse as a way to insert other ideas in our heads because it keeps us interested in the possible outcomes of the world ending, and it’s working. Over the summer for example, there were quite a few random stories in the news of cannibalism and rabid behavior from the “cannibals”. It turned out that these individuals were in fact smoking bath salts, but for a short period of time, people were running around with the idea that a zombie apocalypse was set to begin.

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                So the question is, are TV shows and movies such as The Walking Dead, I Am Legend and 28 Days Later reflecting our paranoia towards the idea of how or when the world will end? Or are these stories the reason why we have this looming anxiety about the apocalypse?