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Persuasive Essay On The Walking Dead

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First it was vampires, now it seems as though American culture is obsessed with zombies. Countless movies and television shows have premiered centered around these undead beings, but one seems to be the most prevalent. The Walking Dead is based on the ongoing comic book series written by Robert Kirkman. This horror drama plays on AMC, a channel known for it’s darker, and also extremely popular shows such as Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and The Killing. The show, which is currently finishing it’s sixth season, is the most popular show on television bringing in over 22 million viewers each week. An in depth look into the content of the show proves that it’s popularity is well deserved, and that it is not just another gory addition to the zombie genre. …show more content…

Darabont has experience working with darker subjects; he has credits for the screenplays of The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. Zombies, or in the show’s case, “walkers” are not a new subject matter, which is why it was imperative that Darabont find a way to make The Walking Dead stand out from the other additions to the genre. The first episode of the series, “Days Gone Bye,” has very few zombies until the very end when the audience sees thousands of walkers populating the destroyed streets of Atlanta. The Walking Dead stands out from other zombie shows because of it’s focus on the characters’ survival. While the walkers are an enormous part of the show, the real focus rests in how the characters maintain their humanity during the apocalypse. This idea has not been explored as extensively in other members of the zombie genre, and it is refreshing to see a television show with such a violent premise where the gore and violence is not at the forefront of every …show more content…

While the television show does not explicitly follow every single detail of the comics, it does come very close. The show helps build The Walking Dead into a franchise, now there are t-shirts and action figures and other zombie-shaped paraphernalia selling out in stores across America. An element that lacks in the show is the explicit use of product placement. In a destroyed world it would be superfluous to show a giant neon sign advertising Coca-Cola, the show keeps true to it’s tone by not explicitly placing large logos in the background. Instead, the characters will reminisce about their “Benz” or using their “Maytag” instead of saying “washing machine”. It’s much more subtle product placement than most other shows on television, but this newer technique uses product placement in a way that is consistent with the show’s overall

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