The Walking Dead

The horror genre has been captivating and enthralling the masses for centuries, but more recently in the twentieth century these morbid tales have moved from the old media of oral stories and literature to the new medium of horror pictures. Horror pictures still are not the end of the evolution of the horror genre, as this medium itself has experienced evolutions to satisfy an increasingly desensitized audience. To exemplify this evolution of horror pictures we will be taking a look at an occult classic from 1968 Night of the living dead and a new thriller The Walking Dead. Both horror pictures portray a zombie apocalypse and there are similarities and differences in the main characters, the zombies, and the worlds of the two pictures.

Nowadays, Americans find violence entertaining. It is recorded, viewed, and shared constantly. In Don DeLillo’s short story, “Videotape” a young girl recorded a man that was shot while driving in a car; the video was shown on the news repetitively. The short story revolves around a man at home attentively watching the video; he continuously called on his wife to watch the video with him. This videotape represents how everyone is being desensitized to violence, how there is a growing obsession with violence, and how quickly life can be taken away.

Acts of violence are detrimental when regarding its effects on human emotion. When exposed to too much violence, a person’s perception on society and even themselves begins to be altered. Nevertheless, just as violence can be disadvantageous to people, it can also be seen as an advantage as it causes citizens to realize that change needs to occur. In “Great to Watch,” the author, Maggie Nelson, discusses how society, especially Americans, have become desensitized to violence. Nelson also goes into depth to explain how society has become accustomed to violence due to the fact that people are exposed to it on a daily basis. In addition, Beth Loffreda discusses and explains the effects that a violent hate crime had on the town of Laramie, Wyoming

Sontag’s essay “Regarding the Pain of Others” expresses humanities’ obsessive nature to images of pain and suffering. The TV screen turns on. We see footage of Syrian refugees suffering by the hands of chemical warfare. They are helpless. The viewer, knowing he cannot do anything in his power to help, continues to watch as the chemicals are released into the air causing the deaths of thousands of civilians. This “appetite for sights of degradation and pain and mutilation” (97) is caused by the “love of mischief” (98) humans feel when they watch atrocities take place. These gruesome images are watched to create a sense of numbness in the viewer. Today, “mayhem is entertaining” (101) to the eyes of modern culture. Sontag pinpoints that people only care about themselves with a misguided view of “how is this affecting me” rather than the ordeals of others to whom it would easily affect. Generally, we are less responsive or sensible to horrors that we constantly see often such as images of war or chaos. Sontag tells us that an “unwillingness to engage with these premonitory images of nearby war was an expression of helplessness and fear” (100) which results in a “bored, cynical, apathetic” (101) perspective of the situation. There is no hope to end suffering and pain unless the viewer takes action to help change the situation for those facing atrocities on the other side of the TV. We can either stay content in our mass culture of violence through “films, television, comics, and computer games” (100) or we can rise up and use compassion to overcome the hardships of atrocities we see.

The Walking Dead is a televised American drama series about a group of people trying to survive a zombie apocalypse developed by Frank Darabont. The series stars Andrew Lincoln as sheriff's deputy Rick Grimes, who awakens from a coma after the world yields to a zombie plague (Griffiths, 2011). Dazed and confused from months in the hospital he wanders out to figure out why he cannot find anyone alive. He makes his way home only to find his wife and son missing. He sets out to locate his family and finds many other survivors on his journey (Tucker, 2010). The Walking Dead coordinates with many social themes such as

In reading, the articles by Phillip Simpson and Christine Heckman, the routine story of blood and gore is interpreted as a reaction to our interest in the post-apocalyptic world. Simpsons article, “The Zombie Apocalypse is Upon Us!: Homeland Insecurity” was featured in a collection of texts regarding the Walking Dead. Following, Simpson directed the essay for the intended audience to be American citizens who watch or are wanting to learn more about The Walking Dead. Simpsons essay is a factual, persuasion and academic based essay. This is a factual essay because Simpson uses facts based from the show and information from other published texts. Heckmans article, “Roadside ‘Vigil’ for the Dead: Cannibalism Fossil Fuels, and the American Dream” also was featured in the same book of collected essays. The collection

Everyone is influenced and shaped by society. Society affects our perceptions, our consciousness, and our actions. A majority of the influence, especially on the younger demographic comes through the media; specifically through television. It is important to examine how violence in the media develops a pervasive cultural environment that cultivates a heightened state of insecurity, exaggerated perceptions of risk and danger, and a fear-driven propensity for hard-line political solutions to social problems. The purpose of this essay is to evaluate the impact of television and media violence, as well as the human cost of violent media, and the overall effects on society from watching TV.

Not only is it far and away television’s most popular show among the highly coveted 18-to-34-year-old demographic, it has almost single-handedly refuted every one of the ideas laid out in my opening paragraph. Where most serialized dramas create a world and, over time, spread out into it, adding characters, nuance, and layers, The Walking Dead has a guillotine where the story engine should be. It has no interest in saving the world or curing the zombie outbreak. Instead, it sets up base camp in the crushing moment when most dystopic movies end, sinking into the heartbreak, violence, and loss. “Everything is fucked,” isn’t a traditional TV starting place, but, then again, The Walking Dead isn’t a traditional series. Its remarkable proficiency in areas often considered ancillary — sound design, visual effects, editing, and casting — has helped sustain it, even when the plot veers decidedly into a sort of sadistic nihilism. And, in a perverse way, the bleak consistency of The Walking Dead — no matter what else is going on, someone’s getting bitten every week — is precisely what saves it as a TV show. At this point, the constant, gruesome suffering has become as dependable as a laugh

One American belief that has been consistent throughout the history of the country is perseverance. In John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s speech “The Inaugural Address” and Frank Darabont’s series “The Walking Dead”, the idea of perseverance is well represented. Kennedy wanted to show people how it may take time to fix our country, but we must keep pushing through the hard times, there is a light at the end of the tunnel we just need to keep walking. Darabont’s show, meanwhile, depicts a very diverse group of people surviving a zombie apocalypse. Although Kennedy and Darabont express their thoughts on perseverance through different ways, but it is ultimately the same.

The TV series "The Walking Dead" first showed on October 31 , 2010, the main character is Rick Grimes who is was a sheriff in his home town. Rick Grimes was shot before the out break and his good friend Shane locked him in his hospital room and hoped for the best. Through out the TV series Rick is faced with many struggles, he ends up shooting his best friend Shane and his wife ends up dying while giving birth to his daughter. Rick also has a son named Carl who starts out as a young boy who can't fight for himself, he eventually turns out to be a strong member of there group. Now the villain is many people in this show, the first human threat turns out to be the Governor who ends up going crazy about killing Rick. This act cause many of Ricks group to die as well as killing the governor. The real threat happens when the group finally encounters a group that calls themselves the Saviors, Rick makes an agreement to another group called the

Have you ever felt like you are living in a world where humanity isn’t at its best? Have you ever felt mixed emotions by watching a TV show? Is it possible for a show to represent love, hate, anger, drama, pain, sadness or even cause you a sense of distress? The Walking Dead is the perfect show to make you think about how people act in different situations in life and shows us what type of people these circumstances can create. The show is based on a post-apocalyptic time where the existence of humanity is near its end. The Walking Dead represents themes of fear, betrayal, sacrifice, hope, leadership and, the conflict between good and bad. Some aspects of the show such as the character development and how, psychologically, the characters tend

The whole world might be tuning in to the sixth season of The Walking Dead waiting for the arrival of Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Negan, but Andrew Lincoln has yet to see an episode of the AMC series. The man who plays Rick Grimes has just confirmed that he doesn’t watch his own hit TV show!

Throughout this course we have learned that all people, no matter where they live in the world, are capable of committing acts of evil. We have seen an increase in this evilness since the beginning of the postindustrial society due to a variety of different factors. The ones that I find the most critical are caricature of the nervous system, evolution of legal systems, depersonalization, essentializing, restorative justice and resilience. Caricature of the nervous system plays a large role in how people think and act in today’s society. Our caricature emphasizes the dramatic features of events and how our brain sees them.

The Walking Dead universe does not use the term zombies, but “walkers” instead. The premise of the game revolves around the main character Lee Everett and a little girl named Clementine, who he meets at the beginning of the game and is set to protect her at all costs. On the way to find a better place or escape for survival, they meet several people and survival groups who may leave or die due to decisions that the players make. The main storyline does not stray too much and the choices that the players make affect more on character development and how the other characters in the game perceive Lee.

Oliver Stone’s 1994 classic, Natural Born Killers, excited and traumatized its audiences while also causing controversy. The tale of white trash lovers caught up in a realm of chaos that includes a continuous murderous rampage from state to state, draws in audiences with its graphic violence and riveting pulse inducing music. Yet, the message of this film seems to be much deeper than just exposing audiences to yet another chaotic action movie filled with guns, blood and mayhem. Stone’s Natural Born Killers examines the subject of media’s investment in serial murder very thoroughly, and so it seems likely that it has the potential to offer a more rigorous interrogation of the nature of the American public’s fascination with the serial