Theory: People Love ‘The Walking Dead’ Because Their Jobs Make Them Feel Dead Inside

[klook]

Theory: People Love ‘The Walking Dead’ Because Their Jobs Make Them Feel Dead Inside
By Michelle Dean on Oct 15, 2013 1:15pm (Flavorwire)

“A lot of modern life,” Chuck Klosterman mused in the New York Times in 2010, “is exactly like slaughtering zombies.” His theory was that “(Z)ombies are like the Internet and the media and every conversation we don’t want to have. All of it comes at us endlessly (and thoughtlessly), and — if we surrender — we will be overtaken and absorbed.” Most people I know would find that interpretation too highbrow, and answer the question of why they like zombies with something akin to, “Because they eat brains.” But Klosterman’s theory has a certain self-serving appeal.

If life is just a process of cutting through dead weight, well, someone has to wield the scythe. And generally that makes you, the lover of zombies, the one agent in the story still in possession of, well, any faculties. You get to be the person who is picking off the mindless, one by one. You get to decide who has a life remaining that’s worth living. You are God, an omnipotent being sparing the rank and file from their colorless existences. In short, imagining oneself as a person of action among zombies is, well, an ego trip.

<snip>

...Speaking as a former cubicle slave, my job made me feel more dead inside than any dumb cat-GIFs site or, yes, even the strange rah-rah culture of San Francisco tech. There was this great essay from David Graeber, recently, on the phenomenon of the "bullshit job." By “bullshit job,” he meant the kind of job that has no real function in the world other than to exist as a job, and bore everyone and waste their human capacities until they retire and die:

While corporations may engage in ruthless downsizing, the layoffs and speed-ups invariably fall on that class of people who are actually making, moving, fixing and maintaining things; through some strange alchemy no one can quite explain, the number of salaried paper-pushers ultimately seems to expand, and more and more employees find themselves, not unlike Soviet workers actually, working 40 or even 50 hour weeks on paper, but effectively working 15 hours just as Keynes predicted, since the rest of their time is spent organising or attending motivational seminars, updating their facebook profiles or downloading TV box-sets.

I hereby posit that the “bullshit job” is the most likely thing to make people feel like they live in a sea of Walking Dead, and that it is what makes them long for and identify with the hamfisted heroics of Rick Grimes and company. At least these people are going out in the world and doing something vaguely meaningful. They are, additionally, fictionally putting friends and co-workers out of the misery that is the vast majority of people’s working lives. And they are draped in righteousness as they do so. Zombie-killing is win-win that way.

See the whole article here:
http://flavorwire.com/420215/theory-people-love-the-walking-dead-because-their-jobs-make-them-feel-dead-inside/

[unblock]

1. nah. i think it's because it allows killing without those pesky ethical considerations.

i mean zombies are already dead, right?

so you can satisfy your urge to kill, kill, kill! without feeling the slightest bit guilty.

other forms of bad guys always have problems, maybe you could have done something short of killing them. here it's ridiculously simple.

[klook]

2. Ha, good point

I remember many years ago a friend confessed to me, after seeing Dawn of the Dead, that he'd love to be in a field full of zombies with a rifle and just plug them in the head one at a time.

I've never watched more than a few minutes of The Walking Dead, but apparently they do attempt to introduce some moral complexity by having non-zombie characters who look after some of the zombies -- like the guy who keeps a bunch of them in his barn and feeds them chickens.

[OnyxCollie]

3. In this past episode,

the main character, Rick Grimes, has three questions he asks to anyone who wants to join his group. They are:

How many walkers (zombies) have you killed?
How many people have you killed?
Why?

There is more nuance in the show than KILL! KILL! KILL!

[unblock]

4. of course there are ethical considerations regarding killing people

but are they suggesting that there are ethical considerations regarding killing zombies?


yes, obviously there's more to making an interesting show than just here's a target, kill it. the goal is survival more than killing zombies for the sake of killing zombies, but that's a practical consideration, not an ethical one. in fact if they could figure out a way to kill every last zombie, they would have no ethical qualms about it at all.

does grimes really object to people killing zombies out of some ethical sense? or is it more a question to see how trigger-happy someone is, how prone they are to attracting zombies, or how good they are at conserving bullets?

[OnyxCollie]

5. Couple things.

Everyone becomes a zombie when they die (unless one is shot in the head), so there will always be more zombies.

Herschell believed the zombies were still people and he kept them in a barn. He later changed his opinion when he watched them go unfazed after being shot in the chest.

Rick's son, Carl, admonished some kids for naming the zombies, because they were dead things, not people. Rick had lectured Carl earlier that he should not name the pigs they were raising to eat.

[unblock]

6. this only proves my point. they should have zero ethical qualms about killing zombies.

to add to your list, very early on i think there was a guy who shot and killed zombies from the second floor of his house. but he couldn't bring himself to kill his zombified wife. the ethics were clear, he *ought* to kill that zombie as well, and feel zero remorse, but he can't bring himself to do it because it felt wrong, it's too painful, he couldn't accept that his wife was dead, something like that. the point is that it's all misplaced ethics. the "correct" ethical conclusion is that you do in fact have a license (if not a duty!) to kill, kill, kill zombies without any ethical reservations about it. any qualms you have you need to get over for the sake of your own survival and the survival of other humans.

so, sure, fine, they talk about ethics, but in the end, the conclusion is that it's perfectly ethically fine to kill zombies.

[fasttense]

9. Allows killing without those pesky ethical considerations???

What if you don't want to kill?

I mean I never really wanted to kill masses of people even dead ones. And I was in the military.

In the military, I knew my job was to plan and prepare for killing but it was a Last Resort. I always looked at it (this was before the bushes) as something I would have to do only if all else failed. It was NOT something I relished doing even in war.

I slaughter livestock too but never ever look forward to it. It is something I do in order to eat and make money but not something I do because I think of it as enjoyable. In fact, after we slaughter chickens, I can't eat chicken for at least a month.

I watch the walking dead because it scares me when those zombies jump out and I'm fascinated by the society created by this virus. I like a good scare, especially an imaginary scare, it helps me to forget my problems.

But there is some resemblance to those awful boring jobs and zombie like behavior. If a worker could help make decisions like what to do with the wealth created by their work, how to go about making a better work environment. If there were just some real choices and decisions about the work, it wouldn't be so zombie like.

[infidel dog]

7. Bullshit indeed

I've read a galaxy of explanations for this disgusting program and all the related trash of its genre. Fans of this dreck are desensitized morons enjoying hyperviolence vicariously. What's most disturbing to me is how many of these humanoids fantasize about shooting, mutilating or incinerating their fellow human beings. I'm also astonished by the amount of money this show makes for its perpetrators and sponsors. I hate to disappoint some of you, but zombies cannot exist. There are however lots of living, breathing people around who, along with this suffering planet, are being systematically brutalized by our beloved corporate overlords and their lackeys. How pathological has a society become when a sizeable percentage of it watches this garbage faithfully but is blissfully unaware of political, ecological and economic dysfunction on a global scale? I dunno. But I will venture this opinion; if your ideal fantasy world is a desperate and ultimately meaningless battle for survival on a blighted planet inhabited by cannibalistic corpses, you might as well be a Republican Congressman.

[xocet]

10. Interesting avatar...

As you noted: "I've read a galaxy of explanations for this disgusting program and all the related trash of its genre. Fans of this dreck are desensitized morons enjoying hyperviolence vicariously."

I Yam What I Yam: The Story of Popeye
Miss Cellania • Wednesday, November 28, 2012

The following is an article from Uncle John’s All-Purpose Extra Strength Bathroom Reader.

...



Fighting was part of Popeye's persona from the very beginning. He was the most violent in the earliest days of the comic strip, when he cussed, started fights, and often hit animals, people, and inanimate objects with little or no provocation. The scrappiness of those early cartoons were well suited for the audiences of the 1930s and 1940s. Bud Sagendorf writes in Popeye: the First 50 Years: "Though today it may seem brutal, Popeye's outlook was a natural reaction of the times. A population frustrated by the Great Depression liked the idea of one small man fighting back and winning. They, too, wanted to strike out at something they feared and didn't understand."

...

http://www.neatorama.com/2012/11/28/I-Yam-What-I-Yam-The-Story-of-Popeye/#!lDLaK

[MisterP]

11. that poster's gonna be of no help whatsoever once Simon Phoenix is defrosted...

[xocet]

14. Yeah..."Even kids with chicken pox love hot dogs...." n/t

[infidel dog]

12. Well, I never claimed to be a peaskable individdle meself...

and I yam pretty violent sometimes...But like the famous sailor, I hate cruelty and have a pretty fair sense of right and wrong, unlike some consumers of Amerikan pop culture who enjoy watching a boy kill his mother(!) post-delivery of his sibling, as happened on a recent episode of this vile program. I'm not an apologist for anything. If I disagree with you I'll walk away, but if you push matters...ahem. "...so keep good behavior that's your one lifesavior with Popeye the Sailor Man."

[xocet]

13. Well...

The point is that it is hypocritical to condone violence in a story (Popeye) when you find the story acceptable and to decry others for accepting violence as part of another story (The Walking Dead).

If you were self-consistent in your position, it would not be notable. However, when you display the Popeye avatar and call out others, you are just being a hypocrite - in case you did not notice. (By the way, the history of Popeye's development directly contradicts your claims of a "fair sense of right and wrong" as I pointed out above.)

Your response is funny though - a semi-threatening (?LOL), misspelled word salad?

"..., but if you push matters...ahem. '...so keep good behavior that's your one lifesavior (sic) with Popeye the Sailor Man.' "

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101676343#post12

Is this post "...pushing matters..." and, if it is, what should I fear?

[phleshdef]

16. I watch the show, I'm a fan and your theory about me is bigoted, off base and 100% wrong.

[yurbud]

8. good point.

[phleshdef]

15. The Walking Dead isn't really very much about zombies. The zombies are just the background noise.

What the story is really about is the way human beings react to the world and each other in such a situation. Its a commentary on human nature.