Search results for "Zombie"

Violent Encounters : The Hobbesian State of Nature in DayZ

2016

In his seminal work on social contract theory, Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes described the anarchic pre-societal condition of the state of nature. In this predicament – aptly named as “the war of all against all” – people lived poor, short and brutish lives. The dystopian world simulated in the survival horror game DayZ mirrors this natural state of man. The game invites players to roleplay survivors of a zombie apocalypse. The present paper examines the factors contributing to pervasive violence, moral ambiguity and degeneration of human condition, which are prominent features of DayZ’s gameplay. The article will situate DayZ into the context of Hobbesian state of nature and explicate elements …

"That's Real! That's What You Want!": Producing Fear in George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978) vs Zack Snyder's remake (2004)

2011

International audience; This article examines traditional oppositions between terror and horror in Dawn of the Dead (1978) and its recent remake (2004), by focusing on one of the major changes made by the producers of the remake: the use of running zombies, which emphasizes the danger the creatures represent to the characters, and enables the film-makers to resort to the kind of cheap startle effects that abound in contemporary slasher and action movies. That the living dead of 1978 were slow-moving allowed for contemplation of their pathetic state and questioned the border between living and dead. The 1978 film underlined how incompatible the living dead were with such techniques that rely…

Scientific ethos and the cinematic zombie outbreak : science in fictional narratives

2015

Public anxiety about emerging biothreats is evident in the recent glut of popular entertainment where the demise, or near demise, of humankind is imagined to be the result of a new infectious pathogen against which science has no existing vaccine or cure. This article examines the figure of the scientist in such fictional narratives and what these characterizations indicate about public attitudes toward science in our contemporary world. It focuses in particular on the image of the scientist as clumsy naïve, immoral experimenter, heroic savior, and self-reflexive ethical agent.

Rete e apocalisse

2015

Le visioni apocalittiche in alcuni contenuti new media

Interrogating on the Essence of the Zombie World

2019

The chapter discusses critically the ontology of zombie world, as well as its interlink with the Thana-capitalism, as a new stage of capitalism where the Other’s death is gazed, consumed and preferred. The paradigm of the zombie world is debated in this chapter. In this respect, the culture of zombies situates in a futurist—apocalyptic—world, where technology and modern science have contributed to the end of mankind. The survivors not only struggle against zombies in a hostile world but also redeem the human nature according to two contrasting forces, the needs of survival which led to extreme individualism and the needs of re-foundation. The figure of the zombie represents the pauperized o…

Wokół odpadów cyberkultury

2012

Härmistetty kuolema: pelonhallintaa zombi-kuvakirjoissa

2018

Artikkeli tarkastelee zombikuvakirjojen tapoja käsitellä zombeissa ruumiillistuvaa rumaa ja väkivaltaista kuolemaa. Se keskittyy erityisesti tapoihin, joilla zombeihin liittyviä pelkoja pyritään kuvakirjoissa hallitsemaan. Kaunistavan, tieteellisiä selityksiä painottavan estetisoinnin lisäksi se tarttuu esteettisen härmistämisen käsitteeseen, eräänlaiseen naurettavaksi tekevään rumentamiseen, jonka se liittää taikauskoon ja kuvamagiaan. Vaikka esteettistä härmistämistä voidaan pitää animistisuudessaan jossain määrin primitiivisenä ja lapsellisena esitystapana, artikkeli esittää, että se on lopulta melko yleinen populaarikulttuurinen pelonhallinnan tapa. Alentaessaan ja karnevalisoidessaan y…

Resisting Bodies: Power Crisis / Meaning Crisis in the Zombie Film from 1932 to Today

2011

Critics have repeatedly focused on the political subtexts of the living dead films of George A. Romero, revealing, notably, how they reflect specific social concerns. In order to determine what makes the zombie movie and the figure of the zombie so productive of political readings, this article examines, first, the classic zombie movies influenced by voodoo lore, then Romero’s initial living dead trilogy (1968-1985), and finally some of the most successful films released in the 2000s. Resorting to a post-structuralist framework including Althusser’s notions of state apparatuses, Foucault’s distinction between subjection and subjectification, and Butler’s analyses of subversive resignificati…

Representing the Haitian diaspora in Russell Banks’s Continental Drift, from Port-de-Paix to Little Haiti: a celebration of the margins

2021

International audience; Russell Banks’s 1985 novel Continental Drift tells the intertwined stories of Bob Dubois, a white American man who decides to try his luck in Florida, and the Haitian Vanise Dorsinville, who is forced to leave her island with her son and her nephew to flee Jean-Claude Duvalier’s dictatorial presidency. In this paper, I study how, in the chapters dedicated to the Haitian diaspora, Banks chooses to adopt an ex-centric point of view to give a voice to those whose history and culture have largely been ignored by American society and literature. Vanise is a figure of in-betweenness, caught between Haiti and the United States, between land and ocean, and even between life …

Ficciones inmunitarias. Sobre la lógica de la inmunidad en la cultura contemporánea

2018

This article develops the concept of “immunitarian fiction” taking as paradigmatic examples epidemics and zombie narratives, which share the idea of contagion as the main matrix of their narrative. The article tries to address the following question: in what way do these fictions, and other similar ones, participate in the imaginary of immunity and, at the same time, show some of their internal contradictions? For this, the text reflects on a set of cultural products of mass diffusion (novels, television series, cinematographic works). We analyze, in the first place, how these fictions highlight the fears and social anxieties linked to the tensions of the “immune paradigm” and represent the…