XXXombies: Economies of Desire and Disgust

The undead have infected numerous media forms recently, including prime-time television (The Walking Dead), videogames (Dead Island, Left 4 Dead), comic books (Chaos Campus, Marvel Zombies), classic literature (Pride, Prejudice and Zombies), and stage musicals (Fleshed Out, Musical of the Living Dead). It is ironic that the living dead should be so persistently profitable given that zombies have been commonly interpreted as symbols of consumer capitalism’s damaging effects (see Bishop, 2010; Harper, 2002; Loudermilk, 2003). Those issues are particularly pertinent at present, since the current boom in zombie-media is situated against a backdrop of global economic crisis. Indeed, numerous thinkers have used the zombie plague as a metaphor to describe international recession’s detrimental impacts on society (Giroux, 2011; Harman, 2012; Nelms, 2012). It is paradoxical that despite their salience as emblems of financial disaster, the living dead have become icons for consumer capitalism’s continued success. During this period of economic crisis, zombies have been voraciously devoured by audiences.