You know you live in a messed up world when your first
thoughts about all of this zombie business are:
1. Is this a ploy to get me to buy more bottled water?
2. I bet the government is experimenting on
poor people again.
poor people again.
3. I f ’ing knew this was going to happen.
Recently two gruesome incidents have sparked a
tongue-in-cheek debate about the outbreak of a zombie apocalypse. In Miami, Florida, Rudy Eugene was shot
and killed by a police officer while chewing the face of 65-year-old Ronald
Puppo, a homeless man who survived the attack, although he sustained severe
injuries. According to Miami Police, Eugene is suspected to have been under the
influence of bath salts, a strong hallucinogenic when used as a narcotic.
In Hackensack, New Jersey, 43-year-old Wayne Carter
allegedly disemboweled himself in front of police and then cut, ate, and threw
pieces of his flesh and entrails at the officers. The police were responding to
a call from a witness saying Carter had threatened to harm himself. Carter, who
has a history of mental illness was subdued and hospitalized.
Still other stories have been fueling the zombie hysteria. A
mysterious disease has been affecting children in Northern Uganda since the
1960s. Dubbed the Nodding Disease, some 3,000 children are suffering under a
strange affliction that leaves them ‘zombified,’ unresponsive and prone to
extreme acts of violence such as arson. Treatment of the Nodding Disease is
non-existent. Desperate parents are binding their children by their hands and
feet in an effort to keep them under control. According to the World Health Organization, specialists are
baffled as to what causes the sickness, though some experts speculate a
microscopic worm carried by the Tutsi fly causes the disease.
More thoughtful commentators have pointed out that these
incidents are not connected to a zombie out break at all, but are endemic
examples of deep seated sociological problems where people turn to drugs as a
means of escapism, access to mental health is a social privilege, and the
imperialist rape of the African continent has left millions without access to
sanitation and clean water. But in a larger sense, these events are indicative
of a zombie outbreak indeed. They are the characteristics of a vampyric
economic system, refusing to die, remaining undead to plague the barely living.
This is capitalism in no uncertain terms.
The relationship between zombies and capitalism is not new.
The most formidable films of the zombie-horror genre have exhibited strong
allegories to capitalism and social crises. Director George Romero filmed three
seminal zombie classics Night of the
Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead
(1978) and Land of the Dead (2005)
that are expositions on racism, consumerism and classism respectively. 28
Days Later (2002), a more contemporary rendition of the zombie meme by
director Danny Boyle, profiled militarism, pharmaceutical giants run amuck, and
genetic modification. Still another, Dead
Snow (2009), a cult hit by Norwegian director Tommy Wirkola featured Nazi
zombies rising from under the snow of Scandinavia in a clear nod to the
disquieted ghosts of fascism in Europe.
Perhaps the most relevant theme was driven home in the 2004
film Shaun of the Dead in which the
protagonist spends the first hours of the zombie apocalypse stumbling through
his daily routine, oblivious to the catastrophe around him until it confronts
him directly. The film begs the question whether the audience is aware of its
own social setting, and what it may take for them to react to it.
So who then are the real undead? Those gnawing away at the
productive living in new and terrifying ways. The ruling class of the world
spreads greed, alienation, and terror much like a disease; infecting the world
with their profit wars, and draining the planet of its vitals. If pop culture
teaches us anything- it’s how to deal with a zombie.
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The recent zombie incidents raise the issue of life imitating art, but also drive home the absurdity of the system we live under. The tragic case of Rudy Eugene not only underscores the insanity of abusing bath salts as an escapism, but also the unqualified failure of the drug war that proffers bath salts as a easily obtainable alternative to illegal narcotics. Eugene, who according to those who knew him was mild mannered, could have been subdued using non-deadly force to interrupt his attack, but instead he was shot in the head, another victim of lethal police force.
Wayne Carter is a victim of a social safety net left
threadbare by decades of neoliberalism in the United States. Carter, clearly
suffering from mental illness, remained unnoticed until his act of desperation
brought him to the headlines. Shouting at police officers “I’m going to die
today… I’m sorry but I’m going to heaven.” Carter stabbed himself as many as
forty times during a two-hour standoff before a SWAT team subdued him. In
Carter’s case, violent self-harm is only the mirrored response to the
systematic and equally violent treatment that the poor and working class are
subjected to daily by an economic system prone to crisis.
Likewise in Uganda, where the bloodied rags around the hands
of children reflect the bloodied flags around those who kill for profit, an
inhuman system has plundered a continent and left swaths of humanity without
healthcare, jobs, basic resources or amenities.
The reality is that despite the hype behind these events,
they are not unique. They are the alarm bells that sound daily in a world
lashed by wars and austerity. A world crying out for an alternative, where the
needs of all are met, and the abilities of all are fulfilled.
Aimless wandering children, adults inflicting harm on
themselves and others without regard- personifying the system that created
them. The hands of the dispossessed, reaching out and clawing for meaning in
world that wasn’t built with them in mind. Mindless, rag-filled, starved,
infected, untreatable, without diagnosis, madness. These themes might make good
fodder for this year’s Halloween blockbuster, but are in fact the hallmarks of
the capitalist system.
Capitalism breeds zombies.
Welcome to the Apocalypse.
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