Description
Book Synopsis Science fiction and horror television shows predict how the world might be different if zombies were real, or if artificial intelligence could develop consciousness. Pop culture critics reveal that these not-quite humans are often proxies for race, and the post-apocalyptic landscapes set the stage for reimagining social and political institutions.
This book advances horror scholarship by placing those stories within a long tradition of mythologizing U.S. history. It demonstrates how Disney''s Zombies reenacts the civil rights movement, how The Walking Dead fulfills Thoreau''s fantasy against the backdrop of founding a new nation, and how Westworld permits visitors to experience the Old West while bearing witness to Indian Removal. Each of these narratives imagines a future that retells the past. The chapters within look at that tradition in order to understand the present.
Trade ReviewClayton has provocatively situated a fresh range of zombie and zombie-adjacent texts in long-standing nationalist discourses within the American psyche. The analysis demonstrates the long reach of the zombie mythos in ideological roots of repression and resistance, unpacked with insight and wit."—Peter Dendle, author of
The Zombie Movie EncyclopediaTable of Contents
- Table of Contents
-
- Acknowledgments deletevi
- Preface
- Introduction
- Chapter
- Myths of Colonial America
- Chapter
- Lakota Ghost Dance and the Imaginary Frontier
- Chapter Three
- Caribbean and Gothic Origins of the American Zombie
- Chapter Four
- Social Critique and the Modern Zombie
- Chapter Five
- Civil Rights Movement Retold in Disney Zombies
- Chapter
- Destiny Manifested in Westworld's Philosophical Zombies
- Conclusion
- Chapter Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
