The Social Construction of Zombies
The Social Construction of Zombies
The Social Construction of Zombies
Logan suggests that zombies are demonstrating the “bare beginnings of so-
cial behavior,” allowing for the possibility of human society socializing
them. This is certainly the aim in their efforts to “train” Bub. Similarly, at
the end of Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead (2004), a montage demonstrates
the ways in which English society reintegrates the remaining zombies—as
game show contestants, daytime talk show guests, supermarket workers, and
video game players. Over the course of Isaac Marion’s Warm Bodies (2011),
the zombie R slowly eschews zombie tropes and begins to embrace human
norms and behaviors. All of these examples would be consistent with the so-
cialization efforts advocated by constructivist scholars. If the undead learn to
act as if they are human again, then constructivists would posit that they
have abandoned their identity as flesh-eating ghouls.
These policy recommendations are potentially useful, but a thorough con-
structivist analysis would have to acknowledge a darker possibility. The sug-
gested constructivist policies assume that once zombies walk the earth, hu-
mans will be able to socialize them before they proliferate beyond human
control. If a critical mass of flesh-eating ghouls were to emerge, however,
then the constructivist paradigm offers a very different prediction. Construct-
ivists would predict an emergent “norm cascade” from the proliferation of
the living dead.20 A norm cascade functions like peer pressure: as people wit-
ness others adhering to a particular standard of behavior, they are more
likely to conform to that standard of behavior as well. As a larger fraction of
individuals are converted to the undead persuasion, the remaining humans
would feel significant material and social pressure to conform to zombie
practices.
The conformity meme appears frequently in the zombie canon. In World
War Z, Brooks notes the existence of “quislings,” humans who act like they
are zombies. As one character describes them, “These people were zombies,
maybe not physically, but mentally you could not tell the difference.”21 In
Shaun of the Dead, the principal characters practice shuffling and moaning in
order to blend in. In Ruben Fleischer’s Zombieland (2009), Bill Murray puts
on zombie makeup in order to go out for an evening. Even if humans adopt
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zombie norms simply to survive, over time these actions will begin to consti-
tute their identity.
The lifestyles of the college student and zombie are eerily similar.