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2018 | Book

Introduction Read chapter Read first chapter

Queering the Family in The Walking Dead

Author: Prof. John R. Ziegler

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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About this book

This book traces how The Walking Dead franchise narratively, visually, and rhetorically represents transgressions against heteronormativity and the nuclear family. The introduction argues that The Walking Dead reflects cultural anxiety over threats to the family. Chapter 1 examines the destructive competition created by heteronormativity, such as the conflict between Rick and Shane. Chapter 2 focuses on the actual or attempted participation of characters such as Carol and Negan in queer relationships. Chapter 3 interprets zombies as queer antagonists to heteronormativity, while Chapter 4 explores the incorporation of zombies into the lives of characters such as the Governor and the Whisperers. The conclusion asserts that The Walking Dead presents both queer alternatives to and damaging contradictions within the traditional heterosexual family model, helping to question this model and to consider the struggle of queer American families. Overall, this study holds special interest for students and scholars of queerness, zombies, and the family.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter
Chapter 1. Introduction
Abstract
This introduction argues that The Walking Dead’s zombie narrative reflects cultural anxiety over the family unit. Threats of familial destruction or conversion come not only from zombies but also from non-heteronormative relationalities. Lee Edelman implicates the family in reproductive futurism, which enforces heteronormativity and depends upon the figure of the Child, presumed guarantee of a social future. Zombies represent a queer challenge to reproductive futurism, which a zombie child intensifies. The traditional nuclear family’s persistent dominance in the postapocalypse of The Walking Dead propels efforts to contain possibilities for alternative family structures, which repeatedly arise. Tracing how the franchise represents the transgression of heteronorms narratively, visually, and rhetorically reveals how recurring elements in those representations function to attempt to normalize, naturalize, and police sociosexual ideologies.
John R. Ziegler

Living Families

Frontmatter
Chapter 2. That Is My Wife: Reproductive Futurism and Patriarchal Competition
Abstract
The chapter examines the oppressive relational dynamics engendered in The Walking Dead by reproductive futurist ideology. This dynamic of competition and ownership plays out in the conflict between Rick and Shane over Lori and Lori’s children. That this competition results in conflict and death rather than a cooperative adjustment of familial structure demonstrates the tenacity of heteronormative ideology. Even Carl ignores queer possibilities, and the competition over Lori and her children also foregrounds the significance of the symbolic Child, worth killing and dying for and able to temporarily redeem even the Governor. Occasionally, Rick briefly seems willing to reimagine family relationships, and the adherence of many characters to patriarchal norms repeatedly causes violence and death, even as the franchise frequently aligns itself with these norms.
John R. Ziegler
Chapter 3. Insane Proposals: Beyond Monogamy as Beyond Rationality
Abstract
This chapter examines the actual or attempted participation of living characters in The Walking Dead in queer modes of relationality. In the comics, Carol proposes a polyamorous marriage to Rick and Lori, and their rejection frames her request as irrational, a common rhetorical tactic of reproductive futurism. Carol ultimately commits suicide, an act of queer negation. Negan’s polygamy is misogynistic, competitive, and oppressive rather than collective and liberatory; and it contributes to his defeat. The franchise does include positive depictions of queerness in gay characters and couples. However, Eric and Denise are both killed, and Denise dies in the television show in place of heterosexual Abraham in the comics. Television-Abraham’s death is positioned as more tragic because of his recent embrace of a reproductive future.
John R. Ziegler

Living/Dead Families

Frontmatter
Chapter 4. What Happens in the Barn Stays in the Barn: The Family and the Zombie as Sinthomosexual
Abstract
This chapter interprets The Walking Dead’s zombies as sinthomosexuals, or queer antagonists to reproductive futurism. They act as queer Others through asexual reproduction, focus on immediate drives, and the presence of the infection in every living person. These zombies figure as alternatives to reproductive futurism, and their mere existence troubles heteronormative hegemony, as do the recurring transgressions by living characters, particularly Hershel and Lizzie’s questioning of the line between the living and the living dead and their willingness to view zombies not just as people but as family. Zombie-Sophia in the TV series represents a disturbing amalgam of child, symbolic Child, and sinthomosexual, and control must be sought by destroying the zombies that encroach on the categories of human and family and suppressing viewpoints that enable such encroachment.
John R. Ziegler
Chapter 5. Out of the Barn: Alternative Families and the Undead
Abstract
This chapter explores the incorporation of zombies in The Walking Dead into characters’ domestic or family lives. Jessie emblematically refuses to let go of either Carl or her own zombie-bitten son, and the Governor cohabitates with and accommodates zombie child Penny. Notably, in failures to contain zombie children’s queer threat to reproductive futurism, Penny’s fate in the comics remains unresolved, as does Duane’s, the zombified son with whom Morgan has been living. The Whisperers live with zombies, wear their skins, and no longer abide by conventional sexual morality or nuclear family structure, but Alpha still sends her daughter to live with Rick’s people. Such breakdowns of zombie/human and queer/heteronormative boundaries, along with the repeated transgressions against reproductive futurism, demonstrate heteronormativity’s simultaneous durability and fragility.
John R. Ziegler
Chapter 6. Conclusion: A Terminus
Abstract
Rick Grimes’s semi-successful defense of the nuclear family is emblematic of how The Walking Dead represents struggles around reproductive futurism. The franchise presents a variety of queer alternatives to the heteronormative order, and in presenting the resistance to these alternatives, it also presents the contradictions within and damage from the traditional, monogamous, possessive sexual-familial model, helping us to consider the struggle of queer American families. Zombies (always already or potentially us) are oppositional to reproductive futurism and represent queer potentialities, and the containment of queerness invites denaturalizing consideration of its mechanisms. This containment sometimes fails, and until the conclusion of The Walking Dead, its completion remains deferred. In fact, the TV show has recently killed Carl, the ideological impact of which is for now unknown.
John R. Ziegler
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
Queering the Family in The Walking Dead
Author
Prof. John R. Ziegler
Copyright Year
2018
Electronic ISBN
978-3-319-99798-8
Print ISBN
978-3-319-99797-1
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99798-8