Welcome

Welcome to the Zombosium. This symposium is dedicated to that most unloved of the undead, the humble zombie. Yet despite the relative weakness when compared to their gothic undead cousins zombies have acquired a new currency in contemporary times that werewolves, vampires and ghouls could only dream of. Zombies span the media: They have escaped their traditional environment of celluloid, invaded online and digital video, infested games, contaminated mobile content and now no field of media remains uninfected. This proliferation poses many new questions: what do zombies represent? What fears or neurosis do they articulate? Are they tied to particular social phenomena – serving as a barometer of angst or helplessness in the face of new times of uncertainty? Who are zombies – are they us or are they an ‗other‘ to be expunged? Is their decrepit physicality illustrative of a rejection of the myth of physical beauty? Can zombies run? What is the best weapon against them? Do we really have to destroy the brain? We hope to address these and many other questions of zombies at the Zombosium. The papers presented here cover a range of topics and the organistaion of the panels hopefully brings together scholars with convergent interests. We are also hosting a showing of Dawn of the Dead (2004) starting at about 5.30pm in the Stripe Auditorium on campus. Following this we will find somewhere to eat and have a drink or two. I hope you enjoy the event. Marcus Leaning

Programme Performance Gym Boardroom

9.30 – 10.00 Tea / Coffee

10.00 Welcome: Professor Liz Stuart, Senior Pro Vice Chancellor, University of Winchester.

10.05- 10.45 Keynote: Ian Conrich: An Infected Population: Zombie Culture and the Modern Monstrous

10.45-12.15

The Walking Dead… Chair: Laura Hubner Kerry Gough Dead Special: Zombies, SFX and Making the Undead Respectable in the Reception of AMC‘s The Walking Dead (2010) Dominik Maeder The Walking Dead, True Blood and the Survival of Television Darren Reed and Ruth Penfold-Mounce The Zombification of the Sociological Imagination: The Walking Dead as Social Science Fiction

I ♥ Zombies: Zombie Fans and Creatives Chair: Ian Conrich Paul Manning Zomedies, digtal fan cultures and the politics of taste Marcus Leaning Zombie Apocalypse Survivor Communities on Mumsnet and Youtube Elizabeth Switaj Night Wreck: A Hybrid Creative-Critical Presentation

12.15 – 1.15 Lunch (Huurrhhh! Brains!!)

1.15 – 2.45

Be Afraid… Chair: Marcus Leaning Laura Hubner The Fear of Zombie Flesh Eaters: From Video Nasty to Blu-ray Jordan Lloyd and Roger Cooper Z-Rated:Zombie-proof your own home Chris Farnell What Are We Afraid Of: Hotel Rwanda as a Zombie Movie

The Thinking Dead… Chair: Shaun Kimber Julia Round Zombies, absence and existentialism: Are we the walking dead? Gary Farnell The Current Conjuncture and Its Monsters‘ Yari Lanci Zombie 2.0 subjectivity: a new dromological paradigm

2.45-3.15 Tea / Coffee

3.15 – 4.45

Zombie Environment and planning A Chair: Paul Manning Christian Lenz ―Never to Return Home‖: Nomadic Tendencies and the Notion of Home in Dead Set Antonio Sanna Consumerism and the Undead City: Silent Hill and the Resident Evil Films Shaun Kimber Zombies are us: Zombiedom and Media & Film Education within British Higher Education

Zombie Environment and planning B Chair: Marcus Leaning Emma Dyson Space and Place in Zombie Culture: How fictional film inspires dissent, celebration and the carnivalesque in social spaces. Toby Venables Locating the Zombie: Landscapes of the Living Dead

Stripe Auditorium

5.30 Film screening of Dawn of the Dead (2004) with an introduction by Ian Conrich

Keynote Paper - Boardroom, 10.00 - Introduced by Marcus Leaning Ian Conrich, University of Essex

An Infected Population: Zombie Culture and the Modern Monstrous

Like a contagion, the modern horror film has spread from the screen - where it was relatively contained - and into the streets and homes beyond. Horror movies have now successfully penetrated comic books, computer games, toy stores, and fancy dress shops, with innocent children seduced by the opportunity to wear replica costumes of the screen's most hideous creatures. Leading this monster invasion is a zombie culture that has infected a willing population, albeit a hungry horde of part-timers feeding off a consumer culture. The recent rapid growth in the number of zombie films has been matched by the emergence of a zombie culture, which has seen a series of zombie walks across the UK in Birmingham, Bristol, Brighton, Newcastle and Leicester. The zombie walks are a development of the flash mob transgressions, with a DIY ethic encouraged through home-made blood-strewn clothes and decay-effect makeup, which is celebrated through a parade presenting creativity and ingenuity. Zombie ingenuity is certainly in the merchandise supporting this contagion, with zombie energy drinks (crimson coloured and sold in blood bags), remote controlled zombies (operated by a hand-held brain), and garden zombie sculptures that give the appearance that the living dead are pushing up through your lawn. This paper will aim to corral a range of these specimens, focusing on the zombie walks and zombie merchandise to understand in what ways the population has become infected and how a zombie culture has created a modern monstrous.

Parallel Panel 1 Boardroom 10.45-12.15 The Walking Dead…

Chair: Laura Hubner

Kerry Gough Dead Special: Zombies, SFX and Making the Undead

Respectable in the Reception of AMC‟s The Walking Dead (2010) Kerry

Gough

Kerry Gough, Birmingham City University

Originating from the ongoing comic book series by Robert Kirkman (2003-), AMC‘s The Walking Dead (2010) is the latest resurrection in the zombification of culture. In an era where a proliferation of comic book adaptation has saturated the cinema screen, sfx technology has now allowed for the spread of zombie culture within the blockbuster television environment (Gough, 2007). This contagion has led to the infection of popular cultural reference and a permeation of low brow sensibility into high budget quality American television programming and content. With the writing and executive producer team of Frank Darabont and Robert Kirkman, and Darabont directing, AMC continue to carve out a space for The Waking Dead within the quality television schedule. Off the back of the success of Mad Men (2007) and Breaking Bad (2008), The Walking Dead serves to capture a quality position amongst the US network schedule, harnessing its public in an effort to compete with HBO and Showtime through its original high-quality drama series. Add to this an all-star cast; Andrew Lincoln (This Life, Human Traffic, Love Actually, Teachers, Afterlife), Jon Bernthal (Night at the Museum 2, Num3ers, The Pacific), Sarah Wayne Callies (Queens Supreme, Prison Break), Laurie Holden (The Magnificent Seven, The X Files, Fantastic Four, Silent Hill, The Mist, The Shield) and Jeffrey DeMunn (Law and Order, The Green Mile, The Mist) – The Walking Dead has all the markings of quality blockbuster television. With a spattering of sfx heritage from Greg Nicotero (Romero‘s Day of the Dead, Land of the Dead and Survival of the Dead, From Dusk Till Dawn series, Sin City, Grindhouse, Death Proof, The Pacific) who trained under the legendary Tom Savini, The Walking Dead marks out mainstream appeal for the zombie culture. Unlike coagulated zombie blood, the reception for the series has been warm and flowing, recognising the series as a representative marker of AMC‘s successful bid towards quality television. AMC, in its mainstreaming of zombies appeals to its horror tv fans, while expectations of blockbuster sfx provide the necessary blockbusting elements. Reviewers have praised the series‘ use of ‗traditional makeup FX instead of CGI‘ (nvillesanti, 2010) commending the series for ‗spectacular special effects that one would expect to see in a high budget Hollywood movie‘ (Brown, 2010). One reviewer identifies The Walking Dead as a ‗glorious super production of a tv series‘ in which ‗AMC has become a synonym for the highest possible quality in

entertainment‘ (fe_scolfaro, 2010), while another affirms that accolade in referring to the series as ‗28 Day Later on tv‘ (Moviegeek, 2010). One thing for certain, is blockbuster sfx‘s contribution to the zombie contagion of mainstream television. Zombies plus sfx equals dead special, and with a new series set to hit US screens later in 2011, in the words of LMFAO, ‗everyday I‘m shufflin‘‘ in anticipation of the next Zombie invasion and network infestation.

Dominik Maeder The Walking Dead, True Blood and the Survival of

Television

Dominik Maeder, M.A. (Constance/Vienna) Experiencing the rapid breakthrough of the World Wide Web in the mid- and late 90s, many Internet pioneers, media critics and TV executives all the same predicted a foreseeable decline of television, ultimately to result in the death of the outdated goggle-box (cf. Miller 2010: 175-186). Ten to 15 years later, those reports have proved to be greatly exaggerated. However, media scholars still debate which shape the survival of television in the digital era takes: Is it a resurrected ―Television after TV‖ (Spigel/Olsson 2004), an undead medium placed in a new media context (Gripsrud 2010) or rather some form of non-physical content in search of a new body (Kompare 2006)? Instead of adding another theoretical approach to these comprehensive concepts, I shall conceive of the zombies and vampires depicted in the popular US TV series The Walking Dead (AMC, 2010-) and True Blood (HBO, 2008-) as reflexive televisual figures of transmission, serving as means of

rethinking television‟s status as a medium of transmission within the medium itself. Therefore my presentation will focus on the specific modes of transmission embodied in zombie and vampire „life‟: While bare zombie life represents a relentless threat operating through invasion, infection and erasure of subjectivity (Bishop 2009; Canavan 2010), romantically charged vampire life remains menace and temptation, drug and cure at same time. Could we accordingly identify different ways of dealing with the digitization of

TV‟s mode of transmission within the two series? Works Cited

Bishop, Kyle (2009): ―Dead Man Still Walking: Explaining the Zombie Renaissance‖, in: Journal of Popular Film and Television, 37(1)/2009: 16-25

Canavan, Gerry (2010): ―‟We Are the Walking Dead‟: Race, Time, and Survival in Zombie Narrative‖, in: Extrapolation, 51(3)/2010: 431-453 Gripsrud, Jostein (Ed.) (2010): Relocating Television. Television in the digital context. London: Routledge Kompare, Derek (2006): ―Publishing Flow: DVD Box Sets and the Reconception of Television‖, in: Television & New Media, 7(4)/2006: 335-360 Miller, Toby (2010): Television Studies. The Basics. London/New York: Routledge Spigel, Lynn/Olsson, Jan (Eds.) (2004): Television after TV. Essays on a Medium in Transition. Durham & London: Duke University Press

Darren Reed and Ruth Penfold-Mounce The Zombification of the

Sociological Imagination: The Walking Dead as Social Science Fiction

Darren Reed and Ruth Penfold-Mounce, University of York Osborne, Rose and Savage (2008: 531) make the observation that ‗professional sociologists…are not the only people who investigate, analyse, theorise and give voice to…phenomena from a ―social‖ point of view‘. In this paper we assert that the zombie genre is part of phenomena that shed light on society through a non-scholarly format making it a form of social science-fiction (Penfold-Mounce, Beer and Burrows, 2009). Drawing on the AMC television show The Walking Dead we will explore two key sociological themes that are central to the series: emotion and mobility. These two themes are dominant in the narrative of The Walking Dead and have been used in manner that enables a re-enchantment of the sociological imagination and placing the show into a similar realm as the HBO series The Wire which has been heralded as inherently ‗sociological‘ (Penfold-Mounce, Beer and Burrows, 2009.

Parallel Panel 2 MB2 10.45-12.15 I ♥ Zombies: Zombie Fans and

Creatives

Chair: Ian Conrich Paul Manning Zomedies, digtal fan cultures and the politics of taste

Paul Manning, University of Winchester

Following recent work by Kackman and others (2011) on the role of on-line 'paratexts' in structuring the uses and interpretations of contemporary television drama, this paper will explore the on-line ecology of paratexts generated by the recent film Zombies of Mass Destruction. It will suggest that the particular features of the zombie film and, more specifically the zombie comedy film or Zomedy, lend themselves to being the objects of discussion within the discursive fields sustained by on-line paratextual sites. These features include genre conventions and audience expectations of pleasure, the political economic elements of production, and possibilities for political engagement within the spaces offered by the zombie text. Thus, a film such as ZMD must be understood not simply as a text in isolation but a cultural formation, comprising of the ecology of the text and on-line paratexts. But ‗Zomedies‘, particular those with a ‗political message‘ such as ZMD may generate significant tensions within fan communities because in the eyes of some both the comedic and political elements undercut traditional ‗zombine pleasures‘. These tensions may be exacerbated or accelerated by new media paratexts through which particular taste hierarchies are proposed, resisted and re-structured..

Marcus Leaning Zombie Apocalypse Survivor Communities on Mumsnet and Youtube

Marcus Leaning, University of Winchester Faux-real texts have been a popular sub- genre within horror across a number of media. In texts concerned with zombies the sub-genre has appeared in films such as Diary of the Dead (Romero, 2008) and novels such as Zombie Apocalypse (Jones, 2010). This paper considers how one variant of this theme, Zombie Apocalypse Survival Guides (ZASGs) have been centralised, incorporated and extended within two distinct online communities. ZASGs have been a popular literary form for a number of years (Brooks, 2003; Ma & Heller, 2010; Page, 2010; Seslick, 2010; Thomas & Thomas, 2009). The genre has also manifested itself various other media forms such as web pages and wikis (Marsden, 2007), downloadable guides (Johnson, 2006) and even guides for playing zombie modifications on video games packaged as non-game zombie apocalypse survival guides (Lee & Miggels, 2011). One interesting development has been the integration of ZASGs themes with various forms of social networking communities – facebook groups for example - and user generated content dissemination sites. The integration of ZASGs in both social networking and content dissemination sites has resulted in considerable peer-level communication between users of the sites. This paper details research on two such systems: a discussion thread on the Mumsnet parenting website concerning how to survive the zombie apocalypse and comments arising from a Zombie Survival Guide video posted on Youtube. Initial findings indicate that there is a considerable disparity in to the level of continuity of discussants in the two systems. It is argued that the centrality of the text to discussion is in converse relationship with the continuity of the community – the more focussed the site is on a particular text the less cohesive the emergent community is. Brooks, M. (2003). The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead: Three Rivers Press. Johnson, D. (Ed.) (2006) How to Survive Zombies!!!! www.davefilms.us Jones, S. (2010). Zombie Apocalypse! : Constable & Robinson Limited. Lee, S., & Miggels, B. (2011). Call of Duty Black Ops: Zombie Survival Guide - When gun juice simply isn't enough. Take this journal. . Retrieved 21 August, 2011, from http://uk.xbox360.ign.com/articles/115/1159873p1.html Ma, R., & Heller, Y. N. (2010). The Zombie Combat Manual: A Guide to Fighting the Living Dead: Penguin Group USA. Marsden. (2007). Zombie Survival guide and Defense Wiki. Retrieved 07 August, 2011, from http://www.zombiesurvivalwiki.com/

Page, S. T. (2010). The Official Zombie Handbook (UK: Severed Press. Romero, G. A. (Writer) (2008). Diary of the Dead. USA: Dimension Films. Seslick, D. (2010). Dr Dale's Zombie Dictionary: The A-Z Guide to Staying Alive: Allison & Busby. Thomas, M. G., & Thomas, N. S. (2009). Zompoc: How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse: Swordworks.

Elizabeth Switaj Night Wreck: A Hybrid Creative-Critical Presentation Elizabeth Elizabeth Switaj, Queen‘s University Belfast

A train crashes, spilling unknown chemicals into the air. A nearby rural town suffers heavy casualties overnight, as an isolated survivor is forced to kill his neighbours, friends, and family members who have been transformed into monsters. In the 1500-word short story, ―Night Wreck,‖ I present a tale of horror that follows this cliché sequence of events but with a twist: the second-person narrative is unreliable. Events may not have taken place the way they are described and, even if they did, the ―zombies‖ may in fact have been unundead—that is to say, merely human. I will open this hybrid presentation with a brief discussion of the elements of the zombie genre which appear in the story and how these elements have been used in major zombie media such as Night of the Living Dead, Shaun of the Dead, and World War Z, and Shaun of the Dead. After reading the story, I will argue that my particular remix of these elements reflects the concerns of the age of Wikileaks—which is also the post-9/11 and post-7/7 world—in which we believe that there are a terrifying threats in the world and yet do not trust the governments which claim to protect us from these threats.

Parallel Panel 3 MB1 1.15 - 2.45 Be Afraid…

Chair: Marcus Leaning Jordan Lloyd and Roger Cooper Z-Rated:Zombie-proof your own home University Sheffield Private Practice Mathematical models of a zombie contagion conclude that the spread of infection will far exceed any organised resistance, unless aggressive counter tactics are employed. In the United Kingdom (and indeed most countries in the world), citizens do not have the benefit of the Second Amendment to carry firearms like our American cousins; resulting in a much lower survival rate for untainted humans.

Our entry into the second annual Zombie Safehouse Competition is not a ‗one-off‘ mobile fortress, but rather a socio-economic strategy, culturally embedded in our social psyche in the way we know best: the cult of consumerism. Rather than create a ‗zombie-proof house‘, it is instead proposed to zombie-proof your own home in the event of a zombie apocalypse. The proposal approaches designing a zombie proof house from a perspective which assumes a future of everyday (albeit unwanted) co-existence with the undead. Z-Rated: Zombie-proof your own home projects a typical suburban London based strategy for adapting ordinary Londoners homes for protection against the marauding zombie threat.

Our response to a zombie contagion considers a strategy without the options of an antigen or vaccination. Integrated into Prime Minister David Cameron‘s vision for the ‗Big Society‘, a parliamentary response is prematurely distributed online, and runs as the main headline in a popular free London newspaper. It describes a strategy using Big Society rhetoric: building communities, decentralised power and localism. In short, getting the proles to pay for everything themselves, in the perfect union of the public and private sectors.

Laura Hubner The Fear of Zombie Flesh Eaters: From From Video Nasty to Blu-ray Laura Hubner, University of Winchester Released in the UK as Zombie Flesh Eaters, Lucio Fulci‘s Zombi 2 (1979) has continued to excite new audiences with its bold set-pieces. The film hosts a rich display of zombie-versus-shark action, apocalyptic church-burning and slow-moving zombies finally making their way across the bridge to New York, shuffling to the beat of Fabio Frizzi‘s score. As the movie is about to be available on Blu-ray at the end of this month, with an impressive features listing, this is a key moment to review some of the controversies and debates that have over the years been incited by the film. Zombie Flesh Eaters has sparked most debate over its use and levels of gore, and a number of its scenes, such as the eye-piercing and the communal flesh-feast, have helped it to maintain a lively, and elaborate, relationship with the censors and critics. Focusing on censorship and reception, in relation to the changing cultural and historical contexts, this paper looks at the major regulatory frameworks and decisions made since the film‘s inception, unravelling some of the underlying tensions, fears and taboos suggested by these decisions in relation to the film text, and the context of specific sequences within it. The paper will also explore issues raised by technological and exhibition developments, such as the shifting viewing contexts brought about by video and DVD.

Chris Farnell What Are We Afraid Of: Hotel Rwanda as a Zombie Movie

Chris Farnell, Freelance Writer Hotel Rwanda is a film that tells the story of a very real and horrific sequence of actual events. However, in the story‘s characters and plot structure, the film closely mirrors the structure of many zombie apocalypse movies from Night of the Living Dead through to the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake. The film features a host of the staple elements of the zombie movie- the initial (unbelieved) news broadcasts, the eventual siege narrative, the military and governmental bodies that are unable or unwilling to help, and of course, the key point of the film- a society breaking down as ordinary people turn violently on one another. The aim of this paper is not to illustrate anything about either Hotel Rwanda or the act of genocide it portrays by showing how it mirrors a zombie movie, but rather, the reverse. Highlighting the real events that influenced the creation of class zombie movies, and showing how the fantastical events of the zombie apocalypse genre are reflected in the retelling of the terrible real life events of Hotel Rwanda, we can cast a light on just what it is about the story of the zombie apocalypse that scares us so much, and perhaps more importantly and disturbingly, what it is about the zombie apocalypse that we actually fantasise about.

Parallel Panel 4 MB2 1.15 - 2.45 The Thinking Dead…

Chair: Shaun Kimber Julia Round Zombies, absence and existentialism: Are we the walking

dead?

Julia Round, University of Bournemouth

Although the living dead continue to decay, their stories are evolving. This paper uses existential philosophy to analyse Robert Kirkman‘s The Walking Dead (both TV series and comic) in the wider context of zombie narratives. It argues that the text is representative of contemporary zombie texts in its desire to excise zombies from their own narratives, and that this development is best understood in the context of existentialism. The paper focuses first on the notions of essence and ethics, whereby the ‗soul‘ is determined only by one‘s choices and actions, and discusses the ways in which Rick‘s self-imposed quest(s) (to find his family, to protect his wife and children, to keep his group alive) illustrate this idea and project meaning into his life. It points out that the still and empty landscape of The Walking Dead contributes to this depiction, and argues that a zombie text is the perfect foil for this setting. Concepts such as identity and the Other are then discussed. Identity is consistently problematised (although ultimately not denied) in The Walking Dead – whose zombies, in contrast to more traditional narratives, are not the demonised Other. Instead, Rick and his group are in conflict with the people they encounter. It identifies a similar tendency in other contemporary zombie texts and concludes by situating The Walking Dead in relation to these. It notes the current cultural trend to redefine zombeism as a disease across multiple media (28 Days/Weeks Later; Resident Evil) and the link between technology and transmission (Pontypool, The Cell). In this way, The Walking Dead is exemplary of the next phase in a developing narrative of zombies. Early themes (possession/slavery) that gave way to twentieth-century concerns (consumerism, technology) have now replaced by a ‗post-zombieism‘ that, although it ostensibly sustains the presence of these creatures, in actual fact seeks to excise them from their own narratives in order to better illustrate the existential plight of humanity.

. Gary Farnell The Current Conjuncture and Its Monsters

Gary Farnell, University of Winchester

This paper argues for the value of the zombie myth as an interpretative motif in relation to the financial and related forms of crisis in the global capitalist system. Images of monsters and of the apocalypse in the financial press during the 2008 financial crisis constitute the focus of discussion. The conclusion this paper reaches is one that posits the figure of the zombie as traversing the problem of representation of the present crisis, being in this regard at once an embodiment of the Lacanian object a and a form of political resource. At the same time, a displacement of the vampire by the zombie is traced in the course of historical-into-contemporary Marxist Gothic literature on capitalist production. This is all for the reason that, as is well known, the image of the zombie signifies the end of civilization itself.

Yari Lanci Zombie 2.0 subjectivity: a new dromological paradigm

Yari Lanci, Freelance The zombie genre, buried half-dormant for many years, has been brought back to ‗life‘ during the last ten years. The renewed attention and popularity of the figure of the undead, the varied attempts at representing this figure, and the massive economic investments of numerous media productions – such as the recent TV series ―The Walking Dead‖ – constitute some of the most visible symptoms of a very specific ―political unconscious‖. As Fredric Jameson would put it, this political unconscious is increasingly aware of a new paradigm shift regarding the process of political subjectification. This paper will try to analyse different trends which might characterize a new theoretical understanding of the figure of the walking dead, especially in relation to our own political moment and, more precisely, to the specific process of subjectification within the neoliberal framework. Our starting point will be an investigation of the zombie character in relation to the speed of its movements, drawing on Virilio‘s concept of ―dromology‖. Our central tenet is that although a generalised constant increase of speed towards its absolutization was already detected by the French philosopher during the 1980s and 1990s, this trend has more recently undergone a dramatic metamorphosis, with the emergence of contemporary neoliberal capitalism. Observed from this dromological perspective, it might be argued that zombies‘ increased speed of movement, as in Boyle‘s ―28 Days Later‖ (and its successors), on the one hand may be seen to depict the new kind of subjectification in operation in the third millennium, on the other, however, this speed opens up spaces of theorization about the disruptive potential of what we will call the ―Zombie 2.0 subjectivity‖.

Parallel Panel 5 MB1 3.15 - 4.45 Zombie Environment and Planning A…

Chair: Paul Manning

Christian Lenz “Never to Return Home”: Nomadic Tendencies and the

Notion of Home in Dead Set

Christian Lenz, Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, TU Dortmund, Germany ―An English(wo)man‘s home is his/her castle‖ is a well-known idiom, connecting the private space with strongholds in which one can reside and whose walls are to keep enemies out. In E4‘s mini-series Dead Set a perfect example of a castle is presented: a home away from home, an artificial mini-cosmos. Having created a Foucauldian panopticon with the famous Big Brother house, the inmates are happy to live their lives in front of the camera and audiences are eager to watch – until the zombie apocalypse starts. I claim that Dead Set provides a new, if bleak idea of the concepts of home and belonging as the inmates turn their artificial ‗home‘ into a proper fortress against the living dead – heightening their insularity to the extreme. This is juxtaposed with people on the outside, who have not yet been turned into a zombie and who have to leave their homes in order to escape the undead or find new nutritional resources – the real home, the comfortable castle becomes a distant memory. Humans have to become nomads in the sense Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari proposed: Never be truly able to settle at one spot but only to rest temporarily. This, again, links the nomads to zombies who can never settle down, either: Just like the humans they are forced to wander the earth, begging the question whether the idea of home has to be abandoned at all in zombie narratives. Eviction day is coming.

Antonio Sanna Consumerism and the Undead City: Silent Hill and the

Resident Evil

Films

Antonio Sanna Freelance writer In my paper I shall examine the recent horror films Silent Hill (2006) and the quadrilogy of Resident Evil (2002-2007) with a specific attention to the representation of the urban space given by the directors of the films. In these works, the cities are pictured as desert places, haunted by the remains of humanity, by monstrous creatures that have lost any characterization as human beings. Precisely as in many Gothic literary narratives published during the nineteenth century, the cities portrayed in these films are uncanny and inimical spaces, characterized by labyrinthic and claustrophobic settings which are intended to arouse fear and paranoia in the main characters of the stories as much as in the viewers of the film. I shall specifically argue that such representation of the city can be interpreted as caused by the consumerism of contemporary society. In order to do this, I shall particularly refer to the academic debates which identify the figure of the zombie with the (almost) non-autonomous citizen who is driven by an uncontrollable consumerism of personal and social goods. Secondly, and by showing and analysing some brief passages of the films, I shall apply such discourses to the representation of the city given in these recent productions and stimulate questions concerning the function of the city in the absence of consumerism and the human being.

Sean Kimber Zombies are us: Zombiedom and Media & Film Education

within British Higher Education

Sean Kimber, University of Bournemouth The paper will present a case for using the zombie as an analytical tool for reflecting upon media & film education within English higher education. Using examples from contemporary zombie films and ideas associated with zombiedom the paper will suggest that far from being homogeneous, film representations of the zombie and zombiedom alert our attention to a wide range of possibilities that can productively be employed as critical lens through which to examine contemporary higher education. The paper will develop its argument based upon four overlapping strands. First, that the current global climate of uncertainty and crisis has given rise to a renewed impetus and verve within apocalyptic zombie narratives. Whilst falling short of an apocalyptic event the current challenges facing media education within English higher education can be understood as an allegorical manifestation of the undermining and collapse of social institutions found within contemporary zombie narratives. Second, the key to understanding the relationship between tutors and students, from the tutors perspective, is to appreciate the interplay between survivors losses and their dependency upon their views of zombies. Third, that humanising and sympathetic representations of the zombie can inform our understanding of students, by foregrounding their dynamism, motivations and skills, and through an emphasis upon student-centred approaches to learning and teaching. Fourth, higher education would befit from stronger collaborative partnerships in learning and teaching between students and tutors to not only maximise their collective strengths but to also offer a unified approach to the zombifying challenges facing the subject

Parallel Panel 5 MB2 3.15 - 4.45 Zombie Environment and Planning B…

Chair: Marcus Leaning Emma Dyson Space and Place in Zombie Culture: How fictional film

inspires dissent, celebration and the carnivalesque in social spaces.

Emma Dyson, University of Portsmouth As arguably the most popular modern horror icon, it is fruitful to consider the fictional Zombie following Robert Kastenbaum‘s discussion of Arnold Van Gennep‘s concept of liminality. In the case of the Zombie, as both dead yet alive, we can see the most obvious fictional example of a body as liminal, removed from society yet returning, removed from life, yet still functioning. The Zombie can move between areas of social interaction, and also functions within its own space, one which cannot be categorised as easily as either-or, alive or dead. This serves to question the social borders that living bodies function within. This refusal of borders and categories is also presented within the physical presence of the Zombie breaking socially constructed areas designated for the living and the dead, notably within film and media, but also now in the popular phenomena of Zombie Walks. Following Walter Kendrick, we have separated ourselves from death physically, but: ―Even as we deny that our flesh must decay, however, we surround ourselves with fictional images of the very fate we strive to hear nothing about‖. This paper will examine the importance of space and conflict in Zombie film post- 1968, and how this has been translated into social gatherings that at once celebrate the Zombie and undermine the notion of controlled social spaces of behaviour.

Toby Venables „Locating the Zombie: Landscapes of the Living Dead‟

Toby Venables, Anglia Ruskin University While the 'zombie' seems universal – appearing in many folklores and apparently transferable to all cultures and contexts – the modern zombie story is frequently related to contemporaneous socio-political realities, a key example being George A Romero's Night of the Living Dead and the violent upheavals precipitated by the Civil Rights movement. Drawing on work by Robin Wood, André Bazin, and Adam Lowenstein, this paper identifies a deeper tension, suggesting the modern zombie story is a ‗landscape genre‘ – like the Western, Film Noir and road horror (the key template for which is Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) – predominantly American, and similarly built upon the dichotomy between the urban and the rural. The roots of this dichotomy are traced to ancient tensions between Roman 'civilisation' and 'barbarian' tribalism. A repeated pattern in the modern zombie story is the city being overrun, becoming a deadly feeding ground in which the living are mere meat. They must, therefore, take refuge in the countryside. While road horror indicates anxieties about the rural landscape – whose cannibalistic, mutated inhabitants prey upon lost city-dwellers – the zombie story seems to suggest a need to reconnect with the land in order to escape living death. The ‗message‘ is clear: cities make us zombies. Or, perhaps, they already have. To quote Romero, speaking of the shambling, mindless denizens of the shopping mall in Dawn of the Dead: ‗They‘re us.‘ Nevertheless, this also rekindles the Western myth, albeit in bleaker guise – the possibility of salvation and new life in a lawless, savage landscape.