Aliens and Zombies

The setting: Earth, in which 95% or more of the population has been killed - mercilessly.

The protagonists:  A small group of survivors.

Discussion:

This is a fairly common setup for a speculative fiction story.  From this basic premise, however, several different genres of tales emerge.  Due to the kinds of TV dramas I've been watching lately, I've noticed how similar, and how different, the narratives can be.  It seems to me each variation has its own viewpoint which touches us psychologically, but with one key theme which is shared, and another theme which is specific to the genre it represents.  I'll discuss two today - alien invasion, and zombie apocalypse.

 In this blog, I've already written about Falling Skies, a summer show on TNT.  In that show's world, the merciless agent -- the cause of so much killing and the destruction of our way of life -- is a hostile alien invasion.  The protagonist group we follow consists of a wide range of people, few of whom knew each other before the disaster.  It's been very entertaining, often quite dramatic, and it's something Sherry enjoys watching with me


In the. past couple of weeks, I've seen another cable show which has two seasons under its belt -- as Falling Skies has.  This one is The Walking Dead.  As you might guess by its title, in this show's world, the merciless agent is not aliens -- it's zombies.  Sometimes single zombies, but most often hordes of them, drawn to living humans with the sole purpose of eating those humans and, as a result, turning whatever might be left of the dead humans into zombies. Again, the protagonists are a diverse group.  I find it entertaining, dramatic and -- yes -- gross and horrific.  For these reasons and others, Sherry has no interest in watching it.

Certainly there are similarities between the shows -- I've already mentioned the basic set up, and the protagonist groups.  Additionally, the "good guys" are clearly marked by their humanity, and the bad guys by their non-humanity.  But, because these are stories written about how people will behave when the structure of civilization has been removed, we also find out that some of the humans are pretty inhuman, too.  We see that the survivors want to reestablish a place where they can be safe, and be civilized again, but we see that some of them are willing to assert control over weaker members of the group, and many of the dramatic threads come from the people who are closest to being heroes dealing with people who are less than heroic.

With so much in common, then, are the stories the same?  Are we dealing with the same ultimate themes?

I believe it's pretty clear the answer is no.

Both types of stories deal with a loss of civilization.   They both examine what it might mean to have to live by our wits, without most of the comforts or certainties our lives contain.  In both kinds of stories, we have to face the fact that, ultimately, none of us are really in control of our surroundings. We could be placed into situations in which we would have to adapt or die very quickly.

In the case of Falling Skies,  the force which caused this mess is alien.  That fact makes the themes of these stories focus on "Us vs. Them."  THEY caused it.  WE are the aggrieved party.  The world might never be exactly the same as it was before, but if WE can get rid of THEM, WE can WIN.  So, in that sense, Falling Skies is an optimistic show, which plays to our love of US, our hatred of THEM, all while trying to get us to see that ALL of humanity is US.

This is very different from The Walking Dead.  A "zombie apocalypse" story has antagonists which are US, but dead.  There is no THEM in the premise of this story.  Yes, as previously mentioned, some "bad guys" might try to do us harm, but the true villains are the Zombies.  And what do they represent?  They are DEATH made incarnate.  We're all going to die at some point, says the Zombie Apocalypse, and it's not pretty.  We can try to run, try to hide, try to fight it, but Death keeps coming.  And so, in this way, The Walking Dead and other Zombie Apocalypse stories are essentially pessimistic -- or perhaps better - nihilistic.  And yet.  And yet.

As we watch Rick Grimes, the central character in the group of survivors at the heart of The Walking Dead, we see a hero.  Perhaps he's a tragic hero, in a sense, but we see a bit of optimism in him and most of the people around him.  Despite the overwhelming odds, he keeps fighting, keeps resisting, keeps persevering -- and all the time trying to do it with a sense of morality and integrity.  He doesn't always get it right, but he does keep trying.  And this has a hint of optimism in it.  Here he is similar to his counterpart in Falling Skies, Tom Mason.

Ingrained into most of us is a need to see a hero.  (Some might say "all of us" but that's a topic for another time.)  We want a person who will stand in for us and face the challenge while trying to do the right thing.  Depending on the type of story, we don't need that person to ultimately win but we need to see the effort.  And in that sense, each of these stories has an underlying hope for the ultimate value of our humanity.


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This entry owes a great deal to my good friend, Michael Hacker, who has done much deeper analysis on the psychology behind story types --  specifically horror subgenres.  I wish I had been able to hear him as a panelist at the Greater Los Angeles Writers' Conference, where he got a chance to discuss this. Anyway, Mike, feel free to add your knowledgeable two-cents.