Undead Apocalypse: Vampires and Zombies in the 21st Century

236 Pages·2016·6.09 MB·English

by  Stacey Abbott

Undead Apocalypse

Undead Apocalypse
Vampires and Zombies in the
Twenty-first Century
Stacey Abbott
For Simon, Max and Lily
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© Stacey Abbott, 2016
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
The Tun – Holyrood Road
12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry
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ISBN 978 0 7486 9490 7 (hardback)
ISBN 978 0 7486 9492 1 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978 0 7486 9493 8 (epub)
The right of Stacey Abbott to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).
Contents
List of Figures vi
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction – ‘Needing to Know the Plural of Apocalypse’ 1
1 The Legacy of Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend 9
2 ‘Cancer with a Purpose’: Putting the Vampire Under the
Microscope 39
3 The Cinematic Rising: The Resurgence of the Zombie 62
4 A Very Slow Apocalypse: Zombie TV 93
5 The Hybrid Hero 120
6 ‘Be Me’: I-Vampire/I-Zombie 142
7 How to Survive a Vampire Apocalypse: Or, What to Do When
the Vampires are Us 177
Afterword – They Walk Among Us: Vampires and Zombies
Popular Culture 198
Filmography 202
TV Guide 206
Works Cited 208
Index 221
Figures
1.1 Under the microscope in Last Man on Earth 14
1.2 Zombie-like vampires in Last Man on Earth 17
1.3 Claustrophobic mise-en-scène in Night of the Living Dead 33
2.1 Bella’s transformation in Breaking Dawn Part 1 40
2.2 Mise-en-scène of science in The Hunger 46
2.3 Fear of contagion in I Am Legend 54
2.4 The scrutiny of the vampire in Perfect Creature 59
3.1 The memorial wall of the dead in 28 Days Later 70
3.2 Zombie-child in Dawn of the Dead 71
3.3 Mise-en-scène of viral paranoia in [REC] 83
3.4 The unresolved ending in [REC] 90
4.1 Walking among the zombies in ‘Guts’ The Walking Dead (1.2) 97
4.2 The family that eats together in ‘Dead Men Don’t Wear
Plaid’ Supernatural (5.15) 102
4.3 The all-too-human zombie in ‘Type 4’ Being Human UK
(3.3) 104
4.4 Buffy as zombie in ‘Bargaining Part 1 & 2’ Buffy the Vampire
Slayer (6.1/2) 110
5.1 The action vampire in Underworld 128
5.2 Costume for the vampire cyborg in Underworld 128
5.3 Western camouflage for the desert in Resident Evil: Extinction 130
5.4 Special Effects Action Cyborg in Resident Evil: Apocalypse 138
5.5 Digital Effects in Resident Evil: Afterlife 139
6.1 Composition of resistance in Byzantium 154
6.2 I-vampire in Only Lovers Left Alive 159
6.3 I-zombie in ‘Episode 1’ In the Flesh 170
6.4 Queering the zombie in ‘Episode 3’ In the Flesh 173
6.5 Zombie revealed in ‘Episode 3’ In the Flesh 173
7.1 Feeding frenzy in Priest 181
7.2 The monstrous vampire observed in Daybreakers 184
7.3 The zombie-like vampire in ‘Night Zero’ The Strain (1.1) 188
7.4 The fundamentalist vampire film: Priest 195
8.1 The pleasures of zombie face painting and cosplay 200
Acknowledgements
Despite its apocalyptic content, this book has been a joy to write and has
brought me into contact with so many like-minded people with whom I
have been able to share my love of vampires and zombies, as well as my
fascination with the post-apocalyptic landscape. As such there are many
people to whom I am indebted for sharing their ideas and for discussing
mine. I would like to thank everyone at the University of Edinburgh
Press for their support for this project. There are many scholars of the
undead who have influenced me over the years, including Nina Auerbach,
Simon Bacon, Brigid Cherry, Ken Gelder, Samantha George, Sorcha
Nì Fhlainn, Maria Mellins, Catherine Spooner and Milly Williamson.
In particular I am indebted to Gregory A. Waller’s The Living and the
Undead: Slaying Vampires, Exterminating Zombies as this was a major
influence on my work both in this book and my earlier Celluloid Vampires.
I was delighted when Celluloid Vampires was acknowledged in the revised
edition. I would, therefore, like to thank Gregory Waller for his influence,
outstanding scholarship and generosity of spirit. This book began as two
keynote papers, for the Open Graves Open Minds conference organised
by the University of Hertfordshire and the Vampires: Myths of Past and
Future conference organised by the Institute for Germanic and Romantic
Studies, University of London. Thank you to Sam George and Simon
Bacon for the invitations. I also delivered early versions of my zombie TV
chapter at Ewan Kirkland’s Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! Symposium and
for Aris Mousoutzanis’ research seminar series, both at the University
of Brighton. Thank you to the organisers of these events, as well as to
all those delegates who made insightful comments and shared their
work. Your feedback was invaluable. I am indebted to the University of
Roehampton for providing the sabbatical in 2014 to begin this project
and to my colleagues in the Department of Media, Culture and Language
for all of their support and encouragement. You are a fantastic team
with which to work. Thank you to Stan Beeler, as always, for supplying
me with interesting new television series to watch, including Z-Nation
and iZombie. Thank you, also, to Peter Bailey, for his enthusiasm for the
undead, for his excited Facebook messages about The Walking Dead, and
viii undead apocalypse
for sending me loads of fascinating links about zombies in popular culture.
Your messages always made me smile.
I would like to thank Dominic Mitchell and Max Brooks for speaking
to me about their work and for their contagious enthusiasm for the zombie
genre. Their work is an inspiration and I look forward to all of their future
projects. I am still holding out hope for In the Flesh, as I am desperate to
know what happened to two of my favourite zombies, Kieran and Amy. I
would also like to thank Claire Eastham for introducing me to Max Brooks
and to Daniel Fraser for introducing me to Claire – you are a wonderful
couple, destined for great things. Thank you to Ed Lambert and Karen
Myers of the British Board of Film Classification for their help in sourc-
ing useful material from their archives and for allowing me to have access
to such fascinating paperwork. As always thank you to the staff of the BFI
Reuban Library for their assistance and for being one of my favourite
places to research or simply to sit and think.
During the writing process, I have been inspired and encouraged by
so many friends and colleagues who are also writing books. Thank you
to everyone who took part in the Summer Writing Club and the Autumn
Writing Club on Facebook for all of your support during the final stages of
this process. You helped in so many ways. Thanks in particular to Lorna
Jowett and Bronwen Calvert for their scholarship and friendship, particu-
larly as we all worked so hard to complete our individual books and gave
each other much needed support. The Trio Rules! Thank you to Roger
Luckhurst for letting me read a pre-published version of his book Zombies:
A Cultural History, and for setting the bar so high. I would like to thank
all of the students who have taken my Modern Vampire and Genre and
Cultural Context classes for thoughtful and engaging discussions about
vampires and zombies. As always, you ensure I keep looking at these films
with fresh eyes. Thank you to Karis Searle for the engaging and thought-
provoking discussions about masculinity and the post-apocalypse (and
The Walking Dead) while supervising your undergraduate dissertation.
Those talks definitely started my brain thinking about the apocalypse.
Thanks to Ash Harkin for encouraging me to read graphic novels and play
video games, basically pushing me out of my comfort zone. I’m not quite
there yet but I do own The Walking Dead video game.
As always a special thank you goes to my super-cyber sibs, Glenn,
Leslie, Jeff and Joanne who always remind me of where I come from and
who I am. Your encouragement and support of my strange fascination
with the undead means so much. Finally, I cannot adequately express the
debt that I owe to my husband Simon Brown who has done so much over
the past two years to enable me to write this book. His contribution cannot
acknowledgements ix
be understated, including listening and talking through my ideas, reading
draft chapters, devoting hours to watching an ever-growing number of
vampire and zombie films and television series, not to mention undertak-
ing more than his share of dog-walking as I completed the book. Thanks
also to Simon for sharing our sabbatical in 2014. It was a delight working
with you in this period, whether in our home – me at the table and you on
the sofa – or in our writer’s retreat in North Devon. Thanks also to my
dogs Max and Lily for their patience with me as I worked and for being
the best distractions. It is ironic that this book about vampires, zombies
and the apocalypse is bound up with the happiest memories of the four of
us walking in crisp winter weather on Saunton sands. It is for this reason
that I dedicate this book to the three of you.