AMC's
The Walking Dead
AMC’s The Walking Dead represents a cumulation of the industry and societal trends I discussed in the home page of this website. First, I will explore how the show is reflective of AMC’s basic cable status. This freed them from the network model that depends on advertiser revenue. The Walking Dead could then be afforded a longer run time free from the traditional format of intermittent commercial breaks. This lent itself to AMC’s televisuality that included slow pacing reminiscent of cinema. Quiet eerie pauses and long takes underline the visual style of the show. Characteristic of this is the first, practically sans-dialogue, several minutes of the pilot episode, which follows the protagonist Rick as he wakes up in a post-apocalyptic world and wanders around. This stamp of AMC’s trademark style, which includes wide shots, location shooting, and naturalistic performances, is just one of the ways that the cable network followed HBO’s rebranding of TV as culturally superior to regular TV. The visual aesthetic of the show is carefully crafted and shots are photographically impressive, another attempt at sophisticated cinematic features. AMC aligned themselves with the notion of non-network television as privileged fare with a high production value afforded by their subscription fee and new 12-13 episode seasons. They used their own televisuality to differentiate themselves in the competitive marketplace and create a unique brand centered around exclusivity and quality. Like HBO, they used their original programming, mainly Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and The Walking Dead to position themselves as creators of award-winning and critically acclaimed content. During its first season, it became the most highly rated basic cable drama among adults aged between eighteen and forty-nine in history, solidifying its affiliation with “upscale” demographics and profitability to advertisers. AMC also owns a catalogue of feature films, helping to develop an association of high art with their originals.
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The content of the program also reflected these post-network era tendencies and was brand-focused. Even more than the broadcast networks, premium channels sought to drive home their brands and define themselves in terms of their broadcast counterparts. In The Walking Dead, they fully embraced the guts and gore of the zombie sub genre, adding in obscene language to prove just how subversive they are. Knowing this tendency, I was surprised to not see much nudity or sex in the series. Another way the series models post-network era content is through its themes and characters. For starters, each of these AMC shows: Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and The Walking Dead feature morally obscure protagonists and complex themes. They are socially conscious and critical, in the way post-network era programming swayed to align themselves with “distinguished”, “culturally superior” content. Though often relying on culturally conventional themes, this show attempts to be more unorthodox in its narratives. One of the ways they do this is through the loss the conventional morality. The post-apocalyptic world has rendered obsolete the good vs. evil and right vs. wrong binaries. The characters are forced to do normally horrible things, but their values and meanings are gone. People kill their zombied loved ones, they loot and steal, and kids become killers. Main characters are morally ambiguous, a trend not reserved to post-network era shows, but typical amongst them. Unlike the fictional worlds we are used to that reflect a greater good, this universe operates under the idea that meaning and value is socially constructed and projected. Religion, government, and science; institutions important to American culture, are shown as incapable of providing salvation. The characters turn to each of these establishments for hope, but they ultimately fail them. The one institution that provides solace and represents TV’s traditional heritage, is family. Much time is given to Rick, Lori, and Carl; and those characters without biological family (or whose family has been killed), seek out family-style relationships. The post-network era saw shows centered in the domestic sphere, extending the biological family to include others. The survivors, individuals and families, create clans that mimic traditional familial structures. This is the only stability for the characters, defining the nuclear family as a staple of a healthy community. This also allowed for unlimited possibilities of relationship shuffling and story material. These shows, also like The Walking Dead, featured contexts rife with violence, tension, fear, and threat. This points to the program’s heritage in the family melodrama. Multiple storylines and evolving characters and relations gave the show narrative richness.
The Walking Dead is a blend of many genres besides the family melodrama. Most obviously are the fantasy/sci-fi/horror genres, which are not typically encased in the domestic setting like this series. These genres have historically been sites for cultural critique because of their separation from the “real” world that allows them some distance from topical issues. Precursors such as The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, The X-Files, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer laid the sci-fi/fantasy television groundwork for the show. George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, a critically acclaimed horror film, is its film antecedent that introduced the zombie apocalypse and popularized the zombie subgenre. Its cult following likely led to the creation of the AMC series. Its subversive themes and social critiques also carried over, as did the referral of zombies as “ghouls” in the film, leading to the show’s title of zombies as “walkers”. By piggybacking off of this cultural notoriety associated with sophistication, the show could separate itself from typical “lowbrow” TV and its heritage in the original comic, another “unsophisticated” medium. But breaking from prior zombie narratives, the zombies are no longer the characters’ main concern. Their anxiety centers around threats from other people and a lack of resources. Survival of the protagonists is the overarching theme. Prior zombie fare also leaned left, critiquing capitalism, individualism, and Western society. Night of the Living Dead has been said to critique the Vietnam War, for example. The Walking Dead instead relies on more traditional values of family and simultaneously individualism, in that individual survival is the most important. While trying to appear socially conscious in a post-network era fashion, the show still leans on other thematic heritages such as violence and patriarchal power structures. Its position on cable does not preserve it from creator’s desires to appeal to the traditionally desirable viewer. Rick and Alan are the alpha males, with most men in roles such as hunters, doctors, and leaders. The women generally do the laundry, nurse the sick, and care for the kids. Racial stereotyping can be found as well, such as the inclusion of a a group of Latino gangsters, though they do include non-white protagonists, such as Michonne and Morgan Jones.
More surprising to me is The Walking Dead’s heritage in the Western genre. The show adapts and alludes to Western conventions. It does this visually and through its themes. In the pilot episode, I noticed many Western references. For example, Rick mounts a horse and rides solo into the city of Atlanta. This is directly reminiscent of the trope of the lone stranger riding into town. Thematically, the post-apocalyptic America setting represents the Wild West: the new frontier marked by lawlessness and adventure. Rick is the rugged All-American cowboy who is supposed to save the day. This visually juxtaposes with the dark and eerie urban setting. The image of Rick riding on a horse is in direct opposition to the burned out cars and city infrastructure that surrounds him. The themes are juxtaposed as well: the colonialist values and imperialism typical of the Western, and the destabilization of dominant power structures inherent in the zombie film. The show updates and recreates the Western genre, distinguishing itself by reviving a genre that was all but dead.
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Outside of industry conditions, it is important to consider cultural influences. American social anxieties of disease outbreaks, natural disaster, terrorism, technological advancement, and environmental destruction prevalent in the media played into these apocalyptic themes. Images of abandoned cities, corpses, decay, and gangs of vigilantes capitalized on our collective fears. The groups of survivors unable to work together or compromise played off of our perceptions of an increasingly polarized society unable to reconcile differences. Because of these cultural apprehensions, The Walking Dead could resonate with American audiences.
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This series represents the logic of publishing in that in an era of endless variations on a genre, the show could position itself in a very specific niche that encompasses several genres. But with its huge success and impressive viewership, I feel that The Walking Dead did operate in “forum-like terms”, in that it did become water cooler conversation. Its popularity made it a household name in America, returning to this idea of a shared cultural experience. This was highlighted by “The Talking Dead” a show aired immediately after the weekly broadcast dedicated to discussing the week’s program. Furthermore, the user-determined schedule facilitated by the logic of publishing is less applicable to The Walking Dead, because audiences tune in to the weekly broadcasts, returning to the model of a communal viewing experience and collective live audience.
The immense success of this show and mainstream-ization of the zombie sub genre has galvanized shows such as Syfy’s Z Nation and BBC’s In the Flesh. I do not think it broke any new ground except to be demonstrative of the slow progress of the business of regulated innovation.