![]() ![]() Nowhere is the political message of the film more transparent than in the scenes set in Jerusalem. But the iconography of the rampant living dead assault on streets and buildings harks back to the storming of the Bastille at the onset of the French Revolution, which remains the prototype of mass protest movements to this day. The zombie invasion of major Western cities echoes recent demonstrations such as the Occupy Movement or the Spanish Indignados, who took to public spaces to demand the end of economic inequality. Their poor are contaminating us and we are becoming more like them. The developing countries are to blame for the faltering prosperity of the West. The movie’s conservative subtext is not hard to grasp. After all, the standards of living have been declining in most developed nations, a situation exacerbated by the 2008 economic meltdown and the ongoing eurozone crisis. If the living dead represent the world’s poor, it is not surprising that their “disease” is viewed as contagious. Let us revisit some key moments of World War Z bearing this question in mind. Faced with the sheer number of those infected by the pandemic, we cannot help but wonder: are zombies the 99%? After all, most Westerners quickly turn into living dead, with only a few pockets of human resistance left in the end. Yet, we should not give in to a facile reading of the movie as a simple “East versus West” story. The hordes of famished zombies who invade Philadelphia, eager to sink their teeth into anyone in their path, can be interpreted as the world’s poor, desirous for a share in the wealth of prosperous America.ĭon't miss what David Miliband, Laura Chinchilla, Bill McKibben, Mohamed Nasheed, and more had to say at our latest virtual event, Forsaken Futures. The movie offers a dystopian view of the globalized planet, according to which the West is taken over by the rest. As in so many other recent films, the peril comes from the East and threatens to destroy “our” way of life, so eloquently portrayed by Pitt and his family. World War Z clearly panders to Western fears of Asian dominance. What is the film telling us about globalization? How are we to interpret this zombie genealogy? Hailing from developing countries, the living dead rapidly spread throughout the globe thanks to modern means of transportation. That line was later removed in an effort to appeased Chinese sensibilities and Chinese censors, who are yet to approve the release of the film to the world’s second-largest cinema audience. ![]() In fact, the movie originally identified China as the source of the infection. Later, we learn that the disease originated somewhere in East Asia, where the combination of toxic industrial waste and overpopulation created the perfect zombie breeding ground. A series of images of environmental degradation suggest a causal link between the zombie epidemic and rising levels of pollution. The first sign that something has gone awry in the “good-guys-against-bad-guys” traditional plotline comes early in the film. One cannot help but ask: Who are these zombies? And why do we have to fight them? Or perhaps it’s the disturbing fall of Jerusalem to hordes of zombies, the images of which are clearly reminiscent of footage from the Palestinian Intifada. Maybe it’s the moment when Pitt’s middle-class family idyll is shattered by swarms of living dead. The film’s somewhat contrived happy ending notwithstanding, I left the movie theater with the nagging feeling that things are not what they used to be in Zombieland.
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