MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

In recent years there has been a surge in the popularity of all things zombie, accompanied by a shift in the representations of zombies within zombie narratives. One way that we have tracked this shift is by differentiating between ‘old’ and ‘new’ zombies. With the zombies of old, we always knew where we stood—they wanted to eat us; we wanted to shoot their heads off. But with this new crop of undead, such neat boundaries are quickly being eroded. Instead of mindless, vacuous, hunger-filled husks, these new zombies are far more like us than their older relatives. They think, feel, and even seek gainful employment! New zombies all but collapse the distinction that has for so long made taking that headshot a no-brainer.

This paper comes out of a larger project in which we explore the revelatory potential of this new paradigm of zombie narratives as a metaphor for mental illness, broadly construed. New zombie narratives, we argue, are uniquely suited to shed light on more sympathetic, progressive, normalizing depictions of mental illness and other forms of neurodiversity.

In this paper, we will examine this strain of modern zombie fiction in The Girl With All the Gifts (McCarthy 2016; Carey 2014). The film and novel of the same name is set in a post-apocalyptic landscape where a fungus has rendered most of the population flesh-eating monsters. Main character Melanie is one of a group of infected children—“hungries”—who may hold a cure, but only by sacrificing themselves in the process. In our reading, TGWATG explores zombiism as a metaphor for neurodiversity, and in doing so forces viewers to reconsider assumptions about “normal” cognitive functioning, as well as the unethical implications within the discourse of “cure.”