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Posted on February 14, 2019

Queering the Family in The Walking Dead

Guest Post

From the first, Rick Grimes’ role as a father has occupied a central place in The Walking Dead franchise. Initially, his quest to find his family drives both him and the narrative onward. Later, he competes violently for the status of sole patriarch of his family (a role that overlaps significantly with his role as leader of his group of survivors), forms new nuclear family units after his wife, Lori, dies, and consistently frames his decision-making as oriented towards making a future for his son, Carl. Perhaps his focus on the family does not seem surprising. Perhaps it even seems “natural.” Perhaps, however, it should not.

My essay, “‘We can’t just ignore the rules’: Queer Heterosexualities,” in the collection The Politics of Race, Gender and Sexuality in The Walking Dead, proposes that both The Walking Dead comics and television show overwhelmingly present, in their narratives, language, and visual representations, the dominance of the heteronormative nuclear family, the ideology that underlies it, and the mechanisms through which that ideology is enforced and naturalized.

Posted on October 26, 2018

The Walking Dead’s Hyperreal Hillbilly

Guest Post

AMC’s The Walking Dead is back for its 9th season. We’re going to run a series of posts about the series that are distilled versions of the arguments of chapters in our edited collection, The Politics of Race, Gender and Sexuality in The Walking Dead, recently published by McFarland. This collection is not at all the last word –and we’d like to open up more conversations about all these things in the show, especially as the issues raised in the book–and the arguments that get made–change as The Walking Dead narrative continues. To that end, we’re inviting submissions to Horror Homeroom that enter into conversation with this series of posts taken from our book. How do these arguments play out in seasons 8 and 9? If we publish your submission, we’ll send you a free copy of the book.

The third post in the series is from Carter Soles and Kom Kunyosying . . . This is what they have to say: Read more

Posted on October 12, 2018

Burning It Down: Fire in The Walking Dead

Guest Post

The second post in the series is from Catherine Pugh . . . This is what she has to say: Read more

Posted on October 3, 2018

Masculinity and Race in AMC’s The Walking Dead

Guest Post

AMC’s The Walking Dead is back Sunday October 7 for its 9th season. We’re going to run a series of posts about the series that are distilled versions of the arguments of chapters in our edited collection, The Politics of Race, Gender and Sexuality in The Walking Dead, recently published by McFarland. This collection is not at all the last word –and we’d like to open up more conversations about all these things in the show, especially as the issues raised in the book–and the arguments that get made–change as The Walking Dead narrative continues. To that end, we’re inviting submissions to Horror Homeroom that enter into conversation with this series of posts taken from our book. How do these arguments play out in seasons 8 and 9? If we publish your submission, we’ll send you a free copy of the book.

The first post in the series is from Brooke Bennett . . . This is what she has to say: Read more

Posted on November 6, 2016

Who is Ezekiel?: Hades and Androcles in The Walking Dead

Dawn Keetley

The second episode of season 7 (“The Well”) has been much and rightly praised for its exceptional storytelling, which served as a welcome relief from the brutality of the season opener (“The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be”).

I’ve read some interesting things online about how the storyline developing between Carol (Melissa McBride) and Ezekiel (Khary Payton), with his strange insistence that she take his pomegranate, evokes the Greek myth of Persephone and Hades.

This article by Ryan Folmsbee on Comicsverse is a good example and lays out how Carol’s story tracks that of Persephone.

A crucial part of the story of Persephone, though, is that it is known as “The Rape of Persephone.” Hades sees Persephone, wandering alone, and he forcibly abducts and rapes her. So when Folmsbee refers to the “love” between Hades and Persephone, it doesn’t exactly seem an accurate description of the relationship—and, indeed, in the posts I saw about the myth, the “rape” part was not being talked about. (Folmsbee gets it more right later when he says that “Persephone was not entirely on board with the idea of spending her life with Hades.”) Read more