A Texas road sign displays warnings about zombies in January 2009

Zombies are everywhere at the moment: a book mashing up the living dead with Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) is a best-seller, numerous zombie films and games have been recently released or will come out later this year and even Woody Harrelson justified hitting a photographer recently because he thought they were a member of the living dead: “I was startled by a paparazzo,” Harrelson said, “who I quite understandably mistook for a zombie.” So why is there a cultural zombie invasion at the moment? What is it about the living dead that means they are popping up at on every corner?

Contemporary Anxieties

This increased prominance to the living dead has not gone unnoticed by the press. The Daily Telgraph asks in an article published today Zombies and vampires: why do we love the undead?, The Arizona Republic’s article notes that Zombies are a Rising Trend, while Time magazine claims ‘Zombies are the New Vampires‘. If anything, Vampires were staked in the heart by a zombified Van Helsing years ago and in their place have risen up an army of the undead who have plagued our tv screens, games consoles, movie theatres and books.

All monsters play on the fears of their contemporary audiences: vampires depict fears regarding sex and sexuality; Frankenstein’s monster highlights anxieties relating to modern science and Werewolves symbolise man’s fear of its own animal passions. Zombies are very much a reflection of late 20th/early 21st century fears, representing a complex range of contemporary anxieties. However, even though zombies symbolise death, disease, de-humanisation, and the fragility of both ourselves and our society, this is not the reason why they have become so engrained in our culture.

It’s because zombies are fun.

Chainsaws and Shotguns

Zombies are a loveable punchbag to offload our frustrations out on; the zombie apocalypse appealing precisely because the old rules of society have collapsed, thereby allowing us live out survivalist fantasies. Moreover, there is no guilt in dispatching a undead walking corpse with a shotgun or chainsaw, only the pleasure of seeing their blood and brains explode. What isn’t there to love about the living dead?

Lost Zombies is a social media initiative, where contributors send in clips for a community-based documentary about a zombie apocalypse. Elsewehere, zombie flash mobs appear in cities, with people dressing up as blood-splattered undead. This is an alternative reality where zombies are real and the post-apocalyptic world is already happening; the boundaries between real and virtual blurred, with zombies a tool to undermine established society and culture. The axiom of Dawn of the Dead where zombies are us, us them is no more apparent: we want to be the mindless zombie and live through a zombie apocalypse.

Apocalyptic Gallows Humour

The very nature the zombie apocalypse is inherently ambivalent: a preposterous unreality (the dead coming back to life and eating the living) effectively a meta-joke that both shies away from, and at the same time implicitly addresses, more possible apocalypses such as pandemic viruses, environmental disaster, economic collapse or even nuclear holocaust. Nearly all these cataclysms are a product of man’s folly and potential to destroy itself: ultimately they are as ridiculous as the zombies that mock them.

More than comedy-horror escapism, zombies are a form of contemporary surrealism; an apocalyptic gallows-humour that parodies our fears of the future. The complex duality makes the zombie continuingly engaging and relevant for contemporary audiences. There is a winking post-modernism associated with zombies, so instead of openly fearing the living dead, we embrace them as old friends. By laughing at zombies we are literally laughing in the face of death and of the absurdity of humans causing a post-apocalypse sometime in the future.

Left 4 Dead

My game of choice over the last few months has been Valve’s zombie first-person shooter, Left 4 Dead. Set during a zombie apocalypse, Left 4 Dead captures the immediate aftermath of the end of the world perfectly: the four human survivors have to negotiate thousands of zombies against a backdrop of empty offices, burnt out buildings and broken-down trains, planes and automobiles. However, Left 4 Dead is more than just a brilliant game, its emphasis on co-operative gameplay is highly significant as it echoes a broader movement towards global co-operation on a political, social and economic level.

Co-operation

While Left 4 Dead’s subject matter is generic (the zombie-apocalypse-due-to-pandemic-virus idea comes straight from I, Legend and 28 Days Later), its game play is revolutionary. Co-operation is key and it is one of the few games where you cannot hope to win unless you’ve got teammates you can trust. While there have been games with co-op modes before (such as Resident Evil, Gears of War and the Battlefield games), nothing is on the scale of Left 4 Dead.

This is a game where you have to stick close to the other players: you are relying on them and they are relying on you through an intricate balance of genuine co-operation. If you decide to do your own thing, not only will you die a quick death but you will probably be condemning the rest of your party as well. You are forced to play nicely with others: even if you leave, the game warns you that you’ll be ‘letting your teammates down’.

In the game you are not an individual as much as you are part of a group; a concept common in armies, sports teams and Socialist/Fascist theory but rare in computer games. That a game is effectively encouraging collectivism is significant, not least as recent months have seen a greater emphasis on the collective as opposed to the individual in political circles.

Left-wing 4 Dead?

Left 4 Dead was released in the US on November 13 2008, less than 10 days after the election of a liberal president who openly professed conciliation as opposed to unilateralism. While it would be a stretch to argue that Left 4 Dead is left-wing, it certainly is a game that symbolises a wider cultural shift from right to left. It emphasizes the importance of the team for success rather than the individual; the solitary superhero character prevalent in games and movies (as in Quake, Die Hard, Tomb Raider, Rambo and numerous others) is rendered redundant. This is a game primarily concerned with the collective.

Recent circumstances have forced the political elite to take a more co-operative route. This was on display at the recent G20 summit in London, with the leading powers agreeing to work together and take a co-ordinated economic approach to address the recession/credit crunch. Meanwhile, in the UK, the Labour Government – once so keen to declare their prudent fiscal conservatism – has abandoned New Labour monetarism to effectively nationalise failing banks. This was a display of state power over the market; of public over private and of the collective over the individual.

Elsewhere, Earth Hour in late March saw cities across the world plunged into darkness as people and institutions turned off their lights for 60 minutes, in what the organisers claimed was ‘a global call to action for every individual, every business, and every community – a call to stand up and take control of the future of our planet.’ This mass collective action suggests that only if everyone joins together, can climate change be addressed and possibly averted.

Left 4 Dead: A metaphor 4 our times?

Left 4 Dead is a game set in an apocalyptic world where co-operation is the only hope of salvation: only by co-operating with your teammates can you ever hope to escape from the zombie horde. Likewise, recent months have highlighted that only by co-operating on a mass scale can we  hope to avoid another Depression or impending environmental disaster. Left 4 Dead may be only be a zombie game in style, but in spirit it reflects a co-operative philosophy that is increasingly relevant for the contemporary world.

In any case, expect a slew of Left 4 Dead clones to emerge in the near future. In the meantime, Valve will be releasing free downloadable content for both Xbox 360 and PC on 21 April 2009.