The Walking Dead’s
popularity continues to grow. The 5th season saw its audience
overtake ratings king, Sunday Night Football, twice. Why does the show continue
to draw so many viewers? It can’t be the writing. The characters often engage in illogical or
incredulous behavior that often has to be explained on the tedious Talking Dead show that follows. This is
a mark of poor writing to be sure. Indeed, it is hard to identify one season
where the intrepid saviors don’t do something entirely stupid. There is not much in the way of
interesting dialogue either. And there
is not much character development to speak of and when a character is “fleshed
out” his or her end is nigh high. It’s predictable that way.
Certainly some of the appeal relates to the show’s conceit:
a group of people trying to survive in bleak and difficult circumstances. This
idea has been employed throughout literature and often makes for compelling
entertainment. From the Poseidon Adventure
to Predator to any of the Aliens
films, and on and on, stories like to put people to the test and see if they
can make it. We are entertained through
their struggle and secretly pull for them to make it—well most of the people. We
imagine our own chances to survive in these stories. Could we do what it takes
to survive? This may even harken back to some primordial sense buried deep,
when our species struggled to persist in a dangerous world. We have scarcely had it so good, so perhaps
the show appeals to an earlier instinct.
However the apocalyptic milieu depicted on the show may also
appeal to our own sense of impending extinction. Information from leading scientists paints a
very dim and bleak assessment of our continued survival. Indeed one finds it hard to
see humans surviving into the 2030s. That’s fifteen years from now and a
very disconcerting idea, an existential crisis indeed. Perhaps he is wrong and overstating it. So,
then, twenty years? Twenty five? Fifty? One hundred? Soon, though. Further many scientists have observed that we are
living in the 6th Mass
Extinction. The five prior essentially killed almost everything on the
planet. The last one some 65 million years ago killed the dinosaurs. Take a peek at the animal
kingdom. Elephants and rhinos are almost all gone. Same with lions, tigers,
polar bears, fish, etc. Amphibians are
nearly extinct. Same with plants. They are going extinct at a breakneck speed,
thanks to humans many scientists reveal. Of course,
other scientists, fewer by far than those who do, say otherwise and the threat is overstated and hyperbolic.
The weather has been acting oddly. Some do not believe in
anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD)—global warming-- because Al Gore made a
movie about it, but it is hard to ignore what we can see outside the windows.
We also understand that we are polluting the environment and that this must
have a negative impact. Have you ever
looked at the toxicity that attends to animal agriculture? Have you heard about
fracking? And who can overlook all the oil that is spilled into the
environment. Not to mention all the emissions. It is easier to ignore the glum
facts, like many people I know, but deep down we know something is askew. It’s
not supposed to be like this. Nature is responding.
While the bleak and calamitous environment on the Walking Dead will not be the same as
runaway greenhouse effect, we understand that something terrible is heading our
way. We sense it. So perhaps the appeal of the show reminds us of our undoing,
and our folly at ignoring threats and thinking we can overcome anything. After all, the threat is us, I mean it’s the
walkers.
