From the "Living Dead" to the "Walking Dead": How Modern Zombie Culture Reflects, Challenges and Perpetuates Implicit Negative Bias towards People with Disabilities

The modern zombie culture has been popular in the West since World War II as an allegory for what ails modern society. Yet, the zombie narrative has not been used in academic scholarship to explore the fears and misunderstandings that society holds towards marginalized communities. To uncover possible connections, this research examined how the reflection of disabilities and other minorities in popular zombie culture influences the audience’s perspectives about disability, inclusion, religion, and the zombie apocalypse. Data gathered through an in-depth survey, follow-up interviews with a sub-group of survey participants, and transcripts of the AMC television series The Walking Dead and George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead were analyzed using statistical and content analysis methods. Traditionally, the study of bias in the portrayal of the disabled community has focused on how audiences react to disability representations, including the level of disability portrayed. This research adopts a unique approach, situating the zombie itself as a representative of the nameless, faceless horde of those in society that do not conform to the social norms of today. The zombie is established as a representation of our unconscious biases, and it is argued that the zombie apocalypse can bring about positive change. The zombie narratives, with characters adapting to living in a world dominated by the disabled zombies that is not unified by religious practices, are seen as a depiction of hope for a post-apocalyptic societal rebuild into a more cohesive, inclusive, and empathetic community that sees the worth of all bodies, regardless of their abilities, with collective responsibility for making sure that nobody is left out.