The living, the dead and the living dead: a sociological analysis of the series The Walking Dead

• Grant number: 13/23244-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: March 01, 2014
• End date: September 30, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Other specific Sociologies
• Principal Investigator: Mauro Luiz Rovai
• Grantee: Jorge Henrique Fugimoto
• Host Institution: Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (EFLCH). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Guarulhos. Guarulhos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The presence of "zombie" has a long historic in movies, but it was with the film Night of the living dead (George A. Romero, EUA, 1968) that the theme acquired the contours by which we know it today. Since, the most productions make references to end of the world, being known between fans as "zombie apocalypse". In 2010, began the exhibition of the series The Walking Dead by the television network from United States AMC, based on comic book homonym of great success. The series follow the sheriff Rick Grimes (played by Andrew Lincoln), after waking from coma in an empty hospital in Atlanta city is forced to fight for his survival, and after find his family passes to lead a group of survivors, requiring him to make different decisions. The world is collapsed and a rest of living people is fighting to survive in a land whose the main enemy is the "zombie" or "living dead", a type of human "non-human". Leveraging the fictional situations related to post-"zombie apocalypse" in this series, this work intend investigate which sociological aspects are mobilized in the presentation made about the end of "civilization" or the world "post-civilization". From the methodological point of view, will be given emphasis to the internal analysis from the episodes, so as to point how are constructed in it the form of sociability (between "living people", "dead people" and "living dead"), the political organization and the exercise of power after the "end of the world". (AU)