If society crumbles in the apocalypse, does everything go out the window? The Walking Dead thinks so. We are introduced to Lee Everett, the protagonist, after he commits murder. He’s on his way to jail but there’s a car crash and he’s able to get away. Immediately what is established is the idea that normal laws no longer apply in zombieland.
Ethics and interpersonal relationships also crumble, the game argues. As the series goes on, we are asked to make moral choices that wouldn’t happen under normal circumstances. Often these are “two of lesser evil” choices–for instance, do you kill someone to put them out of their misery but attract attention to yourself, or do you let them die because they’re a good distraction? In both choices, the person dies. You can’t be the hero but you can help yourself. The suggestion here is that the ability to make the right moral choices wavers if not disappears in the name of survival. Finally, the game posits that people act out of self interest and fear above all else, making it difficult to trust anyone at all–even those you love.
By the time episode 3 occurs, the game goes further and wants to make the argument that gender roles have also dissipated, just like everything else. ‘Nothing is as you once knew’ is crucial to the game. It banks on subverting normal expectations of how things work in society and it creates shock value though the merciless treatment of characters to advance the plot. The game uses both of these things to create an impact.
As an embodiment of these ideals, the character Chuck, who is a homeless wanderer, appears after the lowest point in the game. You’ve recently lost the security of your home, what little you owned, most of the people you know are dead, and you have no clear plan for the future. Chuck then explains to Lee that he should not be surprised, for when the world is overrun by zombies–to paraphrase–you are either living, or you’re not. You aren’t little, you aren’t a girl, you aren’t a boy, you aren’t rich, you aren’t poor–so on, so forth–you’re either living or you’re dead.
This isn’t true. If we examine the cast, we find that the female characters are often defined by feminine aspects and either die or suffer because of them. There are five female characters: Clementine, your adopted ‘daughter’, Katjaa, Kenny’s wife, Lilly, who used to work at the air force, Carley, the former journalist, and St. John’s mother.
The game mounts tension between Lilly and Kenny throughout all the episodes, which wears Lilly thin. By episode three, she is clearly overworked and paranoid, and begins suspecting everyone as a possible betrayer. She turns out to be right, but by this point, the situation has caused her to lose her grip. In a petty argument with Carley, where she is called nothing but a scared little girl, Lilly loses it and kills Carley by shooting her. Lilly’s rational faculties are compromised and she let her irrational paranoia and emotions get the better of her.
Carley, as mentioned earlier, is killed in a stupid spat. Prior to this, though, her primary role was that of love interest to the character. Because the game finds it necessary to hit the player in the gut, most characters can be reduced to their relationship function–as this is what defines their meaning to the player. Carley exists to romantically entangle the player and, once that happens, to be taken away: there is no way to prevent her death. The problem is that little is done to characterize Carley in a meaningful way; she is often in the background and not involved in the plot of the episodes. Being invested in her realistically is an impossibility. But since she is a woman, and the player plays a man, then it follows that they will be interested in each other, right?
Katjaa, similarly, is barely characterized in the game and mostly exists in the background. When she is involved in the narrative, it is to use her first aid abilities–much like women in games tend to be the healers. Otherwise, she exists to be the wife who occasionally argues with her husband, or is taking care of her son. She dies in episode 3 because of her inability to deal with her son’s infection. Here we see the erosion of the two things that come packaged with her gender: she cannot cure her son, and she cannot be a mother anymore. She commits suicide by shooting herself in the head, done to ensure that she does not come back, but it carries a metaphorical significance as well. Where Lilly lacked the mental faculties, Katjaa lacks the mental fortitude to go on. Women are hysterical or irrational, yes?
Momma St John, meanwhile, is the head of the cannibalistic household. This segment of the game is the most horrid, as we see that true darkness lies not with the horde but rather the survivors. She enables her sons to feel justified in pursuing cannibalism, and is the cook of the meat as well. Not only does the moral lapse originate with her, but she uses a typically feminine pursuit–cooking–to enact it.
Finally, we have Clementine. Chuck’s speech earlier is in reference to Clementine–he argues that Lee should stop thinking of her as a little girl and should equip her with what she needs to survive. One of the ways Lee seeks to cement her transition from little girl to ‘alive’ is to cut her hair. Losing the long hair is not only symbolic of losing her innocence, but of the adults around her attempting to erase her gender–which, they argue, no longer exists or matters in the zombie apocalypse.
Those wielding privilege, however, often like to hide their power through erasure. If we just stop paying attention to [race/gender/class] then it stops being a problem! Interestingly, all the women are dead by this point and Clementine is under the care of only adult men. The earlier treatment of the women in the cast is only exacerbated by this fact. Further, Clementine could be said to embody the future–she is a child. But in this future, it seems as if the patriarchy still rules supreme.
Many things might change when society crumbles, but The Walking Dead shows us that the apocalypse is a great environment to shackle us to the typical power structures without noticing it–all in the name of survival.
