The Walking Dead and the Rebirth of the American Western

                Never in the history of their existence has zombie related programming been so wildly popular throughout America. AMC has created an absolute ratings powerhouse with The Walking Dead that has changed the very idea of how many people a cable only network can reach. Almost fourteen million people watched the season finale and these numbers are impressive for network shows. This in turn has helped to push the networks to even try to compete with these cable shows by presenting grittier, darker shows for the American public and the world to consume. The recent Fox hit The Following is a good example of this. The question one should really ask is why is The Walking Dead so popular?

Is it simply that the quality of acting on the show is outstanding? Andrew Lincoln and David Morrissey are two particular standouts in my opinion. Is it that the show has a great story? Is it that there is a fascination with a post apocalyptic world that has developed very strongly amongst the culture since September 11? I would like to present some food for thought. Perhaps the true popularity of The Walking Dead lies in the fact that is has resurrected one of cinemas greatest art forms and an art form that has typically been seen as being distinctly American. To put it simply The Walking Dead is a very prototypical western.

All of the standard generic tropes of the western film are present in The Walking Dead. For one thing the iconography (visuals) constantly reminds us that we are in fact watching a western. For one thing Rick is a sheriff whom wears a cowboy hat and rides a horse. In arguably one of the shows finest moments this imagery is straight out of almost any western film that you could name. Additionally, other common traits of the western are gunfights, saloons, the empty vast landscape, the dastardly villain. These are all heavily present in The Walking Dead. Shane fulfilled this role in the first two seasons of the show with The Governor taking over this role in the third season. In season two of the show the character of Rick undergoes a major transformation when he blows away two guns in an abandoned saloon that is straight out of so many classic western films.

The most important and arguably the most distinctively “American” aspect of the western is the idea of conquering the frontier. This is one of the key myths in America’s mythology and the western was one of the best art forms that expanded upon this idea. Essentially, so many western films portray the American frontiersmen as good and noble people trying to civilize the hostile and uncivilized world that they find themselves in. This is exactly what is going on in The Walking Dead. Of course the “savages” who filled this landscape were Native Americans who were demonized in most of these films. John Ford’s The Searchers remains probably the best Western film to really examine this idea of what the “American’s” really thought about the Native Americans that they encountered. In the world of The Walking Dead the zombies take the place of the Native Americans as the savages who inhabit this vast landscape and are a constant threat to the settlers of this new world.

What makes The Walking Dead so fascinating to me is that it has reinvented the western film and it’s themes, plots and visual imagery make it very clear. Yet I think that many of the fans of the show have not reached this conclusion. I know that several of my students thought about this show in a completely new way once I brought this idea to them. Many of them said that they would never watch a western film because they cannot stand them and yet the absolutely love The Walking Dead. I am not proclaiming to be the only person to recognize this connection but nevertheless I would argue that the show’s popularity especially in America is very much rooted in it’s deep connection to western films. I also wonder if people needed to be reconnected with these myths and ideals after an event like September 11 or if perhaps since western films are in such great decline if the timing was simply right to bring back this ideology in a new and truly creative way.

Matthew Giordano