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A postapocalyptic return to the frontier: The Walking Dead as post-Western

2018; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 13; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/1749602018796696

1749-6039

Amanda Keeler,

Crime, Deviance, and Social Control

This article argues that The Walking Dead is a post-Western, a genre that extracts classical Hollywood Western themes and iconography, and resituates them in a dystopian, postapocalyptic setting. The program features characters forced to reconquer the frontier amid the disintegration of modern society, who must battle undead walkers and other human survivors. As a post-Western, the program inverts the ideological optimism of the classical Hollywood Western. In doing so, it highlights the linkages between the seemingly unconnected narrative universes of the Western and the postapocalyptic tale.