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It’s time for us to turn into Zombies
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5280 Denver’s Mile High Magazine
If You’ve Had Weird Thoughts About Zombies and Vaccines, You’re Not Alone
Earlier this year, stories about people, including Coloradans, blaming their vaccine hesitancy on I Am Legend emerged. We explored the connection.
Angela Ufheil October 26, 2021
Just after receiving her second dose of the Pfizer vaccine, my mom made a strange joke. “I don’t know,” she told me over the phone. “I just feel like, now that I’ve had the vaccine, I’ll come back as a zombie when I die.”
It’s a scene straight out of The Walking Dead, an AMC show I watched with my family. At the end of season one, the characters learn that they’ve all been infected by… whatever is causing the dead to rise. (Supposedly, it was “space spores.”) Long story short, even if a person dies of natural causes, they’ll reanimate and become a zombie.
I verified that my mom—a strong believer in science—was kidding (mostly), and her comment became nothing more than a silly anecdote. That is, until I read a story in the Denver Post in which a man who felt uncomfortable receiving the COVID-19 vaccine mentioned the apocalyptic film I Am Legend. The 2007 movie starring Will Smith also appeared in the New York Times and Washington Post articles—each featuring someone blaming their vaccine hesitancy on the film.
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The zombies’ shambling lack 0f agency maps onto rhetoric anti-vaxxers use: that they’re freethinkers, and vaccinated people are sheep blindly following authority. “I think some of the fear of the vaccine—and you see this in the idea that the vaccine will magnetize you or put a microchip in you—is that you’ll stop being human,” Younger says. Pair that with unsubstantiated lab theory claims made by the far-right, and the overlap between COVID-19 and zombie flicks grows.
“The virus feels very apocalyptic to people,” Younger says. Scenes of barren grocery store shelves from March 2020, as well as fears that anyone, especially your loved ones, could be infected and give you the illness, is straight out of a zombie movie.
Even pandemic language feels familiar. Phrases like “rapid antigen testing” have gone from laboratory lingo to fodder for dinner table discussion. “It’s this massive input of vocabulary that people aren’t familiar with,” Knox says. “Where they have heard all of these terms are films where a bumbling scientist or an evil corporation sets off the zombie apocalypse.”
“I think that’s why people are confused, because we have seen pandemic narratives for so long in horror,” Lauro says. “They wonder, Can my real world look even more like these fantastical horror films?”
Read the article here:
https://www.5280.com/if-youve-had-weird-thoughts-about-zombies-and-vaccines-youre-not-alone/
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weehingthong 