The Walking Dead

“The Walking Dead” has become somewhat of an icon for zombies in America, and even all over the globe. The show is an AMC original depicting a post-apocalyptic world taken over by zombies. Like most zombies are depicted, the zombies portrayed in this series are members of the living dead. However the show gives a scientific spin on it, chalking the reanimation up to an infection that reactivates the brain stem, which controls simple functions such as breathing and eating. In other words, the zombies are humans without the human part. They are reanimated bodies turned animal.

            The reason I bring this up is to brag about how good the shows I watch are. No, I’m kidding, I just want to open you to all the different shows out there. It’s probably my favorite show on television. Each episode is filled with both short term and long term drama that constantly keeps you on the edge of your seat. After not watching the show for the first three seasons, I had decided that I was going to start watching it. This quickly turned into a poor decision, because I began watching it during finals of last semester. As a warning, if you begin to watch this show, do not begin to watch it during exam periods. Consider yourself warned.

            If you don’t want to take my opinion for how good “The Walking Dead” is, why not just see how it has affected popular culture today. The season opened with an approximate total of 16.1 million viewers. If you’re not familiar with television show views, that is indeed a lot of views. For comparison, the finale of “Breaking Bad” had a good 5 million less viewers. The finale of a show is probably the most exciting occurrence for a fan of that show. It will be an episode watched over and over, but will never have the same effect as it did on the first view. I’m not sure if I’m conveying just how important the finale of a television show can be to its viewers. The internet community for that show will go off like a nuclear bomb as soon as that first note in the opening song is played through each individual’s television speakers. However, the season opening of “The Walking Dead” – something nowhere near the effect of a show’s finale – had about 5 million more viewers than the finale of “Breaking Bad”. That’s about the population of Manhattan, four times over.

            In China, “The Walking Dead” is currently the most popular western culture show being played. It currently has more than 250. Allow me to explain how controversial that is for China. With very strict government, television and movie censorship, China gives a hard time towards releasing many highly approved Western television shows or movies. That being said, recently an American film was banned in China. I’m not sure if you heard of it, it’s called “World War Z.” “NO?! WHAT?! WHAT THE HELL, WHY?!” Hold on, I’m getting to that. Many shows and movies in China are banned for violence in general. The censors want to make sure no one gets hurt from the ideas of violent media. Well, World War Z happens to have the undead in it, and that’s considered too violent. Now I’m not sure if you can guess what “The Walking Dead” is about, but I can tell you it’s not about bunnies. The show is so popular that it hasn’t been banned when similar pieces of media have.

            This isn’t just a teenage phenomenon either. Some businesses have racked in the marketing ploys involving zombies after the release of “The Walking Dead”. This doesn’t mean much alone, so I’ll elaborate. An example of this would be the CDC (Center for Disease Control). After the release of the walking dead, the CDC’s blog released a post about zombie survival. What to do if there’s a zombie outbreak. Okay, so maybe zombies aren’t all hype. Maybe they’re possibly real. The CDC has contingency plans for viruses we haven’t been introduced to yet so they can prevent outbreak. Maybe they have a “zombie virus” there and want the word to get out. Well not exactly, the post is driven more towards natural disasters, stating that if you’re ready for a zombie apocalypse you’re prepared for any disaster. It constantly nods towards other natural disasters in its post to show their being facetious about zombies. However, the amount of publicity this post received is ridiculous. This 80 dollar marketing scheme was estimated to be an estimated worth of 3.4 million dollars. It reached an estimated 3.6 billion people, and crashed their blog site when it was first posted. While it makes references to “The Walking Dead” and appeals to zombie culture, the CDC had attained a great marketing value for such a simple idea because of it.