Zombie Essay PDF

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Essay für 4.3 B.Ed. Englisch. Hat sehr gutes Feedback bekommen. Kritisiert wurde der Titel (da man den gewählten Zombie Text im Titel nennen soll) und dass die Absätze inhaltlich miteinander verknüpft werden sollten. Die Arbeitshypothese wurde sehr gelobt....

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Universität Koblenz-Landau English Department Winter Term 2021/2022 Module: 4 Course: Writing Skills 4.3 Name of Instructor: Stacy M. Weiss Word Count: 927 Date of Submission: 22 January 2022

What Do Zombies Have to Do with Climate Change

Konstanze Aurelia Palm 217202704 B.Ed. Gym 3rd Semester Aachner Str. 2H, 56072 Koblenz [email protected]

The zombie as a cultural phenomenon has exceeded the horror genre long ago. Especially when looking at texts aimed at a younger audience, the zombie seems to be much more popular than other monsters. In the children’s video game Plants vs Zombies, the player must protect a house from a zombie invasion. This is done via crops that the player places on the grid-structured lawn of the suburban house that needs to be defended. These plants have various defensive mechanisms, like shooting the zombies with peas, burning them with jalapenos or piercing them with spike weed. Having nature as the defence tool in a game is unique. Even though one could claim that choosing plants as weapons is simply a means of keeping the game child-friendly, from an ecocritical perspective, the game helps us understand our codependency with nature. The game can be seen as a metaphor for climate change. In this analogy, the plants represent nature in general, while the zombies stand for the disturbance of the balance between earth and humankind. The plants form a barrier that slows the zombies down because the zombies eat the plants to get closer to the house’s inhabitants. Drawing a direct link to the climate crisis, you could say that in the game, nature and humanity are being faced with the immediate threat of being destroyed because of consumerist interests. Gabrielle Vasso argues that “current gaming practices suggest that anthropocentric values are normative to virtual worlds as they are in real life” (26). So, even though nature is portrayed very positively, the survival of humanity remains the goal of the game, even if nature gets destroyed in the process. The setting, a suburban house with a garden and a swimming pool, does not only underline the inherent pressure of the situation but portrays the very pessimistic notion of humanity being ignorant towards existing problems in the world. Action is only taken when the consequences of the climate crisis affect oneself. The harmony between humanity and nature, represented by the setting of a suburban garden, gets disturbed by a genuine threat that emphasizes the challenges that climate change imposes upon societies. In that sense, the zombies demonstrate mistakes made by humanity surrounding the climate crisis. They not only use the plants for consumption, but they destroy them. Also, they rely on synthetic materials. For example, they use artificial objects for protection made of metal or plastic. However, it is important to note that the attitude towards climate change has changed drastically in recent times. Vasso points out that the “developing awareness of the human impact towards the environment […] has led to developments in sustainable energy and materialistic goods” (29). This progress gets reflected by the zombies getting more inventive in higher levels. As the player advances in the game, the zombies start to find makeshift solutions by trying to dodge the plants with helium balloons and pogo sticks or 1

use vehicles to drive over them. On the one hand, this points to humanity becoming more efficient and creative when it comes to the exploitation of nature. On the other hand, it suggests that our behaviour towards environmental problems is focused on damage control rather than preventive action. The way that the zombies react to the attack is only focused on what they are directly confronted with. They are unable to see the bigger picture. It gets clear that there are many parallels to the zombies acting like consumer-driven humans who have no sense of ecological responsibility. The way the player interacts with the plants gives a different perspective on how humanity should deal with the climate crisis. The aggressive reaction of the plants can be seen as a portrayal of nature’s response to its’ destruction, which happens in the form of catastrophes and natural disasters. Vasso states “that humans acknowledge their capacity for control of the environment in terms of ability to manipulate and prevent ecological catastrophes” (23). The game adapts this concept and suggests that humanity can make use of this destructive force. In contrast to the zombies’ slow and unstructured attacks, the plants have a military and determined demeanour. Natalie D. Baker argues that “human response to crisis is believed chaotic and anarchic” (144). The zombies personify this assumption. Baker explains further that, in reality, “people tend to be […] self-organizing and chaos adverse” (144). This notion gets picked up by the game by tending to people’s inherent longing for order. The player must think quickly and strategically in which order he places the plants on the grid, so they work most effectively. In that way, the player learns to value the plants’ abilities but still makes use of their resources. Overall, the game helps us appreciate our relationship with nature. Of course, using plants for gaining resources cannot be condemned per se, but we should keep in mind that nature as an entity is much more powerful than humankind when you look at the devastating force it is capable of. The game also helps us understand our responsibility towards the earth. Just like the zombies, we change and evolve. However, it is not enough to simply seek progress but to recognize the potential for destruction in our consumerist behaviours. A game like Plants vs Zombies can reinforce mentalities to develop a higher environmental sensitivity. Be that as it may, climate change in particular shows that human imagination and world-appropriation through metaphors do not do justice to the structural challenges of this potential catastrophe. Images do not replace numbers, and gameplay does not replace complex world developments.

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Works Cited Baker, Natalie D. “Zombie Experts and Anarchy Imaginaries: Fantasies of ‘Crises to Be’ in Climate Change Futures.” Journal of Strategic Security, vol. 13, no. 4, 2020, pp. 141–55. University of South Florida Board of Trustees, www.jstor.org/stable/26965523. Accessed 16 January 2022. “Plants vs Zombies”. Version for Windows PC, PopCap Games, Inc., Electronic Arts, 2009. Vasso, Gabrielle. “An Environmental Critique of American Post-Apocalypse Narratives: Ecocriticism and Ethics.”, 2018, pp.1-32. San Francisco State University, scholarworks.calstate.edu/downloads/ns064751p. Accessed 28 December 2021.

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