Froula Pens Essay in Revenant

Dr. Anna Froula published the essay “Homeland Insecurities: The Walking Dead and the Purgatory of Captivity on the Post-Apocalyptic Frontier” in Revenant: Critical and Creative Studies of the Supernatural. In the abstract, Froula argues: “This essay focuses primarily on how season seven of The Walking Dead relies on recycling frontier mythology’s captivity narrative and how communities deploy captivity and torture against members of other communities or attempt to assimilate them. The structure of the seasons and the frequent mid-season breaks likewise hold viewers captive to the elusive fates of favorite characters. While zombies are always a threat in the series, they do not constitute the ‘Big Bad’ of season six or seven. Instead, the undead, themselves captive to fates worse than death, have evolved, or devolved, into appetite-driven weapons that are subject to the living’s manipulation and deployment against others. In these later seasons, it is captivity and torture that both characters and viewers fear the most.”

Go English!