This study demonstrates how norms and ideals about sexuality and gender expression are used in the TV-show The Walking Dead. An intermediate study is made on the comic books’ two same sex couples as they are compared to how they are represented in the TV-show. Tara Chambler and Alisha, a same sex couple who only exist in the TV-show, not in the comic books, are also analysed. Queer theory and an intersectional perspective are used to discover how different power asymmetries are connected to each other through an active interplay. An analysis of the reception is also made with the help of a discourse analysis on 50 of the twitter commentaries that were posted after the show’s first same sex kiss, with the aim to understand how the media and the public affect one another. The material is selected comic books, episodes from the TV-show and twitter comments. The study shows how sexual expressions are neutralized and used in a heteronormative way.

Concentrating on six representative media sites, 28 Days Later (2002), Dawn of the Dead (2004), Land of the Dead (2005), Children of Men (2007), Snowpiercer (2013), and one television series The Walking Dead (2010-present), this dissertation examines the strain of post-millennial apocalyptic media emphasizing a neo-liberal form of collaboration as the path to survival. Unlike traditional collaboration, the neo-liberal construction centers on the individual’s responsibility in maintaining harmony through intra-group homogeny. Through close textual analysis, critical race theory, and feminist media studies, this project seeks to understand how post-racial and post-feminist representational strategies elide inequality and ignore tensions surrounding racial or gender differences to create harmony-through-homogeny in popular apocalyptic film and television.

Working from Charland's (1987) description of constitutive rhetoric, this thesis is concerned what the popular zombie apocalypse television series The Walking Dead (TWD) has to say regarding survival behavior in a post-apocalyptic world. TWD's plot focuses primarily on the relationships between survivor characters situated among the crumbling remains of society and humanity. An attempt is made to show how TWD (1) establishes a common ideology among its characters, and therefore (2) constitutes its characters as a primary audience through an ideology of inhumanity by three narrative ideological effects. In doing so, the study aims to advance understanding of constitutive rhetoric in a temporal sense and also to emphasize that popular culture artifacts suggest viewers as secondary audiences and implied auditors tied to ideologies. The results of this analysis suggest the new order of a post-apocalyptic world binds survivors into a collective and transhistorical subject. These characters are tied to their past before the apocalypse and also become relatively relatable for viewers. / Master of Arts

Abstract Titel: The Walking Gender Författare: Moa Linder Bakgrund: Den populära amerikanska TV-serien The Walking Dead är en zombiefiktion som  inbjuder människor världen över att följa seriens protagonister kämpandes mot zombies och mänskliga grupperingar i ett oroligt postapokalyptiskt USA. Serien kritiseras för att vara bakåtsträvande gällande dess representationer av genus och etnicitet och  det är vad denna analys ämnar att undersöka. Syfte: Syftet är att undersöka hur genus representeras genom karaktärerna i The Walking Dead med ett strukturalistiskt angreppssätt. Jag undersöker även vilken relation hudfärg har med genus i dessa representationer. Material/ metod: Mitt material består av två avsnitt av The Walking Dead. När jag analyserar valda karaktärer använder jag mig av en narrativ och semiotisk analys. Den narrativa analysmodellen ger en konkret struktur åt analysen som börjar med en övergripande narrativ beskrivning över avsnittet för att sedan gå in närmare i tre valda sekvenser som jag analyserar med hjälp av de semiotiska begreppen denotation och konnotation. Slutsatser/ resultat: Analysen visar på att genusrepresentationen hos karaktärerna i stort sker efter stereotypa mönster och anammar maskulina och feminina ideal där männen beskyddar och kvinnorna beskyddas. Det finns ett visst motstånd mot dessa mönster som främst visar sig i karaktären Michonne som inte följer feminina ideal utan istället bär stereotypa maskulina egenskaper. De svarta kvinnliga karaktärerna följer inte feminina ideal utan tendenserar att motsätta sig normen medan de vita kvinnliga karaktärerna upprätthåller feminina ideal. De manliga karaktärerna förkroppsligar det manliga idealet ’den riktiga mannen’. Den maskulina hegemonin verkar med en hierarkisk ordning där den asiatiske och den svarta manliga karaktären befinner sig lägre än de vita karaktärerna.

This study has as object some excerpts from the first six seasons of the TV series The Walking Dead, and the theme is the dichotomy man/walker. The series gives visibility to a segregation of existences, which become close in accordance with some political-philosophical theories. In this research, the mise-en-scene, the shot, the footage, the diegesis among others components of the series were investigated, to point out the fragments that put in relief the elements that were presented during the research. Thereby, from the contemporary political philosophy, it was analyzed the relation between man/walker considering the becoming-walker of the man, and the human remains of the walker, as elements of biopolitical witnesses. In addition, it was necessary to investigate the (im)profanation on the forms of the plot.s visibility, considering the life, bare through the biopolitics, object of material and immaterial consumption, being reflex of the contemporary capitalism in the narrative. Therefore, the state of exception where the characters live was accurately searched, this state characterizing them as homines sacri, in the form of their killability. This characteristic, both sacred and cursed, has shown itself present on the diegetic survivors and from this, it was possible to determine the forms of junction and disjunction of the existences, through rhizomic relations and the profanation of the improfanable. / Submitted by Rogele Pinheiro (rogele.pinheiro@unisul.br) on 2017-10-23T16:50:36Z No. of bitstreams: 1 112207_Juliene.pdf: 2349984 bytes, checksum: 5ed7d0da60c95e26c06b5bd3adfbeea9 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Fabiane dos Santos (fabiane.santos3@unisul.br) on 2017-10-23T16:51:09Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 112207_Juliene.pdf: 2349984 bytes, checksum: 5ed7d0da60c95e26c06b5bd3adfbeea9 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-10-23T16:51:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 112207_Juliene.pdf: 2349984 bytes, checksum: 5ed7d0da60c95e26c06b5bd3adfbeea9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-07-14 / O presente estudo tem como objeto recortes das seis primeiras temporadas da série televisiva The Walking Dead e como tema tem-se a dicotomia homem/walker. O seriado dá visibilidade a uma separação de existências que se tornam próximas de acordo com algumas teorias político-filosóficas. Nesta pesquisa, foram perscrutados a mise-en-scène, os planos, as sequências, a diegese, dentre outros componentes do seriado, para assim, pontuar os fragmentos que destacam os elementos que foram apresentados no decorrer do trabalho. Desse modo, a partir da filosofia política contemporânea, foi analisada a relação homem/walker, considerando o devir-walker do homem, e os restos humanos do walker, como elementos de testemunhos biopolíticos. Também se fez necessária a investigação das (im)profanações nas formas de visibilidade da trama, considerando a vida, nua por meio da biopolítica, objeto de consumo material e imaterial, sendo reflexo do capitalismo contemporâneo na narrativa. Para tanto, esquadrinhou-se o estado de exceção em que vivem os personagens da série, que os caracteriza como homines sacri, na forma de sua matabilidade. Essa característica sacra, e, ao mesmo tempo, maldita, se mostrou presente nos sobreviventes diegéticos e, a partir disso, pode-se constatar as formas de disjunção e junção das existências, por meio das relações rizomáticas e da profanação do improfanável.

This project proposes that one factor of growing societal interest in the apocalypse narrative is rooted in these stories reflection on our new landscape of telecommunication flows embodied in the Internet. The apocalypse narrative has steadily been growing in popularity, and many academics have offered potential explanations. While other analyses predominately focus on the actual apocalyptic event itself as representative of various societal fears, this project aims to focus on aspects of how we adapt to being in the new apocalyptic landscape, and how this reflects on our own adaptation to being in the new landscape of the Internet. This project takes the work of Martin Heidegger as its primary theoretical lens in an examination of the popular television series The Walking Dead and the Internet streaming service Netflix. This project finds that both the apocalyptic landscape and the new landscape of the Internet throw us into decentered worlds where it is easy to be alienated from one another. Alleviation of our anxieties brought on by these strange landscapes lies in our recognition of being-towards-others in the world and engaging in acts of community building. However, a greater – more global – sense of community is frequently subverted by the way relationships are revealed by technology as divisive.

The Walking Dead is a popular American tv-series set in the near future, or an alternative present. Society has fallen and colapsed into a more post-apocalyptic state. Till this date the seires has reached its third season, and each episode has several million viewers around the world. In this essay the author tries to see how the tv-series reprensatation of men and women looks like. Media, such as tv-series, acts as great source of inspiration when people tries to understand the world around them. If men and women are representated diffrently that may effect how the viewers treat people in general. The purpose of this study wass to examine how men and women were portrayed in the series. What wass classed as typical male and female and how men and women relate to each other in different situations. In order to properly answer to the studys purpose previous research on gender, femininities, masculinities and stereotypes were applied. The material were then examined in a qualitative content analysis with a semiotic approach where the text were studied to elucidate its denotative and connotative meanings. In short, thhe study shows that men and women are equipped with very different abilities. The woman is often portrayed as weak while the man, almost always, is portrayed as the stronger one.

Lorsque l’on s’intéresse au dégoût comme forme d’affect, on remarque que son application abonde au niveau des études cinématographiques et des arts visuels. Par contre, peu de chercheurs se sont intéressés à son analyse à travers les médias dont l’institutionnalisation académique est plus récente, comme la bande dessinée, la télésérie et le jeu vidéo. Ce mémoire a pour objectif d’étendre la pratique des études du dégoût comme affect sur ces médias, en s’attardant sur l’analyse de certaines composantes de la franchise transmédiatique The Walking Dead. De plus, comme ce corpus est marqué par une transmédialité qui dépasse les simples récurrences narratives, ce mémoire veut également produire un modèle d’analyse capable de déceler les structures génératives du dégoût qui tendent à migrer ou être partagées entre les médias de la franchise. Ce modèle sera conçu dans un premier temps par l’établissement d’un dialogue entre les études de l’affect appliquées au cinéma et aux arts visuels et les études sur l’intermédialité. La fonctionnalité de ce modèle sera ensuite testée à travers son application sur la bande dessinée, la télésérie et l’un des jeux vidéo de la franchise The Walking Dead. / When we seek for works that focus on disgust as a form of affect, we note that its application abounds in film and visual art studies. However, few researchers dedicated its analysis through media whose academic institutionalization is newer, such as comics, TV series, and video games. This thesis aims to extend the studies of disgust as an affect’s practice on these media, focusing on the analysis of certain components from the transmedia franchise The Walking Dead. Moreover, because this body of media is marked by a transmediality that exceeds simple narrative recurrences, this thesis also wants to produce an analytical model capable of detecting disgust’s generative structures that tend to migrate or be shared between the media of the franchise. This model will be developed initially by the establishment of a dialogue between affect studies applied to cinema and visual arts, and intermedial studies. Then, this model’s functionality will be tested through its application within the comics, the television series and one of the video games of The Walking Dead franchise.

This study aims to find out how gender roles are portrayed in the series The Walking Dead. Using a quantitative content analysis where every episode of The Walking Dead was analyzed the study shows gender role portrayal in the everyday activities done by the characters. A qualitative study based on a semiotic analysis was also executed where focus lies on analyzing the characters attributes and their trait of character. The result shows that the series maintains a stereotypical representation of men and women. The men take on the typical “manly” work and the women do the majority of the domestic work. The killing of zombier and humans are mostly done by the men in the series. Their trait of character also shows a stereotypical gender role representation where the men are portrayed as tough, fighters, protectors and providers. The women on the other hand are more weak, sensitive and dependent.

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