What Do Zombie Movies Have to Do With Teaching?

On pre-semester anxiety

Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash

Before I get started, there's a certain kind of commenter that I need to head off at the pass. No, this piece will not equate my students with zombies. I hate it when teachers make fun of their students' foibles, and I won't participate in that here.

We're past the middle of July, as I sit down to write this. I teach English at a small college in Pennsylvania, and it's begun to dawn on me that Academic Year 2024-2025 is around the corner. It's been a good summer; probably the best of my career. I've managed a nice balance of rest, leisure, and work, both home projects and writing -- I had two stories published and I’m progressing through a first draft of a new novel project. In many ways, it's been the summer of my dreams.

Add to that glorious work/life balance the fact that this year looks pretty mundane, workload-wise. I have every reason to believe that I can just keep my head down and show up and do good work this year, without too much agita.

So imagine my surprise the last week or so as I felt a tangible anxiety about the upcoming semester. What on earth could be triggering that? Before I unpack that, here's a small piece of surprising information about me:

I have never really enjoyed watching zombie movies. As a horror aficionado, this is, I know, paradoxical. Don't misunderstand me. I appreciate the subgenre's importance, and I recognize the quality of many zombie films. But something about them always bothers me, and not in the way that horror films are supposed to bother a person.

A few years ago, I traced the roots of my zombie-aversion to an emotional state of depression I fall into when thinking about the end of human society. And that subject has come to dominate the zombie genre. Whereas, the horror of Lugosi's White Zombie was confined to one small feudal community, George Romero (who was an absolute genius) blew it up into global catastrophe, and his revolutionary vision for these stories won out.

I am, all things considered, a fan of human beings and human communities. And Zombie narratives are largely about an apocalypse for humanity and I hate how that makes me feel.

So back to teaching (and again, I'm not saying my students are zombies).

I am not alone in how I look at the world today and see society breaking apart. While I do not hold with the theory that the world will be ending anytime soon, it seems likely enough to me that human society as we have come to know it is withering away, to be replaced by God-knows-what. I generally think that we have fallen victim to our own machinery (technological, economic, social, and political) and the machine we've constructed for ourselves has begun to reach its limits. It is flailing about, desperate for a few more decades of power. I think this explains most of the chaos in the world today. (I am heavily influenced in my thinking about this by Paul Kingsnorth's writing about these matters at The Abbey of Misrule. His work dovetails nicely with the deep influence that Matthew Arnold has had on me).

As a fan of human community, the aspect of civilizational crash that hurts me most is our growing epidemic of loneliness and alienation. It seems to me we've collectively chosen the artificial life Silicon Valley offers us over the real people in our own backyards. When given a choice, we deny ourselves our own paroles to stay safely tucked away in our private, digital cells.

Society is unravelling right in front of us every day, and zombie films no longer frighten me, they simply depress me.

And they sap my own will to seek out community, wherever I can cobble it together. This is what terrifies me.

And the most profound struggle I have with teaching now is connected to this.

It isn't the grading or even the bureaucracy. It's the existential dread of walking into a classroom of people who don't want to be there, or anywhere else, and who look for every possible means to escape the room they share with others. I dread contact with people who want nothing other than to be somewhere else, somewhere digital. I know full well that students come to me having been beaten to a pulp by a mechanized and inhuman system of education, so I try not to hold anything against them personally, as individuals. And yet. While these students are not zombies, they participate in the unravelling of the social fabric nonetheless.

And the idea of walking into a room each day to face human beings who find comfort in the very alienation that grinds me to a nub… Well, this is clearly what's fueling my anxiety about the upcoming year.

I hate cynicism, so let me try and steer this into something hopeful.

I'm very lucky to work at a wonderful place, where I do have community with my friends and co-workers. And once the semester gets rolling, I'm generally able to establish and nurture little communities that come together and enjoy one another's company for four months or so (if not always the work we do together — but such is life).

But even in the most successful classes, where the group buys into our intentional community, there are almost always individuals who would rather not be there. They seem to desire being nowhere in fact. And our suicidal culture has provided us with so many tools that make the journey to nowhere seductive and easy.

Even in the best classes, no small part of my attention lands on these poor people. And it's hard for me to look at them and see anything other than the unravelling of civilization. I know that no teacher can reach everyone, and I know that those disinterested individuals are more than whatever they seem in the sliver of time we spend together.

Still, regular contact with their alienation opens a door to a part of the world I’d rather not dwell in. Over the next month, my task is to ready myself for an extended struggle for focus and, above all, grace.

Footnote:

I do love the movie White Zombie, which, as I say does something very different with the monster. And there is one Romero zombie film that I love too (again I appreciate the quality of all of them). The one I have real affection for is Land of the Dead. I think the reason for this is that, at the film’s heart, it’s about the reconstruction of community (both human and zombie) in the aftermath of apocalypse. There is something ultimately very hopeful about that film and it feels more like a beginning than an ending of things. Much like the biblical post-flood world.

If you’re a teacher, what works at your nerves? And no matter your trade, I’m open to any thoughts or suggestions you might have.