6. Landscapes of loss: the semantics of empty spaces in contemporary post-apocalyptic fiction

Martin Walter

Introduction

The world as we know it has been coming to an end for quite a while – at least on screen. With the rising popularity of apocalyptic films in recent years, motion pictures have not only rendered the devastation of western cities a common sight and a recurring cultural representation, but have also established a new fascination with the aesthetics of destruction. Above all it is their visual appeal which mirrors what Susan Sontag, in her essay on post-World War II science-fiction novels and films, labelled a ‘fantasy of living through one’s own death and more, the death of cities, the destruction of humanity itself’.¹ Instead of voicing social criticism, the destruction would offer a strange feeling of release or catharsis; and being confronted with spaces of emptiness plays an important role: ‘The trump card of the end-of-the-world movies – like The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1962) – is that great scene with New York or London or Tokyo discovered empty, its entire population annihilated’.²

The spatial visualization of disaster, as it is found in representations of the apocalypse, seems to offer a kind of overbearing presence – or what Vivian Sobchack called the ‘concrete “loftiness”’.³ The cinematic framing of destruction not only turns it into a strange spectacle, but also provides the onlooker with a rearrangement of a spatial and temporal order, as it engages with and comments on the apocalypse’s effects on social formations such as the family or the community. Working as vehicles of violating or subverting a specific social order, representations of the post-apocalypse usually rely on settings that are increasingly depicted as abandoned, fragmented or disintegrated, at the same time highlighting the idea that they are products of their respective historical context. This is also reflected in the popularity of survivalist themes or lifestyles which have seen a revival in the form of US shows such as Doomsday Preppers (2011–4) or the British documentary Preppers UK 2 (2013), which introduced the audience to images of burning buildings and police vans from the London riots of 2011.⁴ Both series conceived an image of the city as a problem-ridden space that needed to be avoided, which is why escaping from the cities to the empty countryside was repeatedly presented as a major objective.

This chapter explores the functional quality of empty spaces in a number of post-apocalyptic representations, arguing that as part of a wider renegotiation of social orders, fragmented and disintegrated urban and rural spaces work as a means to comment critically on contemporary social formations. Hence they also engage with the persistence of capitalist ideology, especially as manifested in modes of thinking and behavioural patterns.

As part of their engagement and coming-to-terms with a changing environment and society ‘after the end’, post-apocalyptic narratives also mirror what are seemingly perceived as threats to their respective contemporary societies as the characters find themselves reconnecting to a time before the apocalypse. This chapter will take into account a variety of source material from popular culture and will look in particular at the appropriation of empty space in post-apocalyptic landscapes. Two contemporary series will serve as case studies: the popular American zombie series The Walking Dead (AMC, 2010-) and the British production Survivors (BBC, 2008–10). Both series chronicle the lives of a group of survivors in a post-apocalyptic world. Both also feature protagonists that serve as group leaders: the sheriff Rick Grimes in The Walking Dead and the matriarch figure Abby Grant in Survivors. In Survivors a heavy form of influenza (called the ‘European flu’) kills off ninety per cent of the world’s population, while in The Walking Dead an unknown pathogen that everybody – for reasons also largely unknown – already carries brings the dead back ‘to life’. Both series follow their respective group as they travel across the country seeking shelter.

After discussing the popularity of the apocalypse theme, this chapter will take a closer look at the representation of urban and rural spaces. It will argue that the motif of journeying through empty landscapes conveys ideological viewpoints on capitalist spaces. These spaces increasingly address both a ‘perturbed familiarity’⁵ and discourses of global (in)security. Through the characters’ nomad-like attitude towards space, that is, their specific form of movement through empty and hostile spaces, the underlying ideological tensions of a post-apocalyptic world are increasingly displayed.

On one hand, visualizations of post-apocalyptic terra incognita provide the means of producing a new and fragmented spatiality by renegotiating seemingly natural, everyday social practices. On the other hand, narratives of the apocalypse also contribute to the ‘conspiracy against history’ in that ‘they deny what they pretend to explain’.⁶ In other words, while the series take the audience to a breaking point where societal norms are seemingly challenged, once the apocalypse has become reality the overall temporal structures of society (and thus arguably also its ideologies) are shown to remain intact.

In this context, references to empty spaces form part of a larger social commentary that historicizes the moral dilemmas of the apocalypse by oscillating between a form of utopian escapism or ‘apocalyptic anticipation’⁷ for a better future and a somewhat retrogressive vision of a near future in which the conflicts and contradictions of the present social order are extrapolated. In this sense, the post-apocalypse does not put an end to capitalism but instead demonstrates its adaptability. In the case of their appropriation of spaces, the series seem to showcase the overall power of capitalist structures and absence of a utopian alternative, mirroring the conclusion of Mark Fisher (in reference to Marx’s vampire simile) that ‘capital is an abstract parasite, an insatiable vampire and zombiemaker’.⁸ In other words, the apocalypse depicted in these series usually does not represent the end of history but an end and thus also relies on spaces that still echo a pre-disaster familiarity.

(Un)familiar spaces?

In recent years both apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic narratives have seen a remarkable resurgence in popular culture on and off screen, provoking some commentators to argue that ‘they are so common their impact has been lost’.⁹ This is not only reflected in the recurring success of the zombie apocalypse in series like The Walking Dead (2010–), blockbuster films like World War Z (2013) or the Resident Evil (1996–) video-game franchise, but also in genre crossovers such as science-fiction films (Interstellar, 2015), the western (The Book of Eli, 2010), disaster films (The Day After Tomorrow, 2004; 2012, 2009) or dystopian fiction (The Hunger Games series, 2012–5). The post-apocalypse has also seen a revival in novels, for example in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006), which tells the story of a father and his son as they travel through an empty, corpse-ridden America that has been hit by an unnamed disaster; Justin Cronin’s The Passage (2010), which takes place in a post-apocalyptic world of vampires; or eco-feminist works such as Sarah Hall’s The Carhullan Army (2007), which explores the consequences of climate change in post-oil Britain. What is more, the topic has proven extremely profitable, with Hollywood post-apocalyptic action blockbusters like Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) grossing over $378 million.¹⁰

A closer look at the kind of threats and dangers presented in recent fictional depictions leads to a more general question of where these representations are located in contemporary discourses of apocalypticism and how we may make sense of them. While the immense success of films like Armageddon (1998) or Independence Day (1996) surely reflected society’s ‘apocalyptic sensibility’,¹¹ the specific danger of a meteor strike, alien invasion (War of the Worlds, 2005; District 9, 2009; Falling Skies, 2011–5) or zombie apocalypse have become so familiar that audiences hardly seem to question them.

This chapter argues that examining the spatiality of these films can open up an understanding of a subtler trend in the representation of the post-apocalypse: locating ideological implications in representations of familiar spaces. It thus aims to highlight the importance of space, arguing that the representation of seemingly unfamiliar threats is rendered familiar through the implementation of empty and fragmented places, thereby reconnecting rather abstract threats to contemporary social formations like the local community. In this regard, contemporary representations of the apocalypse also contribute to larger discourses on the ‘war on terror’, especially ideas of security,¹² raising questions about the ideological implications of what Engin Isin called ‘the neurotic citizen’, who, under the doctrine of neoliberalism, ‘is incited to make social and cultural investments to eliminate various dangers by calibrating its conduct on the basis of its anxieties and insecurities rather than rationalities’.¹³ Neoliberalism, as a political project informed by a revival of economic liberalist ideas, not only encourages a reconceptualization of individual responsibility but, as Isin argued, has also created a model of citizenship that is governed by unease and anxiety and informed by the pursuit of absolute security. This rise of the neurotic citizen ultimately transforms neoliberal ideas of self-responsibility into claimed rights, that is, the subject’s right to absolute security and safety – impossible claims, ‘because they articulate rights that cannot exist’.¹⁴ In a post-apocalyptic world, empty spaces not only reflect these anxieties but also amplify the neurotic claims for absolute security, most importantly because in a world that has been ‘perverted by apocalyptic signs’¹⁵ and contaminated through the threatening character of emptiness, the claim for safety becomes even more illusory.

An assumed terra incognita is always already inscribed with elements of a recent historical past, always already mapped with what has come before. Through their reconstruction of meaning, spaces work as reminders that a reverse process, that is, a return to a previous or a more hostile relationship between people and their environment, is already inscribed upon contemporary society through the use of familiar iconography. While even destroyed cities and abandoned places are thus still able to represent a form of historic continuity as they provide us with a form of recognizable familiarity, their emptiness also reflects an enduring disruption of time and historical order. The preciousness of familiarity is then thwarted by the omnipresent uncanniness of these places.

The apocalypse and Sigmund Freud’s idea of the uncanny reveal striking structural similarities. Freud used the term ‘uncanny’ (German: ‘unheimlich’, literally ‘un-homely’) to refer to a situation that is strangely familiar, or to which onlookers feel attracted, but by which they are repulsed – a phenomenon he called ‘an affair of “reality-testing”’.¹⁶ He argued that uncanniness emerges in periods of transition and, as Nicholas Royle underlined, is often ‘associated with an experience of the threshold, liminality, margins, borders, frontiers’.¹⁷ Through their depiction of seemingly familiar home spaces that have undergone eerie changes, both The Walking Dead and Survivors highlight the idea that the transformative quality of the apocalypse (re)produces such feelings of reality-testing or situations ‘when “reality” is not “real” [anymore]’.¹⁸ The same feelings of familiarity and security which Freud attributed to the mother’s body¹⁹ become disturbed when the home has been rendered an uncanny space. The following explores the dynamic nature of representational spaces further and works out how the logic of emptiness functions as a means to comment on a changing ideological environment.

The semantics of emptiness

As a cinematographic feature, emptiness has had a long and continuing history, often contributing to the specific genre conventions of a film. Film noir in particular has extensively relied on empty or abandoned city spaces, such as, for example, the destroyed post-war landscapes of Vienna in The Third Man (1949). Moreover, it has also seen a recent revival as part of the ongoing success of post-apocalyptic fiction, such as in the empty city streets of New York City in I Am Legend (2009) or the grim landscapes of The Road. Drawing particularly on motifs of destruction and decay, the visual aesthetics of emptiness have given a new meaning to empty cities which has also led to an increase in representations of ruins, for example in photography and exhibitions.²⁰ The industrial city of Detroit and its economic decline have, for instance, become an active canvas for artists on which they inscribe and visualize what has been described as ‘America’s most epic urban failure’,²¹ with the city coming ‘to stand for nothing so much as its own emptiness and vulnerability’.²² Empty spaces, then, not only document the city’s painful decline but also mirror what Camilo Vergara has called an ‘eerie emptiness’.²³ In the context of urban spaces, emptiness is a familiar and recurring motif, as Dora Apel suggested. Exploring the dynamics of anxiety and sublime beauty that are associated with places of ruin, she argued that post-apocalyptic narratives also ‘render our own society as other and encourage us to ask whether the empire of capital represents lasting progress or a road to decline’.²⁴

If emptiness has come to be associated with feelings of anxiety or failure and has at the same time become a familiar sight – for example, in the form of empty high streets or abandoned houses – it seems plausible to suggest that images of a post-apocalyptic setting are already ‘inscribed’ in contemporary discourses of emptiness. In Living in the End Times Slavoj Žižek has argued that under the conditions of late capitalism, catastrophe ‘is renormalized, perceived as part of the normal run of things, as always already having been possible’.²⁵ In the wake of the recent ‘war on terror’ he argued that before 11 September 2001 (or ‘9/11’) the use of torture was ‘dismissed as an ethical catastrophe’ but that ‘once it happened, it retroactively grounded its own possibility, and we immediately got accustomed to it’.²⁶ Fictional accounts of the apocalypse can also work as reminders that what is presented as a feature of a future society is already an established fact of its extra-textual reality and already present in the form of accepted beliefs and ideologies.

While there is a group dynamic present in many post-apocalyptic narratives, not only does the absence of familiar sights and sounds increase the feeling of unease, but the new spatiality also challenges seemingly natural everyday practices, such as communication between individuals. In the hostile, zombie-ridden environment of The Walking Dead, bodily integrity then becomes the primary goal for the group of survivors, as empty city corners, large plains or abandoned buildings become the epitome of risk and danger that may lurk at any and every point.²⁷

To a large degree the fragmentary or empty character of spaces symbolizes an omnipresent threat of vulnerability and usually works as a first reminder that the familiarity of spaces has been disturbed. This is apparent in situations where the protagonists meet other survivors. Both in The Walking Dead and in Survivors the immediate danger emanating from abandoned spaces is manifested in the genre conventions as part of which strangers become a possible danger – they are rendered an unfamiliar sight in otherwise empty surroundings. Gordon Coonfield has hinted at the fact that in the largely anonymized space of the city, where people look at their smart phones, meeting strangers is taken for granted ‘as natural, even rational forms of collectivity and social organization’,²⁸ while historically it was common for face-to-face communities not only to exclude strangers as ‘others’ but also to live in larger isolation. The representation of meeting strangers in these series, then, seemingly reconnects to a historical form of social contact as part of which strangers are not seen as belonging to a suffering collective but are conceived as a threat. Playing around with familiarity leads to feelings of uncanniness in spaces that appear uncontrollable and in which everybody can become a possible danger. Meeting strangers is also symbolic of the post-9/11 notion of ‘the enemy within’.

Both in The Walking Dead and Survivors the empty and abandoned home works as a symbol of a more general disturbance of order, often visualized through the ritualized performance of returning home – which is rendered a meaningless social practice. When Abby Grant (Survivors) awakens in her bedroom, the emptiness and silence of the house at first create an atmosphere of uncanniness. While for a moment the familiarity of the kitchen seems to calm her, she becomes terrified when she finds her husband sitting dead in the living-room chair. Now overwhelmed by panic, she runs outside into the empty street only to find that either her neighbours are dead or their houses are devoid of any living soul, crying out, ‘Oh, God. Please don’t let me be the only one’.²⁹ Aerial shots of empty city streets also contribute to a disturbance of familiar city scenes. Since in many cases threats are regarded as having originated from the cities, urban spaces are subsequently rendered hostile environments. In Survivors this is done by gradually showing how the lights go out as power failures increase, making London seemingly disappear in dead silence. The series thereby not only embodies society’s fears of a ubiquitous yet often unspecific threat but also comments on the idea that in the post-apocalypse – just like in a neoliberal society – the subject has to enhance his own capital and becomes the ‘entrepreneur of himself’.³⁰ Taking into account that in The Walking Dead the threat posed by other humans is equal to, if not more severe than, the danger emanating from the infected, the series takes body politics to another level: by rendering the body an active canvas onto which the neurotic claim for security is projected.

Securing the body in urban spaces

With the ever-present threat of potentially hostile space, The Walking Dead and Survivors repeatedly reflect discourses about the body, especially the idea of having to secure the body in urban spaces. The imperative of ‘anticipating the catastrophe’ is not only rendered the most important task and subject to a ‘renormalization’, but also actively mapped onto the body, whose integrity, that is, inviolability, becomes the primary goal.

Moreover, in these series, the protagonists are constantly shown ‘conquering’ and making sense of the ruins that surround them. A common reaction can be found in the phenomenon of trying to control urban spaces by using strategies of cocooning – the habit of encapsulating the body – which is again in tune with a more contemporary form of securing the body in everyday life. In The Walking Dead it is an SUV that helps the group journeying across the country. Similarly, in Survivors the protagonists’ car of choice is a Land Rover – and the characters are not reluctant to emphasize its ‘popularity’ as ‘a post-virus vehicle’,³¹ rendering the car a safe, personal space and an embodiment of a ‘portable civilization’.³²

While in a post-apocalyptic scenario the narrative of course profits from the use of a safe vehicle, its use also challenges the narrative’s own conventions, suggesting that amidst the breakdown of social order there is still a ‘ready-made’ solution to secure the body from the outside world. In the apocalypse, then, the car works as a means of connection to previous notions of safety and security, rendering them ‘automobile-turned-home arrangements’³³ in which an empty and threatening environment can be safely ‘conquered’ – a motif again deeply rooted in American car culture. In the 1977 film adaptation of Roger Zelazny’s novel Damnation Alley (1969), a group of survivors are shown driving around post-nuclear American landscapes inhabited by giant scorpions and wrecked by storms in a massive twelve-wheel, all-terrain vehicle called a ‘Landmaster’. Borrowing heavily from the iconography of road movies, here survival is (rather comically) rendered as a family adventure or road trip in which the apocalypse is nicely ‘framed’ through the windshield and as part of which the emptiness of the surrounding landscape is presented almost in a panoramic fashion. Yet, the car itself becomes a space of its own, giving the overall impression that it is firmly rooted in a culture of aggression and hostility, as part of which it remains the preferred means of controlling the protagonists’ personal environment. The audience thus does not witness a clear break with the pre-apocalyptic order, but instead sees the partial survival of pre-disaster habits and modes of thinking. In some cases these pre-disaster survival tactics reach far back into history, such as when protagonist Daryl Dixon in The Walking Dead is shown to be better prepared for the apocalypse thanks to his hunting and tracking skills. The characters’ constant movement also adheres to notions of the Guattarian/Deleuzian nomad, roaming through the wilderness. Although the survivors in The Walking Dead are occupied with securing their community, the process of turning the new, empty spaces of the apocalypse into safe and sedentary spaces is frequently shown to fail, necessitating a cycle of continual movement. While the migrant’s journey usually has a departure and arrival, for Deleuze and Guatarri ‘the nomad moves on a continuous trajectory where points A and B are merely temporary stops’.³⁴ This does not mean that the historical process of sedentariness is completely annihilated, but that the audience at least witnesses its temporary reversal, also apparent in the return to a foraging culture and hunting and gathering society. Sedentariness is apparent in the reintroduction of what Deleuze and Guattari called the ‘state apparatus’ – forms of authority, rules and order. In The Walking Dead many of the places are conceived of as gated communities, like the prison, or the fortified town of Woodbury, which is run by the dictator-like figure of the governor, Philip Blake, ‘a charismatic, hypocritical and vengeful tyrant’³⁵ who offers his citizens shelter by using the apocalypse to create an atmosphere of constant terror and fear. While the narrative has the audience believe that the group is constantly escaping the threatening emptiness of the open space – which is mirrored in the fact that these places turn out to be already populated – this circumstance is thwarted by the fact that the group constantly fail to secure these places or to make them a home.

Temporarily, then, the series bears overtones of how the appropriation of new and empty spaces is linked to violence and defence³⁶ and thus implicitly constructs nomadism as a moral yet problematic imperative, ultimately suggesting that mobility is a desired norm and the only road to survival and safety (if only temporary). This is apparent when, in large parts of The Walking Dead, the characters are shown returning to their roaming existence.

This type of series also borrows motifs from the repertoire of western iconography, ‘especially the wagon train sagas beset by swarms of attacking Indians’.³⁷ The spaces’ significance is, then, also never fixed but usually subject to constant change as the characters move on into the lawlessness of the open space. This organization of the landscape prominently surfaces in the rearranging of social formations and the subsequent conflicts, chiefly because – to stay within the terminology – the nomad opposes the state and becomes ‘an example of a successful warrior against all kinds of oppression by any majority and any authoritarian discourse’.³⁸ This also means that the narrative frequently shows the characters trying to reconnect to a former time, that is, their personal history ‘before the events’. Moreover, raising questions of how the body can best be protected in empty spaces, The Walking Dead also reflects on issues of surveillance and security culture, especially through the characters’ constant monitoring of their environment.

The motif of the journey is not just a convenient means to move the narrative to another setting: it also introduces us to the unfamiliarity of post-apocalyptic space, from which we can then establish a feeling of loss. In both series this is shown by having the group move away from the centre to the surrounding edgelands. Following this ‘unwritten law’ of apocalyptic fiction, moving to the fringes is commonly seen as a form of securing the body, while urban settlements are often rendered as dangerous places – even if the destructive forces of the apocalypse have largely suspended the logics of an urban-rural dichotomy. At the same time, the motif of the journey also adheres to notions of ‘the conquest’, as part of which the group are continuously shown to penetrate and appropriate new and empty spaces. The post-apocalypse thereby not only comments on the way society relates to its urban environment, but reconnects the trope of the abandoned city to history. The exodus from the city reverses the rural out-migration and consequent growth of urban settlements during the age of industrialization and has the characters actively striving for a newly arranged spatiality as part of which the rural countryside takes on new significance. Not only do processes of cocooning turn out to be a problem in the cities, but the survival of the community, and thus civilization, is discursively framed to be connected to the flight from urban surroundings. Initial hopes of reconnecting to familiar surroundings and practices are thus set up to be difficult and disturbing because under the rules of the apocalypse spaces are frequently shown to be emptied of their previous ideological symbolism – a phenomenon that is especially present in the appropriation of spaces of global capitalism.³⁹

The ambivalence of empty capitalist spaces

The Walking Dead and Survivors hint most prominently at the disturbed character of seemingly everyday habits and their implications for practices of consumption. The representation of empty consumerist places in post-apocalypse narratives renders these places not only eerie but also ambivalent, as it challenges their supposedly primary function. While in everyday life the absence of people and empty cash desks in a supermarket may at least come in handy or represent a ‘pleasurable daydream of what a viewer might do should they find themselves free-range in their local mall’,⁴⁰ in apocalyptic movies and series the absence of people leads to a feeling of unease and explores the logic of public and private places. In a world where resources are rare and people scavenge for food, a supermarket seems to offer a safe haven of supplies and allows the characters to embrace the familiar surroundings of commodity culture. In the British zombie film 28 Days Later the protagonists discover an empty supermarket and indulge in an extensive shopping tour, like children in a toy store, and also digress from class-related buying behaviour. When the protagonist Jim, a bicycle courier, stands by the drinks counter, picking up a bottle of cheap whiskey, the cab driver Frank responds: ‘Put that back. We can’t just take any crap’.⁴¹ Instead, he takes a bottle of Lagavulin and reads off the advertising text from the label: ‘Single malt. Sixteen years old. Dark, full flavour. Warm, but not aggressive. Peaty aftertaste’.⁴² Despite its comic effect, the emptiness of the place repeatedly serves as a reminder that under the rules of the apocalypse their seemingly ‘normal’ habit is a relic of the past. What is more, the empty supermarket’s full shelves – in a reverse fashion – also briefly explore a kind of utopian fantasy of freedom that consumer culture is able to supply – provided one has the financial means.

The familiar emotional intimacy that characters feel in the practice of ‘going shopping’ is constantly disturbed. In Survivors, when the protagonists arrive at a local supermarket – clearly shown to be a Netto discount supermarket – the familiarity of the place quickly gives way to a sudden moment of shock when, inside the market, a dead body with a sign around his neck saying ‘looter’ hangs from the ceiling. Outside they are met by a gang led by a man called Dexter who has claimed ownership of the place and subsequently threatens the group:

Dexter: Doing a bit of shopping?

Greg: We needed food and drink.

Dexter: So you thought you’d just steal it?

Greg: What?

Dexter: People have to know this place belongs to us. They need to respect our property. You need to give that back now!⁴³

The series employs a now well-known and recurring motif of the post-apocalypse – the fight over resources – that allows for significant social critique. Similarly to the zombie films of George Romero (Night of the Living Dead, 1968; Dawn of the Dead, 1978), which used the motif of the zombie to mock and satirize American consumerist and capitalist society, The Walking Dead and Survivors both embrace a more familiar setting of the apocalypse. While in the latter series the global aspect of the plague always lingers in the background – illustrated by the opening credits in which an image of the depopulated earth is seen from space – the series quickly abandons the motif and shifts the focus to a specific locality where, in a somewhat accelerated approach, the inner and outer workings of capitalist society are being restaged and openly displayed, most explicitly when the different groups claim ownership over food supplies.

In The Walking Dead the group’s desire to escape to a safe haven, home, or a space they can call ‘their own’, which has the protagonists constantly showcasing a nomad-like quality, is rendered a false hope or promise. While the persistence of capitalist behaviour and thinking is apparent in the survival of property, at least for the group ‘home’ increasingly becomes an outdated concept and dangerous enterprise. When the group find an abandoned-looking prison Rick refers to it as ‘a goldmine’;⁴⁴ however, they soon find out that a group of surviving inmates also claim ownership over it. Here, the aspect of securing the body from the bigger threat becomes more important while the claiming of ownership again alludes to the survival of capitalist structures. The claiming of property is taken to extremes with the introduction of an antagonistic group in season four called ‘The Claimers’, who live according to the premise that taking goods from others is easier than finding things on their own.

A more general reading of the ‘zombifying’ effects of capitalism is showcased in the finale of season two that sees the group moving to a farm run by veterinarian Hershel Greene. While his farm represents a form of edgeland, an isolated, almost utopian space embodying pre-industrial forms of labour away from any urban settlement, it is eventually attacked by a massive horde of zombies, so that the remaining survivors have to scatter individually into the surrounding forests before they reunite on a nearby empty highway. Once reunited, Rick Grimes confronts the group with the knowledge that ‘we’re all infected […]. Whatever it is, we all carry it’.⁴⁵

The narrative serves as a commentary on the global dynamics of capitalist crises, especially capitalism’s adaptability and persistence. If we return to Mark Fisher’s reading of capitalism as the ‘insatiable vampire and zombiemaker’, which argues that zombies come to stand for everything that is wrong with modern capitalism but that capitalism keeps shambling along nonetheless, then capitalism is also rendered a form of internalized structure from which there is no escape: it is zombie-like in that its aesthetics follow the idea that people are left to fight for themselves and – in the case of The Walking Dead, in which everybody is already a carrier of the virus – presents this outlook as being without any alternative. Ultimately, then, becoming a zombie is conceptually rendered a form of medicalized condition from which there is no escape. That is, while the series displays the emptiness of capitalism, it simultaneously points out the lack of alternatives. With the group repeatedly struggling with their new self-identity, the series also renders forms of collectivity increasingly problematic in the aftermath of the apocalypse, culminating in the decaying authority of Rick Grimes, who, after the group has escaped from the farm into the wilderness, reminds the community that ‘[i]f you’re staying, this isn’t a democracy anymore’.⁴⁶ The motif of the zombies overrunning the seemingly safe farm is again linked to the perturbation of familiarity in empty spaces and the uncanny persistence of history. Reconnecting to a pastoral-like, bygone age has proven to be illusory if the farm as a ‘homely’ symbol of peace is suddenly linked to feelings of anxiety. The empty spaces of the surrounding landscapes thus invert the idea of a rural haven or the desire to return to familiar surroundings.⁴⁷ This desire is never realized and constantly postponed, mainly because the ‘new society’ is revealed to be as corrupt as the old. At the same time, the perverted, nomad-like quality of the characters who cannot find peace and have been ‘rejected by the established order’⁴⁸ offers a critical reading of the neoliberal politics of mobility and migration, that is, their effects on identity-making under globalized hyper-capitalism: The Walking Dead and Survivors both highlight the persistence of capitalism’s social and economic mechanisms, which manifest themselves in the characters’ endless roaming of spaces. At the same time, their nomadic existence is symbolic of historic phases of mobility and displacement, most prominently in the protagonists’ adherence to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and the fact that meeting strangers is usually not devoid of violence. On their journey through empty spaces the protagonists not only come to embody the exclusionary logic of migration and the tension between the ‘old’ social order and the need to adapt to a ‘new’ world, but also reveal the problematic nature of what it means to live in a state of permanent uncertainty.

Conclusion

While in the context of the larger socio-economic framework we have seen that the abandoned-earth trope may be read as commenting on discourses of security, bodily integrity or the question of systemic alternatives in a post-apocalyptic world, the question remains as to what extent post-apocalyptic fiction may also offer a form of hope. In showcasing the continuous struggle over resources and living space, the series have the audience believe that while to some extent ‘those [old] rules don’t apply anymore’,⁴⁹ reconnecting to previous forms of societal living can be an option. This is apparent in the ways of claiming ownership (over spaces and resources), but also in the nostalgic notions of what it means to belong to a family, group or community.

However, both The Walking Dead and Survivors reveal the temporary nature of finding hope in their surroundings, especially through reconnecting to elements of social formation that bear a ‘pre-apocalypse’ nature and by ascribing new meaning to the question of belonging. The motif of hope is, then, consistently attached to specific environments in which the characters either actively produce new spatialities or reconnect to more classic tropes of escapism and security. In Survivors rural parts of England repeatedly come to stand for notions of a more traditional trope, that of embodying ‘the symbolic status as the idyllic alternative to urban environments’.⁵⁰ This means that while empty cities are usually perceived as dangerous, the symbolism of an empty countryside is juxtaposed onto the anxieties and fears of urban settlements. In both series the emptiness of the surrounding countryside and the journeying motif function at least as elements of short-term relief and tranquillity, while the empty road is not exclusively symbolic of post-apocalyptic displacement but may also signify a path to a new and safe future. However, the series frequently allude to the notion that hope is fragile and impermanent. In Survivors the group finds temporary shelter in an eco-compound run by the last government minister and antagonist Samantha Willis, who, despite trying to restore order in the form of a provisional government, has people killed for stealing food and hands over convicts to slave labour.

What is more, being confronted with emptiness proves to be an ongoing difficulty leading to a pre-apocalyptic nostalgia, which is linked to earlier social formations that suddenly become deeply desirable, as voiced by Al Sadiq and Sarah Boyer when they overlook the emptiness from a small hill:

Al Sadiq: Never get quite used to it, do you? The emptiness. No-one left.

Sarah Boyer: I think about things differently now everyone’s gone. All my girlfriends going on all the time about getting married, having babies, settling down. It all seemed so boring. Now I think … I’d like to one day. You know … maybe with someone. Have kids.⁵¹

Similarly, as in The Walking Dead, in which Lori Grimes, Rick’s wife, gives birth to her daughter Judith and the offspring symbolizes a new form of hope, elements of the nuclear family and hetero-normative gender roles continue to exist, at least partly, as a social norm amidst the post-apocalypse landscape,⁵² most importantly displayed when, in The Walking Dead, protecting Lori and the baby in a less than desirable world becomes the habitual quest of the group. Both series also give new signification to emptiness by alluding to the idea that repopulating the earth is a post-apocalyptic imperative.

Moreover, the significance of space is increasingly shown to be directly linked to the idea of bodily security, with the series suggesting that securing a place goes along with securing the body. In The Walking Dead rurality can offer a form of short-term escapism from the hostile environment of an Atlanta that was overrun by the infected; however, this idea is later spoiled when the group realizes that everybody is already infected, which also renders the seemingly safe, rural, Georgian countryside a dangerous space. Here the apocalypse quite literally ‘reveals’ underlying ‘truths’ about contemporary society and that ‘sticking to pre-made ideas will get you killed’.⁵³ In the wastelands and empty spaces of the post-apocalypse, however, the coming-to-terms with a changed environment is no smooth transition between the old model of social order and the rebuilding of a new world. Rather, it is a constant negotiation of seemingly outdated practices and nostalgic dreams and the quick adaptation to the new, post-apocalyptic milieu. This chapter has shown that empty spaces in post-apocalyptic television series serve to comment on the complex dynamics of spaces under the logic of late capitalism, apparent in the fact that the substantial recreation of order is shown to be increasingly complicated and any alternative ultimately rendered a form of phantasm and uncanny endeavour. Analysis of the series has highlighted that the spatiality of both The Walking Dead and Survivors not only reveals the ideological implications of what were once familiar spaces, but that emptiness works as a strong commentary that historicizes the dilemmas of a post-apocalyptic environment. Oscillating between a nostalgic wish to return to a bygone age and the survival of pre-disaster modes of thinking, emptiness amplifies the persistence and thus adaptability of capitalist forces and displays their ideological normalization. Amidst the discourse of loss that accompanies the process of rebuilding society, capitalism ultimately remains the dominant symbolic order, complicating the series’ inherent hope for a better future and safe home. At the same time, the series’ use of emptiness and the characters’ nomadic lifestyle render the protagonists powerful examples of the neurotic citizen who is left in a constant state of apprehension and fear and is, in the end, unable to cope with the trials and tribulations of an altered everyday life.

¹ S. Sontag, ‘The imagination of disaster’, in Liquid Metal: The Science Fiction Film Reader, ed. S. Redmond (New York, 2007), pp. 40–7, at p. 44.

² Sontag, ‘The imagination of disaster’, p. 42.

³ V. Sobchack, ‘Cities on the edge of time: the urban science-fiction film’, in Alien Zone II: The Spaces of Science Fiction Cinema, ed. A. Kuhn (London and New York, 1999), pp. 123–46, at p. 132.

⁴ ‘Preppers UK Full UK Documentary 2013’, YouTube, 7 June 2013 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbO3Nyg2HA4> [accessed 11 Jan. 2016].

⁵ E. Barros-Grela and M. Bobadilla Pérez, ‘Space and children in post-apocalyptic film: The Road and Les temps du loup’, in The Child in Post-Apocalyptic Cinema, ed. D. Olson (Lanham, Md., 2015), pp. 77–90, at p. 82.

⁶ E. Gomel, Postmodern Science Fiction and Temporal Imagination (London and New York, 2010), p. 120.

⁷ E. Vossen. ‘Laid to rest: romance, end of the world sexuality and apocalyptic anticipation in Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead, in Zombies and Sexuality: Essays on Desire and the Living Dead, ed. S. McGlotten and S. Jones (Jefferson, N.C., 2014), pp. 88–105, at p. 91.

⁸ M. Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (Ropley, 2009), p. 15. Marx repeatedly drew on the metaphor of the vampire to explore the exploitative nature and characteristic of modern capitalism of transforming matter into commodities by nourishing itself upon labour, ‘by constantly sucking in living labour as its soul, vampire-like’ (K. Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, trans. M. Nicolaus (Harmondsworth, 1973), p. 646). Similarly, Fisher connects late capitalism to a monstrous, inhuman world in which, despite its evident flaws, the system continues to operate, only that ‘the living flesh it converts to dead labour is ours, and the zombies it makes are us’ (Fisher, Capitalist Realism, p. 15).

⁹ A. Billson, ‘Enough of the apocalypse films!’, The Telegraph, 5 July 2013 <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10160886/Enough-of-the-apocalypse-films.html> [accessed 11 Jan. 2016].

¹⁰ ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’, Box Office Mojo <http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=furyroad.htm> [accessed 11 Jan. 2016].

¹¹ E. R. Rosen, Apocalyptic Transformation: Apocalypse and the Postmodern Imagination (Lanham, Md., 2008), p. xii.

¹² A. J. Bellamy, Security Communities and their Neighbours: Regional Fortresses or Global Integrators? (Basingstoke and New York, 2004); Spaces of Security and Insecurity: Geographies of the War on Terror, ed. A. Ingram and K. Dodds (Farnham, 2009).

¹³ E. F. Isin, ‘The neurotic citizen’, Citizenship Studies, viii (2004), 217–35, at p. 223.

¹⁴ Isin, ‘The neurotic citizen’, p. 233.

¹⁵ Barros-Grela and Bobadilla Pérez, ‘Space and children in post-apocalyptic film’, p. 82.

¹⁶ S. Freud, quoted in H. Cixous, ‘Fiction and its phantoms: a reading of Freud’s Das Unheimliche (The “Uncanny”)’, New Literary History, vii (1976), 525–48, 619–45, at p. 639.

¹⁷ N. Royle, The Uncanny (Manchester, 2003), p. vii.

¹⁸ M. Germanà and A. Mousoutzanis, ‘Introduction: after the end?’, in Apocalyptic Discourse in Contemporary Culture: Post-Millenial Perspectives on the End of the World, ed. M. Germanà and A. Mousoutzanis (New York, 2014), pp. 1–13, at p. 11.

¹⁹ Freud, quoted in Cixous, ‘Fiction and its phantoms’, p. 637.

²⁰ J. Hell and A. Schönle, ‘Introduction’, in Ruins of Modernity, ed. J. Hell and A. Schönle (Durham, N.C., 2010), pp. 1–16.

²¹ M. Binelli, The Last Days of Detroit: Motor Cars, Motown and the Collapse of an Industrial Giant (London, 2013), p. 3.

²² J. Herron, AfterCulture: Detroit and the Humiliation of History (Detroit, Mich., 1993), p. 131.

²³ C. J. Vergara and G. Parak, ‘Detroit by night: haunting, desolate streetscapes by Camilo José Vergara’, TIME, 28 Apr. 2014 <http://time.com/3809052/detroit-by-night-haunting-desolate-streetscapes-by-camilo-jose-vergara/> [accessed 11 Jan. 2016].

²⁴ D. Apel, Beautiful Terrible Ruins: Detroit and the Anxiety of Decline (New Brunswick, N.J., and London, 2015), p. 152.

²⁵ S. Žižek, Living in the End Times (London and New York, 2011 [2010]), p. 328.

²⁶ S. Žižek, Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle (London and New York, 2004), p. 63.

²⁷ A. Kozma, ‘Leave it all behind: the post-apocalyptical renunciation of technology in The Walking Dead’, in Thinking Dead: What the Zombie Apocalypse Means, ed. M. Balaji (Lanham, Md., 2013), pp. 141–58, at p. 153.

²⁸ G. Coonfield, ‘Perfect strangers: the zombie imaginary and the logic of representation’, in Balaji, Thinking Dead, pp. 3–16, at p. 6.

²⁹ ‘Episode 1’, Survivors – Series 1, dir. J. Alexander (BBC, 2009), at 42:18–43:33 [on DVD].

³⁰ M. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France 1978–1979, trans. G. Burchell (New York, 2008), p. 226.

³¹ ‘Episode 3’, Survivors – Series 2, dir. D. Evans (BBC, 2010), at 00:06:00–00:06:20 [on DVD].

³² A. Garnar, ‘Portable civilizations and urban assault vehicles’, Techné: Jour. Society for Philosophy and Technology, v (2000), 1–12.

³³ C. Heckman, ‘Roadside “vigil” for the dead: cannibalism, fossil fuels and the American dream’, in ‘We’re All Infected’: Essays on AMC’s ‘The Walking Dead’ and the Fate of the Human, ed. D. Keetley (Jefferson, N.C., 2014), pp. 95–109, at p. 101. See also J. Urry, ‘The “system” of automobility’, Theory, Culture & Society, xxi (2004), 25–39.

³⁴ E. Aldea, Magical Realism and Deleuze: the Indiscernibility of Difference in Postcolonial Literature (London, 2011), p. 129.

³⁵ B. A. Patrick, Zombology: Zombies and the Decline of the West (and Guns) (London, 2014), p. 137.

³⁶ G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. B. Massumi (London and New York, 2004), p. 420.

³⁷ G. Desilet, Screens of Blood: A Critical Approach to Film and Television Violence (Jefferson, N.C., 2014), p. 171.

³⁸ S. Pekerman, ‘The schizoanalysis of European surveillance films’, in Deleuze and Film, ed. D. Martin-Jones and W. Brown (Edinburgh, 2012), pp. 121–36, at p. 122.

³⁹ D. Harvey, Spaces of Global Capitalism: Towards a Theory of Uneven Geographical Development (London and New York, 2006).

⁴⁰ M. Molesworth, ‘First person shoppers: consumer ways of seeing in videogames’, in Digital Virtual Consumption, ed. M. Molesworth and J. Denegri-Knott (New York and London, 2012), pp. 60–75, at p. 61.

⁴¹ 28 Days Later [DNA Films/British Film Council], dir. Danny Boyle, UK, 2002, at 46:15–00:46:20 [on DVD].

⁴² Boyle, 28 Days Later, at 00:46:27–00:46:40.

⁴³ ‘Episode 2’, Survivors – Series 1 [BBC], dir. A. Gunn, 2009, at 00:04:32–00:04:55 [on DVD].

⁴⁴ ‘Seed’, The Walking Dead – The Complete Third Season [AMC Studios et al.], dir. E. Dickerson, 2013, season 3, episode 1, at 00:17:20–00:18:30 [Blu-ray].

⁴⁵ ‘Beside the dying fire’, The Walking Dead – The Complete Second Season [AMC Studios et al.], dir. E. Dickerson, 2012, season 2, episode 13, at 00:32:00–00:32:30 [Blu-ray].

⁴⁶ ‘Beside the dying fire’, at 00:41:00–00:41:40.

⁴⁷ Cixous, ‘Fiction and its phantoms’, p. 620.

⁴⁸ E. W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (London, 1994), p. 403.

⁴⁹ ‘Guts’, The Walking Dead – The Complete Second Season, episode 2, season 1, at 23:00 [Blu-ray]. See also A. Barkman, ‘I don’t think those rules apply anymore’, in The Walking Dead and Philosophy: Zombie Apocalypse Now, ed. W. Yuen (Chicago and LaSalle, Ill., 2012), pp. 207–16, at p. 207.

⁵⁰ M. Bunce, ‘Reproducing rural idylls’, in Country Visions, ed. P. Cloke (Harlow, 2003), pp. 14–30, at p. 17.

⁵¹ ‘Episode 4’, Survivors – Series 2, at 00:05:42–0:06:40.

⁵² C. Hannabach, ‘Queering and cripping the end of the world: disability, sex, and race in The Walking Dead’, in McGlotten and Jones, Zombies and Sexuality, pp. 106–22, at p. 109.

⁵³ B. Kempner, ‘The optimism of The Walking Dead’, in Yuen, The Walking Dead and Philosophy, pp. 141–54, at p. 142.