Textual Analysis Of The Movie 'The Walking Dead'

The Walking Dead has become a disease over the past few years that has spread rapidly through American households. No great television series however is complete without a thoroughly developed title sequence. Everything from a TV-series to a song, more often than not the introduction is the deciding factor in the decision on whether or not the item at hand is intriguing to the viewer. The Walking Dead is a great example of a series that created an intro to its episodes that really grabs the viewer’s attention, sets the tone/mood for the episodes while doing it all in an effective manner. Just like with anything else that has ever been created, there is more than one contributing factor to what makes the intro to The Walking Dead. One of the

In more than just one shot in the introduction there is noticeable moss that covers some of the buildings. Now unless the setting of this series is somewhere in Europe where some places are known for their mossy buildings, this moss symbolizes much more than itself indicating to the viewer that the buildings have not been taken care of in a while. One other sign that contributes to the metonymic code is the shot where a graveyard is shown. It’s roughly halfway through the sequence when it is shown so as a viewer, some of the abandoned buildings and cars have already been shown. Not only are the buildings working symbolically now, but so is the graveyard. Questions like “Was there a lot of death?” or “Will there be a lot of death?” are common things to think when viewing this shot. Lastly, the ripped up American flag towards the end of the title sequence. Again we have a sign not just functioning as itself, but as something much bigger. In America today it would be baffling to find an American flag looking like the one in the introduction, so there must be more to it. All of these signs and symbols when it comes down to it create one metonymic code that can be summed up quite easily. Whatever it was that happened, was bad. We can assume this from all of the details given to us by the signs and it works very effectively for the series

Any series dealing with zombies can from the gun be presumed to have a lot of action in it. Action means a lot of fast paced quick movements. Everything from the panning of the shots to the zooming in this introduction is done at a very high speed, which is to be expected for an action series. It’s almost exhausting to watch the introduction to The Walking Dead because there is so much going on and so much to follow that if someone were to try and focus in on all of it, it would just drain them mentally. On the other hand, this is still a much more effective way to get the viewer’s attention because as a director, the last thing they want is for their audience to be bored or not intrigued after only the first minute or so of the