The Walking Dead American Dream

The New American Dream

Doomsday and apocalyptic scenarios have been continuously glorified and fantasized through the late 20th century and into the new millennium. These seemingly horrific and catastrophic scenarios are being transformed from dystopia to utopia. The sudden lack of security and structure within these broken and run-down societies seems to be the true American dream in today’s time. No longer are the everyday American citizens dreaming of a happy and simplistically structured life, but the new desire is for self-reliance, reconstruction, and possibly even total anarchy.

The mid 1900’s presented a fantasy that was later titled “the American dream.” The American dream, as described by Cantor, included a happy family with

The modern television show titled, The Walking Dead swept through the nation growing in popularity with each passing season. Consumers grew very attached to a series filled with chaos, suffering, and death. It is easy to wonder why an audience who loves their modern technology such as cell, phones, Facebook, and even running water and electricity would find a show which strips its society from these luxuries, so appealing. It becomes much less confusing, however, when you look at the other “privileges” taken away such as a controlling government, dividing social classes, and the stress of a progressively changing society. In, The Walking Dead, season 1 episode 1, the characters are plucked from their day to day lives and thrown into a dangerous epidemic that threatens the lives of every individual on the face of the earth. At first, like almost all zombie shows and films, the characters are scared and hopeless but this fear drove these common citizens to band together and create their own small society with a government and an attitude to protect their own and let the rest fend for themselves (Darabont, 2010). This showed a large dependence on one’s self and the close-knit people who could be trusted. Many people found this concept to be appealing. Instead of relying on the government for structure, people could rely on themselves and the people closest to them. In today’s modern

It is a common theme throughout The Walking Dead to show a process of deconstruction followed by reconstruction. In The Walking Dead season 3 episode 3 the governor and his small town Woodbury were introduced to the main characters. Woodbury is a small town that has a community of people who all have a place to be and a job to do. This community is established in the midst of the chaos yet thrives well on each other. Later the characters and audience find out just how corrupt the governor and his tyrannous system is, but the concept of a smaller structured society is very popular and revisited more than once throughout the series (Darabont, 2010). These reconstruction tendencies through television, depict society’s dream for a reset or a second chance. These well-structured towns with smaller amounts of people provide the fantasy of job security and a much more simplistic and straight-forward society. People do not have to worry about insurance, money and taxation, or whether or not their job will still be around five years from