Zombies and the Adolescent Imagination

I was recently cited in an article in Sociological Review entitled “Zombies and the Adolescent Imagination.” I reprint a portion here for the benefit of some of our readers (you know who you are):

The zombie film, as a pop-culture artifact, reveals a great deal about the interior lives of male adolescents. If we look to De Walters’ study of marginalized male adolescents, (“The Lost Boys,” Journal of Pediatrics, Mar. 1971) we find abundant comments relating to sexual confusion and feelings of being unlovable or unloved. Often these comments take a turn towards subjects’ claiming to feel “disgusting” or “gross.” Yet these same adolescents claim an insatiable sexual drive, and therefore their nascent sexuality takes the form of a shambling, blind beast, which must “eat brains” no matter what the cost. The fact that zombies eat brains rather than genitals indicates that what these boys really crave is an emotional connection with a romantic partner, while simultaneously feeling unworthy of such a connection, because of their “gross,” mutating bodies. That these same boys obsessively fear a future in which they become mindless working-class drones highlights their abhorrence of and attraction to the zombie figure.