The Walking Dead is a popular show on AMC about a group of survivors banding together in the wake of the zombie

apocalypse. Over the course of three seasons, the group suffers many losses and deaths and has reluctantly taken on new members. In any dystopian setting where humanity is at war with a bloodthirsty evil, survival is dependent on cooperation and trust. In the show, members of the group all do their part to ensure the safety and wellbeing of not only themselves but those around them. Still on the hinge of a patriarchal society, the characters slip into common gender roles because that is most familiar to everyone. Interestingly, the signs of gender that prevailed in civil society prove not to be conducive to survival in an apocalyptic setting, where the implications of gender division hinder the preservation of humanity. Because society has collapsed, much of its rules and order have as well. The group attempts to start from scratch, sticking together and hoping to carve out a safe place for themselves in the world. Reconstruction is social in nature, performed collectively, drawing upon societal clues, and often orienting to societal purposes, writes Nick Crossley in Social Construction. The reform that takes place in all three seasons (as it is an ongoing process as power dynamics naturally shift) is directly a product of these things. In terms of survival, the reconstruction of society means that strangers establish codes, that they elect a leader to make decisions, and adhere to them collectively. Gender roles enable men to have more power than women and therefore make the decisions that are oriental to societal purposesin this case, not dying. The power that comes with gender is mythic, founded on the idea that in order for a society to function, men must do the physical, gritty labor while women are left to domestic work, tasks assumed to naturally be optimal for each side. During the zombie apocalypse, this myth proves itself to be false as the following of those practices puts the group in danger time

after time. The pressures of these roles prove to be too much for men to handle, and women who go against these codes have to first waste time fighting to prove themselves before even being trusted or allowed to contribute to the groups cause: surviving. Power is the distinguishing feature of masculinity, writes Brian Pronger in Sexual Mythologies. In The Walking Dead, power means being able to make decisions that few or no people will challenge. Power also implies self-sufficiency, where those who are most likely to sustain (were they to be alone in the wild) are considered more powerful and therefore more valuable than those who would not. Rick Grimes, the main character, is the unofficial leader of his group. A respected cop in former society, Rick initially inhibits a sense of justice and good leadership, which wins over many people. Rick struggles to upkeep the various roles that civil society opposed on him, which contradict due to the circumstances he finds himself in. How can he be a devoted father and loving husband when he must prioritize protecting his family over spending time with them? How can he be both compassionate and loving when he is constantly in the battlefield? How can he ensure that he is being fair and just when survival means treating strangers with distrust and sometimes behaving ruthlessly? This psychological tug of war is what Terry Lee refers to as gender role strain in his article Virtual Violence in Fight Club (page 419). In The Walking Dead, the signs of gender manifest slightly differently than they would in normal society. The biggest signifier of masculinity is the right to bear arms, because it represents the power of self-sufficiency. Women in possession of weapons or knowledge of how to operate threaten the status quo. In season two, a running plotline was Andrea, one of the more masculine women in the group, insisting that she be allowed to stay on watch and bear a gun. In season three, Andrea and Michonne stumble into an isolated community and Michonnes swords

are taken from her. For the duration of many episodes, she insists that they be given back to her. The swords are taken in an attempt to feminize her, to make her more docile, but she resists and is seen as a threat, as someone unpredictable and potentially dangerous for simply wanting to have a means to be able to protect herself.. What most strongly indicates masculinity in the women on the show is how they style their hair. Andrea and Michonne wear low maintenance hairstyles. Andrea frequently ties her hair in a ponytail; Michonnes hair is kept in dreadlocks and requires little to no care. The other gender role that these characters play into in the feminine role as a comforter, where these women put forth the emotional labor of optimism, hope, or being allowed to openly express their fears, doubts and loves. They operate as the voice of reason. The men are always seen deliberating important issues or grimacing but female characters are allowed to smile and show slivers of brief happiness now and then. Women are gendered to be more open about things, whereas masculine affection is strongly demonstrative in nature, rarely verbalized. Therefore, we often see women in the show conversing among themselves while men are depicted in media res, only pausing to discuss plans or strategy. Gender in a post-society relies on men being emotionally distant and women attempting to open dialogue. In the first episode of Season 3, for example, Ricks pregnant wife, Lori, attempts to get a moment alone with him to talk. Rick has finished announcing plans and strategy on how to secure safety at a new location. As soon as he finishes talking, he walks away and Lori runs after him. Rick, she says. About the baby, we to talk About what? Rick cuts her off abruptly and whirls around to glare at her. Lori is taken aback by how fiercely he responds and hesitates in her next line. This question is an assertion of Ricks power and masculinity. He is emotionally closed off from his wife and has been

increasingly so from the moment they reunited in season one. Their relationship has deteriorated to such a point that he can only seem to express hatred for her, even as she stands before him eight months pregnant with his child. The question is a challenge, a warning that any questions or commentary she has that runs contrary to his plan is bound to be shut down. Things, answers Lori. She swallows. The baby is due any day now Talk to Herschel, Rick says coldly, referring to the vet-turned-doctor of the group. Herschel is the only male character who displays the feminine quality of talking about things, mostly because he is old. (After this episode, he also loses his self-sufficiency because he has his lower leg amputated after a zombie bite.) Rick essentially dismisses Lori and her concerns. Im doing stuff, Lori, he tells her. Things. In that scene, Rick sacrifices his traditionally masculine role as the concerned husband and interested to-be father for his other masculine role as the cold-hearted, militant leader. Rick is no longer able to reconcile those two aspects of his gender role expression. His characterization fits what Terry Lee describes in Virtual Violence in Fight Club: Men who achieve a certain consciousness about their failure to measure up may develop serious psychological problems or behave in antisocial ways simply by trying to live up to unrealistic and, more often than we think, overly risky role expectations. When Lori eventually dies during childbirth a few episodes later, Ricks psychotic break worsenshe begins hearing voices and seeing the ghost of his wife, projections of the guilt and pressure of the expectations he is burdened with. We see other characters grapple with the same breakdowns: in season three, Rick reunites with Morgan, a man who saved his life in season one. Since they were last together, Morgans son has died. Why? Because Morgan failed to kill his wife after she became a zombie, and as a

result his son was too emotionally attached to kill her. Because Morgan could not reconcile his role as the loving husband with the logically, detached protector, he lost his son and consequently failed at his role as a father. Due to this loss, he isolates himself from society, locking himself in a house surrounded by tons of booby traps and overloaded with weapons and ammo. He is paranoid and obsessive, a shell of the man he was in the beginning of the apocalypse, and completely different from who he was back in the normal world of the past. Another character who flies to a different extreme is a man who calls himself The Governor and is the leader of the aforementioned isolated community that Michonne and Andrea stumble upon. After losing his daughter (failing at his role as a father), he grows obsessed with finding a way to revive her. When that dream is shattered after Michonne kills her (again), he becomes ruthless and declares a war against Ricks group. Because the only role that he is able to fit into is as the ruthless, mistrusting leader (because he no longer has a family to be compassionate or thoughtful for), he has lost all humanity and/or sense of morality. The idea that gender as a social construction must be upheld and followed is so ingrained in these characters that it clouds their judgment and their decisions. In a civil world, that construction was believed to be necessary for society to thrive. But the Walking Dead shows that that construction does just the opposite. For men, these roles can be so rigid that they cause psychotic breaks, leader to tyrannical power imbalances and destroy families. It creates a huge psychological burden and a subsequent guilt complex. The Walking Dead demonstrates that in an apocalyptic setting, the preservation of humanity relies on the reconstructing of those gender roles.

References: Crossley, Nick. Social Construction/Social Constructionism. Key Concepts in Critical Social Theory. London: Sage, 2005. 296-300. Print. Lee, Terry. Virtual Violence in Fight Club: This Is What Transformation of Masculine Ego Feels Like. Journal of American & Comparative Cultures25.3/4 (Fall 2002): 418-423. Print. Pronger, Brian. Sexual Mythologies. Everyday, Everywhere: Global Perspectives on Popular Culture. Eds., Stuart and Terry Hirschberg. Boston: McGraw- Hill, 2002. 226-236. Print.