Serial Horrors of Loneliness: The Impossibility of Communitization in "The Walking Dead"

Abstract

For a long time, zombie movies have lead a shadow existence. Nowadays,, zombies have surprisingly become in vogue: today, they are a constant telemedial companion, reaching all relevant target groups. «The Walking Dead», offers a promising object of investigation. The main question is why has this series with its dark lonely world become one of the most successful telemedial narratives of our times? The paper wants to show from a sociological-philosophical perspective how we can understand modernity as an age of growing loneliness as it generates uncertain social relationships and living conditions, provoking a longing for a simpler lifestyle without the antagonisms of modernity. But this desire for an anti-modern change, which leads to 'post'-modernity, and the hope to overcome modernity's loneliness, does not only negate all modern achievements —prosperity, democracy
and freedom—, but also those modern means of mass communication like television, which made the loneliness of modernity bearable through mediated forms of communitization.

KEYWORDS: serie, The Walking dead, anti-modernity, communitization.