scholarly journals “No one gives you a rulebook to raise a kid”: Adoptive Motherhood in The Walking Dead Video Game Series

Loading ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (20) ◽  
pp. 51-70
Author(s):  
Sarah Marie Stang
Keyword(s):  
Video Game ◽  
Father Figure ◽  
Extant Literature ◽  
The Walking Dead ◽  
Mother Figure ◽  
The Way ◽  
Walking Dead

This article closely examines the representation of adoptive motherhood in Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead video game series. It builds off previous research which has examined The Walking Dead: Season One as an example of a ‘dadified’ game to explore the ways adoptive motherhood is represented throughout the series. More specifically, this article focuses on the series’ protagonist, Clementine, as she develops from a daughter-figure to a mother-figure. Overall, this article argues that although TWD has been discussed primarily as a dadified game and much of the extant literature on the series has focused on Lee as a father-figure, TWD series can also be read as a ‘momified’ narrative. While there are several problematic aspects in the way Clementine is portrayed, the series is notable in that it explores adoptive maternity, centralizes the experiences of non-white characters, and reinforces the message that family is not limited to blood relations. Because of its centralization of Clementine – a young, potentially queer, adoptive mother of colour – TWD series should be considered as a maternal narrative, rather than only categorized as another dadified series.

scholarly journals Choices and Consequences: The Role of Players in The Walking Dead: A Telltale Game Series

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 350-358 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Genovesi
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Comic Books ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Interactive Approach ◽  
Transmedia Storytelling ◽  
The Walking Dead ◽  
Walking Dead

Abstract One of the most important features in a transmedia structure, as Max Giovagnoli argues in his book Transmedia: Storytelling e Comunicazione [Transmedia: Storytelling and Communication], is the development of the user’s decision-making power, defined by the author as “choice excitement.” In this, every choice of the user should have a consequence in the fictional universe of a specific franchise. Consequently, a narrative universe that wants to emphasize choice excitement and the active role of people can focus on video games, where the interactive approach is prominent. This essay will discuss a specific video game, based on the famous franchise of The Walking Dead. This brand, which appears in comic books, novels, TV series, Web episodes and video games, is analysable not only as an exemplary case of transmedia storytelling, where every ramification of the franchise published in different media is both autonomous and synergistic with the others, but also by focusing on the choice excitement of users in the first season of the video game The Walking Dead: A Telltale Game Series.

The Walking Dead and the Never-Ending Zombie Story

2018 ◽  
pp. 67-91
Author(s):  
Tim Lanzendörfer
Keyword(s):  
Modern Life ◽  
The Walking Dead ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Way ◽  
Walking Dead

This chapter reads The Walking Dead through its creator Robert Kirkman’s contention that it is the “zombie movie that never ends.” Drawing on Eran Dorfman’s notion of the everyday in modern life and Frank Kermode’s parsing of the need for literary endings, it argues that The Walking Dead’s narrative endlessness and questing for the restitution of the everyday is best understood as symptomatic of a contemporary moment in which there is room for doubt what the everyday actually is. The chapter suggests that The Walking Dead reflects the way life is lived in the absence of a sense of narrative endings.

Monster Stories/Storied Monsters

2019 ◽  
pp. 195-214
Author(s):  
Adam Charles Hart
Keyword(s):  
Video Game ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Horror Genre ◽  
High Profile ◽  
The Walking Dead ◽  
Living Dead ◽  
The Face ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Walking Dead

This final chapter continues the discussion of monsters by engaging with the writings of Robin Wood, who theorized monsters as fundamentally ambivalent figures who allow us to envision alternatives to the restrictive social order. It then realigns Wood’s terms to show how the recent horror genre has been structured around questions not simply of monstrosity, but of asserting or maintaining humanity—and recognizing the humanity of others—in the face of monstrosity and other inconceivable horrors. This is the explicit theme of The Walking Dead TV series, as is emphasized in its first video game adaptation, The Walking Dead: The Game (2012), but is there at the beginnings of the modern genre in the 1960s with a film like Night of the Living Dead (1968). The chapter concludes with a discussion of how understandings of “monstrosity” and “humanity” are redefined around questions of morality with two high-profile, integrated horror films, Get Out (2017) and The Shape of Water (2017).

Comic Books, Video Games, and Transmedia Storytelling

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 34-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlie Ecenbarger
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Comic Books ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Comic Book ◽  
Additional Information ◽  
Transmedia Storytelling ◽  
The Walking Dead ◽  
Book World ◽  
Walking Dead

This article illuminates the transmedia storytelling techniques in The Walking Dead comic book and video game. Telltale Games' The Walking Dead localizes itself within the comic book world of The Walking Dead by acting as a transmedia storytelling device and using intertextuality comics to assist game players with meaning-making. By participating in the game, Telltale rewards players with additional information about The Walking Dead universe, as well as creating a contingent but separate narrative that expands upon the existing Walking Dead world. This exploration of The Walking Dead offers insights into the specific methods that are being employed by creators to further engage the audience in the transmedia storyworld.

scholarly journals Social Media and the New Commons of TV Criticism

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 208-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Teurlings
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Culture Industry ◽  
Ample Opportunity ◽  
The Walking Dead ◽  
Contemporary Media ◽  
Tv Shows ◽  
New Commons ◽  
The Way ◽  
Walking Dead

This article investigates the way that social media have given a renewed impetus to TV criticism. Websites like Entertainment Weekly or TVline.com not only offer TV criticism by TV critics but also offer ample opportunity for fans to debate their favorite TV shows, part of what Graeme Turner has called “the demotic turn” in contemporary media. Whereas academic scrutiny of this demotic turn has tended to focus on the issue of democratization and the valorization of subjugated knowledges, relatively little attention has been given to how this has created a “commonification” of TV criticism. An analysis of audience reactions to The Walking Dead shows a protoprofessionalization of TV criticism, with audience members offering increasingly sophisticated analyses of TV shows, informed by standards set by the culture industry. The paper ends with a discussion on what type of cultural knowledge these new televisual commons produce and circulate.

scholarly journals The Discursive Problematization of Death, Dehumanization and Sociocultural identity: An Analysis of 'The Walking Dead'

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Victoria Skye
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Major Site ◽  
The Walking Dead ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Discourses ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Way ◽  
Walking Dead

<p>The zombie is a significant cultural figure which is represented and produced as being symptomatic of and relevant to contemporary concerns about death and dehumanization. This thesis will focus on the ways that death and dehumanization are changing and being negotiated within popular cultural representations and discourses regarding zombies, particularly in Frank Darabont’s television series The Walking Dead. The thesis will consider the way in which the figure of the zombie is representative of issues and discourses that are indicative of a problematization of the category of the human, and the notion of the transcendental. This will involve an examination of the changing narratives of the body, with particular regard to consumerism and the insistence of the body as a major site of the truth and value of the self, in contrast to the horrifying bodily form of the zombie. The thesis will also examine the way that dehumanization is problematized in The Walking Dead, where the human/non-human distinction is shown to be increasingly precarious and difficult to sustain. Further, the thesis will examine how the zombie is represented as manifesting the collapse of identity, as agents become alienated from the social discourses, narratives and values which constitute and categorize the subject.</p>

scholarly journals Black (anti)fandom's intersectional politicization of "The Walking Dead" as a transmedia franchise

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Rendell
Keyword(s):  
Black Men ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Black Male ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
The Walking Dead ◽  
Academic Discourses ◽  
Walking Dead

Despite axiomatic industry and academic discourses of The Walking Dead's (2010–) status as quality TV—linked to its graphic visuals and compelling story lines—strong counterclaims question the text's (mis)representations of race and its propensity for systematically killing off Black male characters. An analysis of African Americans' responses to marginalized Black male characters politicizes the racial milieu of the series against the backdrop of wider racial relationships in the United States. Moreover, The Walking Dead is a successful transmedia franchise, and thus racial discourse shifts and changes, depending on which transmedia texts are being consumed. Thus, Black antifan rhetoric aimed at the spin-off series Fear the Walking Dead (2015–) centers on the zombification of Black men, a metaphor of the mistreatment and othering of young Black men by US police. Comparatively, The Walking Dead video game (TellTale Games, 2012) offers character development for its Black male lead character that fans praise against wider cultural representations in relation to both the franchise's hyperdiegesis and to video games in general. Therefore, Black audiences may read The Walking Dead as both racially reductive and radical. In doing so, aspects of self-identity, such as race, can inform (anti)fan positions through intersectional politics.

scholarly journals The Discursive Problematization of Death, Dehumanization and Sociocultural identity: An Analysis of 'The Walking Dead'

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Victoria Skye
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Major Site ◽  
The Walking Dead ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Discourses ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Way ◽  
Walking Dead

<p>The zombie is a significant cultural figure which is represented and produced as being symptomatic of and relevant to contemporary concerns about death and dehumanization. This thesis will focus on the ways that death and dehumanization are changing and being negotiated within popular cultural representations and discourses regarding zombies, particularly in Frank Darabont’s television series The Walking Dead. The thesis will consider the way in which the figure of the zombie is representative of issues and discourses that are indicative of a problematization of the category of the human, and the notion of the transcendental. This will involve an examination of the changing narratives of the body, with particular regard to consumerism and the insistence of the body as a major site of the truth and value of the self, in contrast to the horrifying bodily form of the zombie. The thesis will also examine the way that dehumanization is problematized in The Walking Dead, where the human/non-human distinction is shown to be increasingly precarious and difficult to sustain. Further, the thesis will examine how the zombie is represented as manifesting the collapse of identity, as agents become alienated from the social discourses, narratives and values which constitute and categorize the subject.</p>

scholarly journals Writing for Emotional Impact in Film and Video Games: Lessons in Character Development, Realism, and Interactivity from the Alien Media Franchise

Arts ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 20
Author(s):  
Christian Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Creative Writing ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Character Development ◽  
Emotional Impact ◽  
The Walking Dead ◽  
Meaningful Relationships ◽  
Film And Video ◽  
Walking Dead

This article compares Ridley Scott’s film Alien (1979) with Creative Assembly’s video game Alien: Isolation (2014), which is based on Scott’s film. Guidance for academics who teach creative writing—as well as for working screenwriters and video game narrative designers—emerges in the comparison, particularly with regard to the importance of developing strong yet vulnerable main characters who put themselves in danger in order to protect other characters with whom they have meaningful relationships. Examples from other media, including Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby (1967), James Cameron’s Aliens (1986), Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead (2012), and Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us (2013), are also discussed as they relate to larger principles involved in crafting sympathetic characters, realistic settings, and compelling gameplay for media within the horror and sci-fi genres.

scholarly journals BEING AN ETHICAL LEADER DURING THE APOCALYPSE: LESSONS FROM THE WALKING DEAD TO FACE THE COVID-19 CRISIS

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oihab Allal-Chérif ◽  
María Guijarro-García ◽  
José Carlos Ballester-Miquel ◽  
Agustín Carrilero-Castillo
Keyword(s):  
The Walking Dead ◽  
Ethical Leader ◽  
Walking Dead
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