Of the Walking Dead and Individuality

As I drove home down the 401 tonight, I got to thinking about why the Walking Dead speaks to me.

In the typical zombie story, the heroes (usually a small, rag-tag group forced together by circumstances) are vastly outnumbered by hordes of slow, dim-witted, single-minded monsters.  It's unlike the typical slasher movie where the viewer is asked to identify with the group (think of the teens in Carrie or in any of the Hallowe'en or Friday the 13th films, or the victims of "Jigsaw" in the Saw franchise) as it tries to flee, outthink, or simply defeat the individual ghoul, freak or psycho. In the zombie movie, it's the group that we fear while we side with or emulate the individual in his or her desire to escape.  The viewer roots for the survivors, perhaps in a narcissistic self-identification with their plight.  You want them to persist despite the ridiculous odds, maybe because of the analogy between the survivor's story and our own experience of the workplace, the shopping mall, the grocery line-up or highway traffic.  Our own understanding of the dangers of "the mob" appears to shape our tastes.  In some subconscious way, do we perhaps see a bit of our (idealized) selves in these average individuals pitted against the savage masses? 

Maybe I'm overthinking it (that happens when you spend copious amounts of time behind the wheel on a road you know too well), but I think this may be the reason I can tolerate or even enjoy the Walking Dead while I can't sit through a typical horror movie.

Interestingly, another writer has come to similar ideas about the zombie genre's "hyper cynical, nihilistic sort of individualism" which arises out of fears of a world on the verge of apocalypse where the only person you can count on is yourself.  In an age when the state is withdrawing from many of the social protections that we have come to rely on (particularly following the economic downturns of the past few years and the failure of the markets to redistribute wealth in any meaningful way), it is understandable that we might be fascinated with the concept of self-reliance in an increasingly lawless world.

While I'm not sure about the depth of concern expressed by the piece linked above - which is admittedly rather bleak - the appeal of the zombie genre now makes sense to me personally, at least.

What do you think?