Traditionally, the genre of zombie apocalypse has relied on a number of tropes: zombies’ inhumanity, mindlessness, decaying bodies, and capability to create new zombies with their bite. These tropes stem from societal opposition to disability, as well as from fear of non-heteronormative reproduction and the Freudian death drive. Most zombie literature is not outwardly critical of these tropes, but instead plays on them to portray zombies as an ultimate horror, a type of being that is other than and inferior to humans, that can—and should—be killed indiscriminately to prevent the destruction of western society as we know it. However, one zombie narrative, Dominic Mitchell’s BBC mini-series, In the Flesh, stands out above the rest as distinctly aware and radically critical of these tropes. In the series, the living majority’s medicalization and re-terming of undeath as “Partially Deceased Syndrome” creates an allegory for disability. “Zombies” are given agency in the series, and the series’ protagonist is a young, gay undead individual. Sentient and sympathetic zombies combined with notions of disability and queerness pose a radical challenge to the conventional (read: conservative) tropes of the zombie genre.
