iZombie and Going Viral

Most Sundays lately, I take lunch to a friend's house and relax while eating by watching an episode of  iZombie (2015-16). As another loosely adapted D.C. Comics series, iZombie ties together zombie horror with comedy and the police procedural to enliven the genre. Its sassy goth protagonist Liv (Rose McIver) and her two allies, police officer Clive (Malcolm Goodwin) and chief pathologist Ravi (Rahul Kohli) help maintain its high interest level. But the show also highlights at least a few environmental issues that move it beyond the obvious.

Sure the cause of the zombie virus is linked to energy drinks and the tainted drug Utopium and evolves into a virus contracted through the usual zombie bites. Sure the usual period of rigor mortis is shortened or eliminated altogether, so the undead can awaken in an ambulatory state.  But the connection between food and zombies our weekly lunch represents is translated in two interesting ways in the series that showcase the transformation of food into economic power.

 

As Michael Newbury’s “Fast Zombie, Slow Zombie: Food Writing, Horror Movies, and Agribusiness Apocalypse suggests,” in zombie films such as 28 Days Later the “yearning for the pastoral, for the local, for slow food tend[s] to be crushed” (91). Whereas contemporary critics of agribusiness “fashion to varying degrees an idealized return to the ‘natural’ as a solution to the corporate remaking of food, zombie films insist in their imagery of the apocalypse on the problematic provisionality of any such reference to the ‘natural,’ offering instead a world and food that are always and inescapably made by culture and economic power” (91). 

In iZombie too food moves beyond the natural and is instead constructed by culture and economic power, this time as brains acquired either legitimately or through the usual criminal violence. For once zombie and Meat Cute owner and now funeral director Blaine (David Anders), brains are a commodity, so to increase his market, more zombies must be created and forced into serving as paying customers. For pathologist and police consultant Liv, brains acquired from murder victims sustain her, but they also provide a way for her to give back, helping to solve these victims' murders. In both cases, though, brains become aestheticized, transformed into culinary delights either for sale or for Liv's criminal cases. 

The series takes the time to show Liv turning organ meat into a foodie's delight in overhead shots that emphasize the beauty of brain pastas, burritos, and even Sushi. This beautification of food is amplified in a recent episode in which Liv ingests the brains of a social media addict. In iZombie food is both commodity and cultural artifact--at least if human brains are food.