Warm Bodies (2013) and Comic Evolutionary Narratives

Some comic eco-disaster films highlight a comic evolutionary narrative that builds on the goals of the comic eco-hero. According to Joseph Meeker, these evolutionary narratives explore what might happen if humanity did learn from these more stable comic heroes, since, as Meeker sexplains, “Evolution itself is a gigantic comic drama, not the bloody tragic spectacle imagined by the sentimental humanists of early Darwinism” (164). Rather, the evolutionary process is one of adaptation and accommodation, with the various species exploring opportunistically their environments in search of a means to maintain their existence. Like comedy, evolution is a matter of muddling through.” (164). The zombie romantic comedy Warm Bodies (2013) begins to illustrate this comic eco-narrative.

Directed by Jonathan Levine, Warm Bodies narrates a comic evolutionary narrative catalyzed by the love between “youthful” zombie R (played by Nicholas Hoult) and young human Julie (played by Teresa Palmer). Their story illustrates Joseph Meeker’s description of the comic way argung that participants are successful because “they live and reproduce even when times are hard or dangerous” rather than proving themselves “best able to destroy enemies or competitors” (The Comedy of Survival 20).

Although some critics take issue with how well, as Kevin Jagernauth states in a Playlist review, the film “create[s] new rules” for zombie/human interaction, we assert that in Warm Bodies, both humans and zombies choose cooperation, accommodation, and adaptation instead of destruction and succeeds as an alternative narrative in which both humans and zombies survive. Beginning with an opening that highlights one of the elements that separates the film from other zombie movies (R’s zombie point of view), the film emphasizes R’s cognitive abilities and desire to be human, a desire that ultimately contributes to the “new story” R and Julie begin. 

The comic eco-narrative resolves when zombies and humans join together to defeat “bonies,” zombies who “give up,” “lose all hope,” and shed their human qualities, including their skin. As R explains, On the one had, getting shot in the chest hurt, like a lot, but on the other, it felt good to bleed. To feel pain. To feel love. I wish I could say we killed the bonies with love, but really we just straight up killed them all … That sounds kind of messed up, but they were too far gone to change. It was a good bonding experience for us and the humans. After we joined forces they didn’t have a chance.” A new day dawns after the battles end, and a montage of scenes show zombies becoming more human, and humans becoming more accepting, more accommodating. 

Comedic films like Warm Bodies are a complex form of cultural expression, which have a history of both perpetuating the social order and attempting to subvert it. Comedies are a way to demonstrate the absurdity of society’s problems and hypocrisies. But films like the one touched on here may also provide a space in which we can laugh at eco-disasters, look at environmental catastrophe with a sense of humor and, perhaps, make changes that will serve both humans and the natural world best.