Science, Medicine, and Monsters in Today’s American Popular Imaginary

In this article, we maintain that the current distrust in science and medicine displayed by many Americans can be traced through twenty-first century popular culture texts, especially those dealing with monsters. As other scholars have noted, during stressful socio-cultural, historical, and (now) global moments, monsters tend to “(re)emerge” in popular narratives (Kellner, 2011), becoming an embodiment of the unease that these moments elicit (Levina, 2013). In the twenty-first century world, the many incarnations of monsters and new narratives supporting them have become a “safe space” for society to give life to its anxieties, especially those concerning science and medicine, in a way that helps a mass population manage constant crises. We use The Walking Dead universe to address these claims.