{"id":43633,"date":"2015-11-01T00:01:51","date_gmt":"2015-11-01T00:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=43633"},"modified":"2016-03-18T23:49:40","modified_gmt":"2016-03-18T23:49:40","slug":"look-a-zombie-race-and-passing-in-izombie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=43633","title":{"rendered":"Look! A Zombie! Race and Passing in \u2018iZombie\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Look! A Zombie! Race and Passing in \u2018iZombie\u2019<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

PopMatters<\/a>
\n2015-10-30<\/p>\n

Rukmini Pande<\/strong><\/a>
\nUniversity of Western Australia<\/em><\/p>\n

iZombie\u2019s<\/a> \u201cpassing<\/a>\u201d narrative complicates its broader racial politics.<\/em><\/p>\n

As the fall season of US TV swings into gear, the CW\u2019s<\/a> undead caper iZombie<\/a><\/em> seems poised for an interesting second outing. Helmed by Rob Thomas<\/a> (of Veronica Mars<\/em><\/a> fame), the show\u2019s first season was received well by both critics and audiences, and was quickly renewed.<\/p>\n

To recap briefly, the show follows Olivia (Liv) More (Rose McIver<\/a>), a driven MD whose life is turned upside down when she is turned into a zombie<\/a>. Now working in a morgue, Liv finds out that the brains she eats give her memories of the deceased persons\u2019 lives, specifically, murder victims\u2019 memories.<\/p>\n

She teams up with police detective Clive Babineaux (Malcolm Goodwin<\/a>) to track down various killers, while also attempting to find a cure for zombie-ism (with her ally\/boss, Ravi Chakrabarthi [Rahul Kohli<\/a>]). She also has to try and outwit Blaine (David Anders<\/a>), an ex-drug dealer turned zombie who has created a new business out of infecting influential people and controlling them through their desire for brains.<\/p>\n

The show has garnered kudos for its interesting plot and diverse casting\u2014Ravi is British-Indian, Clive is African-American, and Blaine has a number of non-white accomplices\u2014yet its narrative choices end up complicating its broader racial politics…<\/p>\n

…Passing and Survival<\/strong><\/p>\n

The practice of passing is a complex one but may be broadly seen as occurring when, as Brooke Kroeger<\/a> explains, \u201cpeople effectively present themselves as other than who they understand themselves to be\u201d (Kroeger Passing: when people can\u2019t be who they are<\/em><\/a>. New York: Public Affairs; 2003: 7). This is a deliberate fashioning of identity presentation and has been practiced across demarcations of race, gender, sexuality, and sometimes religion. While the reasons that people attempt to pass are diverse, it\u2019s most often a \u201cstrategy for managing stigma\u201d (Einwohner, Rachel L.<\/a> \u201cIdentity Work and Collective Action in a Repressive Context: Jewish Resistance on the \u201cAryan Side\u201d of the Warsaw Ghetto.\u201d in Identity Work in Social Movements<\/em><\/a>. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press; 2006: 121\u2013139.126) and is employed in situations where being \u201couted\u201d carries heavy consequences.<\/p>\n

Interconnected to this is the acknowledgement that the ability to pass depends on various factors, including physical appearance, income, and community relations. As Allyson Hobbs<\/a> writes in A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in America<\/em><\/a> (2014), to pass successfully a person must distance themselves from their community, and the community in turn must do the same. All these factors play into the narrative of iZombie<\/em> at various points, but by making this a conversation about white bodies, it ignores the historical conditions of that construction, especially in America. In a culture where the raced body is always the one under scrutiny and most likely to suffer policing, the effects of structuring a narrative that places white bodies into that space without adequate critical engagement is dangerous…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Look! A Zombie! Race and Passing in \u2018iZombie\u2019 PopMatters 2015-10-30 Rukmini Pande University of Western Australia iZombie\u2019s \u201cpassing\u201d narrative complicates its broader racial politics. As the fall season of US TV swings into gear, the CW\u2019s undead caper iZombie seems poised for an interesting second outing. Helmed by Rob Thomas (of Veronica Mars fame), the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,8413,8,6462,20],"tags":[9812,16275,21716,6323,21719,21718,21717,21715,10953],"class_list":["post-43633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-communications","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-allyson-hobbs","tag-brooke-kroeger","tag-izombie","tag-popmatters","tag-rachel-einwohner","tag-rachel-l-einwohner","tag-rose-mciver","tag-rukmini-pande","tag-zombies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43633"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43688,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43633\/revisions\/43688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}