‘Zombified’ adolescents: the perception of the adult world over adolescence.

“He had always liked the good parts, even when he was alive,” explains the narrator of The Good Parts (1989), a short story by Les Daniels. This protagonist is a zombie who likes eating human flesh more than anything, especially what he considers as ‘the good parts’: breasts, buttocks, penis and vaginas. However, this living dead is not very different than he was, before turning into a zombie. Daniels tells us that as a living teenager this character was always spending his time eating food and watching porn, looking also for ‘the good parts’. Intentionally or not, Daniels depicts a character that most adults would consider as the typical adolescent. The issue is that most of the ideas that adults usually possess about adolescence contain several prejudices and stigmas.

The teen main character in The Good Parts shows almost no change in his personality when becoming a zombie, just as if there were no differences between being an adolescent and being a zombie. In no way do we conceive that Daniels considers adolescents as zombies, but we understand that he uses the typical view adults have over adolescence to create his character and to show him as a zombie and as a teenager in a similar way. Considering that the traits and characteristics that adults use to describe adolescents are usually the ones that zombies manifest in most of the stories where they appear, we can say that nowadays adults tend to look at adolescents as if they were zombies. Thus, the purpose of this paper will be to discuss the similarities that exist between the preconceptions that adults have about adolescents and the typical features and traits that are usually associated with zombies, using the main character of The Good Parts to show those traits.

In order to achieve the purpose of this paper, we need to clarify the concepts of adolescence and common sense. Three centuries ago, the conception of “adolescence” had no existence. Adolescence emerged as a consequence of the changes and evolution that society suffered after the Industrial Revolution. Since then primary and secondary schooling were founded (Salim, 2015; Baró, 2007). Parents started to oblige adolescents to attend those institutions that had the role of indoctrinating them, with a military style, in order to deal with their ‘bad’ behaviour. Adults needed to justify this total manipulation of young adults. In order to accomplish this objective, they started to create stigmas and prejudices around adolescents. In this respect, Medicine and Psychology played an important role by associating terms such as criminal, rebel, immoral, antisocial and violent with the figure of the adolescent (Salim, 2015).

The objective was achieved because all those prejudices and stigmas have been incorporated into common sense. Gramsci (1970) defines common sense as “the uncritical and largely unconscious way of perceiving and understanding the world that has become ‘common’ in any given epoch” and as “the incoherent set of generally held assumptions and beliefs common to any given society.” Najam explains that ‘for Gramsci, common sense is the view of the world that is “taken for granted”.’ For him, Gramsci’s “common sense” is built within the imagination of society. He claims, ‘It is not simply a question of how things actually are; it is a matter of how they are seen (...)’

 Nowadays, the common sense of our society represents young adults as problematic, immature, ignorant, passive, rebellious, dangerous, silly and irresponsible, among other negative traits (Burak, 2001; Janitorová, 2008; Shiller & Cooper, 2012). Burak (2001) explains the risks of looking at adolescents from an adult perspective because of the possibility of misunderstanding the adolescent behaviour. A vast quantity of adults has a wrong concept about adolescents and tends to adjudge certain characteristics to them that come from preconceptions. In consequence, we can see how young adults are considered, in a virtually massive way, as thieves, drug-addicts, disrespectful and irresponsible people, and also as dangerous for the continuity of the status quo (Reguillo, 2000). This idea is clearly present in Daniel´s story. In The Good Parts the adolescent is showed as a stereotyped adolescent; a boy who spends his days watching porn, without doing anything useful.

Daniels portrays a character that both as a teenager and as a zombie shares the typical characteristics that are adjudged by adults to adolescents: he is described as passive, brainless, gluttonous, irresponsible and lazy. This boy is a virgin and fat teenager whose main interests have to do with eating junk food and masturbating watching porn movies, manifesting no responsibilities at all. And when this boy becomes a zombie, he is always doing nothing but eating human flesh, paying special attention to human sexual organs.

Bishop (2009) grants a depiction of zombies that fits perfectly with the zombie from The Good Parts. He states, 

Zombies are dumb and unintelligent creatures, dead humans that have somehow risen from their graves to relentlessly feast upon the flesh of the living (…) zombies are unequivocally dead monsters, lacking any intellectual beyond basic instincts and motor response.

These characteristics are representative of the main character of The Good Parts. The narrator affirms, ‘If there was any thought at all left in his jellied brain, it would have been expressed in those three words: the good parts.’ The protagonist shows no other intellectual activity than thinking about devouring what he considers as ‘the good parts’. Nevertheless, Daniels establishes almost no differences as regards intellectual activity between his character as a teen human and as a zombie. He depicts the archetype of an adolescent that we may be able to find in an adult mind. However, this archetype, in general, reflects no reality; those ideas originate in common sense. Shiller & Cooper (2012) explains how usually the younger people are dismissed by the elder:

Youth perspectives can be devalued as naive or lacking experience, or not even invited to begin with. Youth or young adults are seen as having less to contribute, resulting in a patronizing nod or “you just don’t understand.”

Buckingham (1998) explains how ignorance from the adult world “typically leads to a view of young people as merely ignorant, apathetic and cynical.” Adults, customarily, rely on their common sense when describing young adults and this leads to the misleading idea of regarding adolescents as zombies just because both of them are considered “dumb”.

Despite the fact of being described as “dumb”, Hunt, Lockyer & Williamson (2014) states that zombies threaten society infrastructure. They explain how “the zombie acts upon very primal instincts, eating to ‘survive’ even though it is already dead” and they claim that zombies “represent extreme lawlessness.” Bishop (2009) states that, “zombies are primarily and decidedly inhuman; they constitute a violation of the natural order of things and present a direct threat to the living.” Zombies represent a social problem for the stability of society. They mean a risk for the continuity of the capitalist system because, as we can see in most of films, they spread extremely fast and for that reason they can annihilate society in a couple of months (Gunn & Treat, 2005; Mzilikazi, 2010).

In The Good Parts, Daniels depicts a city that has been completely destroyed by zombies, who also have killed all human beings. In consequence, the normal functioning of society has disappeared and everything has collapsed. At the same time, the protagonist of the story also represents a risk for the continuity of civilization when mysteriously he has a human little girl and he thinks about eating her. He wants to eat the only human being that is left on Earth; he wants to finish with the only hope for the restoration of human civilization.

  In the same way that this zombie, as most of them, is seen as a source of instability for society, the majority of adolescents are also seen as the source of conflict that puts in risk stability. Hultqvist & Dahlberg (2001) argue,

Most often when conflict between adults and adolescents is described, teenagers are defined as rebellious, that is, the source of the conflict is within them, their hormones, emotionality, and inability to see beyond the present moment. (Sic.) The concrete interactions of rebellious youth with adults are seldom made visible, so that, the simple, unitary description of teenagers as rebellious stands.

Adults look at adolescents as rebellious and irresponsible, but it matters nothing whether those ideas are grounded in mere prejudices as long as adults can blame them for all the problems within society. Without considering practically any positive clue, a significant quantity of adults sees adolescents as people who threaten their ‘normal life’ (Reyes Juarez, 2013). Crawford (2009) claims,

This panic over adulthood [the negation to become an adult] has a strong generational character: blame is directed at the emerging generations, who no longer follow the time-honoured rituals of age and responsibility. Young adults are seen as responsible for the problem, auguring ill for the future continuation of a civil society.

  Adolescence represents in many ways the possibility of change. They are the new generations with fresh ideas that question the status quo, and adults, in a way, are afraid of this. They fear adolescence’s potential because it can ‘exterminate’ their traditional way of living in the same way that people fear zombies because they can exterminate their lives. In order to struggle with that potential, adults tend to describe adolescents as criminal, violent, irresponsible and dangerous (Reguillo, 2000). In this way young adults are considered responsible for all the violence and all the evils of our society. Adults turn them into the enemy who break the rules and order of society.

Adolescents are not only considered as ignorant and dangerous, but also as Milner (2008) states, “teenagers are seen as a crucial future market.” The market, which has been created by adults, has been imposing during years the idea of “you are what you have”. During the period of adolescence, boys and girls build their identity and for that reason they are more susceptible to the marketing strategies. Adults have taken advantage of this situation by creating a whole market for young adults. As Milner says, “teenagers have become the target of massive marketing and advertising campaigns.” However, the same adults who encourage adolescents to consume, also criticize them for their ‘consumerist and superficial’ behaviour.

In the same manner that adolescents are seen by adults as obsessive consumers, zombies usually show “an uncontrollable desire to consume” due to the fact that their existence depends on the consumption of human flesh (Gunn & Treat, 2005).  Bishop (2009) quotes the following phrase from the series The Walking Dead, in which the character describes how zombies are:

The thing you have to realize is that they’re just us—they’re no different. They want what they want, they take what they want and after they get what they want—they’re only content for the briefest span of time. Then they want more.

These lines summarize perfectly well the consumerist spirit of zombies, and also we can say that they reflect the main ideas that adult people possess about adolescents. Zombies want more and more as we can see in the protagonist of The Good Part, whose only purpose is to consume human flesh. In a way zombies can be taken as a metaphor of a consumerist society whose economic system has arrived to a level of development that produces on people an inexhaustible desire for consuming: “the zombies represent the existing horrors of a society brainwashed by the capitalistic need to consume” (Bishop, 2009). Adolescents belong to this society and due to the market’s manipulation most of them are unable of avoiding consumption. Nevertheless, instead of trying to understand and help them, adults condemn adolescents by using pejorative terms like ‘obsessive consumers’ or ‘shopaholics’ to refer to them.

In this way the adult world views adolescents as if they were zombies whose only interest is to consume more and more. In consequence, young adults end up looking like zombies who have to consume in order to survive.

When relying only on their common sense, people tend to reach erroneous conclusions. Common sense is full of prejudices, stigmas, preconceptions and racial ideas which are not based on formal evidence and for this reason, most of the time it is a risk to trust in it. In The Good Parts, Daniels creates a zombie who maintains most of the characteristics, interests and habits he used to have as an adolescent, before becoming a living dead. In this way he portrays an adolescent that is precisely based on ideas that derive from common sense. Nevertheless, Daniels does what most adults believe (probably in an unconscious way): he portrays an adolescent who behaves like a zombie. Precisely, that is the idea that we have tried to argue in this paper: the perception that nowadays, adults, relying on their common sense, tend to look at adolescents as if they were zombies.  We consider that trying to understand adolescents by thinking as an adult is a grave error that most adults commit. They tend to misinterpret and generalize young adults’ behaviour without even trying to have a more comprehensive, critical and honest understanding about their world. It is important to be aware about the mistakes adults can commit by accepting certain generalizations that common sense establishes. By thinking about adolescents as zombies, adults are treating them as ignorant, dangerous and insatiable consumers. However, adults should comprehend that young adults are future adults who are trying to discover themselves, and they should try to guide them, without prejudging them.

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