The Walking Dead's Anatomy

A deputy sheriff, in a coma after an exchange of fire, wakes up in a hospital destroyed and full of corpses. What he finds is a new world, collapsed in chaos and darkness because of a virus that reanimates the dead transforming them into zombies, who, constantly looking for food, attack the living.

This is how Rick Grimes's journey begins, desperate to find his wife and son, disappeared in post-apocalyptic Georgia, between pain, fear, decadence and survivors, often more cruel than the real monsters.

This is the beginning of The Walking Dead, one of the most popular tv series in the world, created by Frank Darabont and based on Robert Kirkmane's namesake comic.

The first episode ever is broadcasted in the US on Halloween's night in 2010, earning an instant success, but it is the debut of its third season, followed by more than 10 million people, which consecrates the show and elevates the splatter series from small cult to mass phenomenon.

The secret of this good luck? The atypical formula. Yes, there are zombies, but that's not the real problem. They never even call them by that name: they use words such as walkers, biters, floaters, roamers, geeks, lurkers.

The monsters ready to bite are the mirror of a distorted humanity that, crushed by the primary need to survive, rarely reveals the best, most often the worst. The threat of extinction disorients, and frees the worst instincts.

Fight the dead, fear the living.

 

FEEL LIKE: Francis Bacon

The Walking Dead looks like a Francis Bacon's work. Human beings lose their humanity, even without being zombies, they become dark presence guided by animal passions, torn from the continuous task of pain and fear. The faces are distorted, ravenous, deformed. It's art of flesh. And, as in the TV series, in the paintings of Bacon between sex,  violence and loneliness remains an imperceptible echo of "human presence".

 

DRESS LIKE: Yeezy, Rick Owens 

When in February 2015 Kanye West presented his first Yeezy collection, someone, among the many acid comments, wrote on Twitter: "Kanye is a genius, that man really has y'all dressing like you're homeless or you belong to the set of The Walking Dead".

It's true that by carefully watching AMC series and the rapper's line the two entities share a certain style made of basic items, often ad hoc damaged with cuts and holes, as well as a color palette of black, shades of brown, gray or olive green.

If zombies prefer Yeezy, men and women seem to be inspired by Rick Owens' dark fashion.

But behind Rick & Co's style there's much more.

The first myth to dispel? That the choice of a garment is limited by the scarcity of clothes that plagues the world inhabited by the undead. "What people don't realize is that you can still go to any store and take whatever you want" - Explained Eulyn Womble, costume designer of the series. "It's not poverty. The characters are all choosing to look a certain way".

Womble also emphasizes that the work on the clothes should enhance the story, not detract or distract from it, because it's not about fashion, it's about the characters. Through the look, you can understand the nature of the wearer.

Take for example Rick. At first, the sheriff still has his uniform, but as the episodes move forward this leaves room for shirts full of blood and beards became unkempt, as well as the humanity of man dissolves more and more, corroded by the atrocities that surrounds him.

 

THINK LIKE: The Walking dead by Tony Moore and Robert Kirkman

Fans know it well: the TV series The Walking Dead is based on the samesake comic book series published by Image Comics and created by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore, now executive producer of the show.

It all starts in 2000 when Kirkman begins to work on Dead Planet, a splatter project set in a mining colony on an alien planet. Here the group of workers discovers an unknown mineral with the power to restore life, but once on Earth, this element triggers the zombies' apocalypse.

The publisher doesn't like the idea and rejects it. At that point, Kirkman has a lucky intuition: omitting the part about aliens and focusing exclusively on the relationship between humans and zombies. The Walking Dead is born.

 

SOUND LIKE: "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe"

The soundtrack of The Walking Dead is curated by Bear McCreary, who alternates instrumental original pieces to hits like Nine Inch Nails Somewhat Damaged, Oats in the Water by Ben Howard, or Hold On by Tom Waits sung by Emily Kinney.

However, the most intriguing musical moment is not an actual song, but the haunting Eeny, meeny, miny, moe hummed by Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) while he decides who his baseball bat covered with barbed wire, Lucille, will hit.

 

TASTE LIKE: Chocolate Pudding, SíGetti Rings, Carolís cookies

 

LOVE LIKE: The friendship between Rick and Daryl

Okay, for the zombies, or rather the "vagant". Okay, for the rampant violence, the rivers of blood and guts, the uncertainty of the future and of the plot. Okay, even for the love between Glenn (Steven Yeun), and Maggie (Lauren Cohan).

But what about Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Daryl (Norman Reedus)? They are our favourites. They are more than friends. More than brothers. They are united by fate. They're bonded together by a friendship made of a few words, but a lot of facts.

In a lost world, where the dead come back to life just to eat the ones who are still alive and the few remaining fight one against each other, Rick Grimes and Daryl Dixon are the light in a dark present.