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Vampires and Zombies as Critical Public Pedagogy: Using Horror for Critical Adult Education and HRD Instruction
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Wright, Robin Redmon |
| Copyright Year | 2011 |
| Abstract | This paper explores the connections among the increasing popularity of Zombie and Vampire films, and the current economic crisis, multi-national corporate abuses, over-consumption, consumerism, and environmental degradation and their effects on adult learners. As I write this paper, the governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, is forcing state employees to relinquish their rights to collective bargaining, while wielding large contributions from the conglomerate-inheriting, billionaire Koch brothers (Lipton, 2011) for political cover in order to give $1.8 billion in tax cuts to multi-national corporations; the governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, is pushing a bill that would allow him to take control of any town struggling under his draconian cuts in state funding and, after firing the elected officials, to turn the town's governance over to a corporation of his choosing (Maddow, March 8, 2011); and the governor of Florida, Rick Scott, is cutting the state's education budget by $1.7 billion (yes, BILLION) in order to give $1.6 billion in tax cuts to corporations and property owners (Maddow, March 7, 2011). Moreover, for each of the past two years, high-level employees of Wall Street banks and security firms have made record salaries ($135 billion in 2010)—the 25 largest Wall Street firms boasted revenues at all-time-highs—while most U.S. workers continue suffering through a deep recession caused by those same Wall Street traders (Luccetti & Grocer, 2011). These governors are heartily supported by the very politicians who insisted that the Obama administration could not cap Wall Street salaries, limit their executive “compensation packages” or deflate their golden parachutes until after they repaid the taxpayer loans handed out in 2007 and 2008. Clearly, assaults on working people in the U.S. are coming from both government and “capital,” and the divide between the very rich and the increasing number of working poor is growing dramatically. This is not a sudden development. The erosion of worker's rights and democratic principles has been a steadily-expanding, monstrous reality since the 1980s, when Reaganomics and its accompanying deregulation began to devour the rights and safeguards that protected workers and, simultaneously, to feed corporate gluttony. Interestingly, this state of affairs is accompanied by an escalating popularity of films and television shows featuring instinctually compelled, survival-driven Zombies and power-hungry, blood-thirsty, megalomaniacal Vampires. Background and Purpose While the decline of democracy in advance of corporate oligarchy is not a new phenomenon in the U.S., it has, like a viral epidemic, passed beyond the stages of arrival and introduction and has progressed, by spreading and mutating, inexorably toward the encoded states of widespread establishment and persistence. Adult educators are recognizing its impact on their student populations. From basic education settings to human resource development (HRD) environments, the unregulated (and inequitable) markets are affecting adult learners' ability to |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://newprairiepress.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3234&context=aerc |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://wenabn.ga/f7v.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
