We now know his team placed campaign ads during the TV show, guessing fans would support their immigration policies. No wonder I’m fed up with zombies
I have only seen bits of The Walking Dead, that hugely popular American TV zombie drama which made a massive star of British actor Andrew Lincoln. But I am going off screen zombies generally: those shambling figures whose low-budget appearance makes them beloved of indie film-makers. Critics love to claim zombies represent undead consumerism. For me they are becoming a gurning cliche, and I wasn’t surprised to see the tiresome Jane Austen horror mashup Pride and Prejudice and Zombies has become 2016’s biggest box-office flop, losing $11.6m. And Forbes magazine this month carries the disturbing news that zombies played a part in the election of Donald Trump. It carries an interview with Jared Kusher, Trump’s super-smooth son in law, widely considered to be the incoming administration’s eminence grise. He masterminded the Trump campaign’s use of social media but also deployed traditional TV ads, targeting them much more carefully, identifying specific voter blocs. And when he wanted to hammer home his anti-immigration message, which TV show did Kushner choose? Well, it was … The Walking Dead. He apparently figured that people who thrill to the idea of battling sinister marauding monsters that look human, but aren’t really, will also be very sympathetic to building an enormous wall. Was he right? Was there a Walking Dead constituency for Trump? Maybe they’d better put some zombies in the White House for political balance.