The most disturbing element of Dead Set was certainly the gore, at least in my experience. I’m not a horror fan, and thus turn my head or close my eyes during the inevitably violent moments of my favorite TV shows or movies. Watching Dead Set, a TV series with a pair of undoubtedly gory opening episodes, I began to wonder what the appeal of this horror was.
As Jefferey Jerome Cohen gets into in his article “Monster Culture (Seven Theses),” part of this horror has to do with the abject. According to Kristeva, the abject (in this case, the blood and guts of human bodies as zombies devour them, and the excrement of the survivors trapped in the house) is “tempting as it is condemned” (19).
This push and pull between attraction and disgust is obviously very relevant when explaining the appeal of the horror genre in general, especially violence and gore. The use of zombies plays into the idea of the abject quite effectively, as they are essentially the walking abject–humanoid figures completely devoid of humanity.
Another aspect of the zombies that I found interesting was the way in which they carry “haunting.” This occurred to me in the context of Claire and Kelly’s relationship. Shortly before the zombie apocalypse set in, Claire revealed that she had also slept with the man that Kelly cheated on her boyfriend with. Claire’s body now holds two sorts of haunting to Kelly: a reminder of the mistake she made in cheating on her boyfriend (she destroyed the zombie of the guy himself, which is interesting), and also the imminent haunting of death should Claire catch up to her. I’ll be interested to see how this zombie haunting continues as more people ostensibly succumb to zombiehood.