Recognizing the Danger of the Male Gaze: The Walking Dead Season 1, Episode 1 "Days Gone Bye"
Season 1 Episode 1 "Days Gone By"
Episode Aired: October 31st, 2010
Male Speaking Characters: Rick, Shane, Morgan, Dwayne (a few deputies, unnamed)
Female Speaking Characters: Amy (Andrea's sister) on the radio
Though these reactions are meant to start a conversation about how television shows and movies carry on dangerous and destructive beliefs about women and how that can have a subconscious effect on all of us, they are also going to carry my personal frustration as a viewer, especially when it comes to Shane or other examples of visceral, trigger inducing misogynists in the series.
Season 1, Episode 1
The first scene of the episode opens with Rick driving a Sheriff's vehicle and comes across a car crash on the road, holding a gas can. Most of the views are from far away to see all of Rick in his deputy uniform, which informs you immediately that he is a person who's in a position of authority from the beginning. On the screen, many other camera angles make Rick seem 'larger than life'.
Rick hears something and sees the feet of the girl under the car (picking up a teddy bear, which is so stupid; walkers don't care about teddy bears; season one walkers are so inconsistent for the sake of drama). She takes forever to turn around even after he speaks, which again confuses Walker and zombie mythology for a slow-burn reveal, and you see her as a Walker. Then he shoots her in the head. This is a powerful initial scene of the show. The protagonist killing someone seemingly innocent and non-dangerous visually tells you they will not pull punches, which is accurate throughout the show.
Then we get to Shane and Rick, a patriarchal bullshit pissing match where Shane badmouths literally every woman who has ever had the misfortune of dating him. Several slurs and then you get to 'The Nice Guy (™)' Rick who then talks about how things aren't going well with Lori and they make it 100% Lori's fault while making Rick the victim of the 'crazy wife' curse and then in the end saying the "caring about us at all" line being said in front of Carl. Rick makes this personal fight a vindication against all of their relationship and the conversation already cements how little value women have to these men, (I wonder what gender wrote this shit…oh wait, I don't have to guess because it was a man for the comics and mostly men for the show) so now they have both made the viewers dislike Lori before we even meet her because she made the protagonist feel bad things. After this preconceived idea had been implanted in what could be called 'men being vulnerable together' because they are close, the truth is that they had the option to have any number of conversations other than bitching about women.
Then we get to the shoot out where Rick is portrayed as the 'logical and smart one' at the expense of the other male deputies (not named, so though they are mentioned in the stats, they are not counted) who supposedly had the same training. This is a simple tool of television to make the protagonist stand out, making other people lack common sense and the training they are all supposed to have. It makes it seem like Shane and Rick are all smarter than anyone else. Then, in the quiet of Rick being hit on the vest, he turns his back without double-checking the scene, so that common sense is immediately invalidated for drama and plot. We could headcanon that it was the adrenaline in the moment, but still, making other people more dumb for the sake of the protagonist is an easy way that many writers of shows and movies utilize to make the main character look better.
The scene where Rick gets shot is a very purposeful shot to show the friendship between Shane and Rick, which is also echoed while Rick is in the hospital, where Rick only remembers Shane's visit, even though we know that Lori and Carl are both present because of their stories later. This is also important because it showcases the show's capability and willingness to highlight the valuable relationships between men in the series. Which is great actually, but it can and does get in the way of other relationships, such as the important one of Rick's marriage to Lori or being Carl's parent. It seems like a choice because when they reveal Carl and Lori near the end of the episode, you don't know that it's them until you see Shane, but it feels weird layered on top of the hate Lori has already gotten in the first scene.
Then Rick wakes up amid an apocalypse that has been going on long enough that the hospital, the city, and beyond have already fallen. There are bodies lined up outside, showcasing some systems and logic before everything went entirely to shit. And no one ever checks in Rick's room again after Shane put a bed in front of the door (we actually do find out later how much time its been later in the season finale) During this portion of the episode, it's just Rick and the weirdness of the new world and here is where I already struggle with The Walking Dead as a canon.
I am not a doctor, but the way Rick wakes up is supernatural at best. Rick is emaciated, yet he can take a jaunt through a walker-infested town, and he can get bopped in the noggin without any additional concussion symptoms. He can battle it out with a Walker the following day, still on a relatively empty stomach, he ate with Morgan and Dwayne, but this isn't a fix-all for not eating for weeks. Are we really going to say that it only took days for the world to look like the one he's seeing now, because the human body dies without water within about three days, according to science. Rick might have had a saline drip, but those things only last for a certain amount of time, so at best, he could have survived in a coma for less than a week. It makes the fan theory that Rick died in the hospital and that this world is a fever dream on the way to the afterlife incredibly plausible.
Anyway, I will attempt not to get caught up in these plot holes in the series, but this is a big one for me, and I can't help but say something about it.
At this point in the episode, we spend a lot of time with Morgan and Dwayne, which serves several purposes. It is a way to share information about the world as it is now with Rick, who is as clueless (always an excellent tool for writers), and it seeks to focus on Rick's hopes and fears. The hope that his family is still alive, like Morgan and Dwayne, alongside the fear and grief because Morgan's wife is a Walker.
Rick experiences the world's losses through Morgan and Dwayne, allowing himself to be empathetic. This part of the episode continues to humanize Rick as the protagonist while sharing information. They got back to Rick's house in the morning and make the discovery that the photo albums are gone, even this is used to show women as not being able to focus on essential things like food and weapons, I think this scene would have been less shady if it wasn't for how Morgan refers to how his wife was the same way, "There I am, packing survival gear, she's grabbing photo alb…" then gets emotional. It creates a moment where men can commiserate about the 'predictable silliness of women' during high stress situations, like every action movie where the woman inevitably says: "What should we do?" According to Reese Witherspoon. These are tropes that are so constant and consistent that we don't really see them for what they are, microaggressions of misogyny. Caring about a couple of pictures when you know your life is over, especially for Lori, who has been told that her husband is dead by the 'well-meaning' liar, she is taking something that means something to both her and Carl. It could have been spoken about in several ways, but it becomes more sinister because they directly compare men and wives and only find the women wanting.
Then they head to the sheriff's department to shower, get dressed, and load up, which leads to them parting ways, Morgan's desire to put down his wife, and Rick's plan to go to Atlanta because that's their best guess of where Lori and Carl could have traveled to.
The stillness of the scene where Rick puts down the half a woman and Morgan attempts to put down his wife again drives home the emotionality of these men, they are both attempting to give mercy to someone who either mattered to them or something that reminds him of what could be lost, again this is where The Walking Dead is good at creating emotional scenes for the men in the show, it makes them something more than just survivalists, they are all human with these hurting spots and that affects what actions they can and cannot take which for Morgan significantly affects his story later on. It also makes women into victims; everyone can and will become a victim within the world of The Walking Dead, but the powerful and meaningful characters are all men.
Amazingly, they let Amy (unnamed) pick up the radio. This allows them to showcase a woman's inadequacy when Dale (also unnamed - will be included in the following episode count) to say that Shane is the only one who knows how to use the radio who proceeds to do nothing different except show his face and talk more aggressively into the radio which then reveals that Lori and Carl must be the woman and child who were shown a second before. They trust Shane to say that the man on the radio is not answering when Amy could have said the same. Then Lori gives essential information about how Atlanta is too dangerous. They should put up signs and she is immediately discounted by Shane, maybe for a valid reason or maybe not but now this is the first time we are seeing Lori after being told that she's a selfish uncaring person by Rick and is being equally invalidated by the man who was her husband's partner, then is backed up by Dale as well that they can't care about other people.
All of this is 100% logical and probably accurate, except that we learn in the next episode that several others went to Atlanta who also can't hang signs? It seems like an excellent way to show that empathy and caring for others is something that the women do (and women are relational, so this isn't a bad thing). Then, the group's men invalidate those statements and turn them into an oppressive control thing between Lori and Shane, leading to her walking away from the conversation and him following. Now this is something that Lori gets a lot of hate for, the fact that she tends to walk away from conversations, from her son and everything else but how many times have we as people, not even gender biased, known that the person who is 'in charge' isn't going to change their mind. Hence, continuing the argument is a wasted breath, and it feels even worse when this happens with your partner or friend. The hate that Lori gets is 100% not warranted in many ways, something that I will be discussing in many of the episode reviews coming up.
The scene in the tent between Lori and Shane is a whole lot, we all know that he already doesn't like women per their first conversation so he is being 'nicer' to Lori in some ways than he is behind the backs of other women but he is oppressive and condescending as fuck about what he is saying. The fact that this particular person said 'you cannot walk off half cocked' is so ironic it borders on obscene and her choice to walk away and experience her feelings is met with him telling her she should hit him and then guilting her into compliance using her son. She even responds by quietly saying, 'I'm a good mom,' but he makes her agree again with his edicts. This is just gross from a man who has been a part of her child's life for a long time and is now sleeping with her, but it echoes his undeniable distaste for women. He's 'nice' for the sake of getting sex and compliance, and even then his 'niceness' is shoddy at best, thanks to the apocalypse letting him control and oppress her even more than if things were still 'normal'.
And then the freaking kiss. I had forgotten that we saw that in the first episode. They get interrupted by Carl, and she assures him she won't be running off, which she keeps for a while.
Back with Rick, he is out of gas and going to a house, calling out at a farmhouse, revealing a man who has obviously killed his wife and himself, just to make sure we remember this world is tragic, but this gets him the horse, which is what gets him to Atlanta.
We end the episode with Rick running into a horde, the horse going down, and Rick getting stuck in a tank with only the voice of Glenn (not named until next episode) to save the day.
Final thoughts:
The thing about apocalypse shows (I heard this echoed in a recent podcast from ChaosBlue and TWDObsessive) is that many things are stripped away after the end of the world, so we don't have to think about them. I agree, but one thing that isn't stripped away in The Walking Dead is the utter disrespect and boiling women down into very two-dimensional people who are frequently only seen as sex objects, mothers, victims, or problems. These words might represent aspects of humanity, but don't represent all of what people are, and even though some of these words could be considered as descriptors of men in the show, they are usually not all there is about them. I want to shine a light on the extraordinarily damaging problem that a lot of media is falling into when men write women as opposed to how men write men.
I look forward to sharing the next episode with you. Thank you for reading.
Podcast Link:
https://www.fanficmaverickpodcast.com/post/ep-58-thewalkingdead-interview-with-fanfiction-writer-twdobsessive
The Fanfic Maverick is also available to listen to your podcasts.
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