Warm Bodies Essay

The film Warm Bodies directed by Jonathan Levine presents a unique cinematic view of agency. Merriam-Webster defines agency as “the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power” (Merriam-Webster.com). Warm Bodies gives an interesting insight into the free will of zombies through R, a refreshingly not-so-helpless female love interest in Julie, and communicates an empowering message of how teenagers can position themselves to change society. This paper will focus on agency in the film in as it pertains to R, Julie, and how the agency of them both interact to create separate, joint agency. The rom-zom-com (romantic zombie comedy) diverts from the typical depiction of zombies found in cultural phenomenon like The Walking Dead, World War Z, or Zombieland. Instead of the zombie being a simple

This is assuming that when R consumes Julie’s late boyfriend’s brain, R not only inherits his memories, but his consciousness. In order for this to be a valid theory, one would have to not only assume Warm Bodies’s zombies to possess this trait, but also assume that Perry would have the willingness to fight for his agency. As Julie describes how her boyfriend died, it does not seem likely he would have this contentiousness. “A lot of things happened to him. But I guess there just came a point where he just couldn’t absorb any more.” (Levine). Julie describes Perry as having given up the fight for his right to live in the zombie apocalypse. This is supported by Dave Franco’s stoic performance of the character. Since it is not likely that Perry would be willing to fight for his agency against the “powerful” New Hunger, and R’s constant struggle to separate and free himself from it, one can conclude that it is not Perry’s agency that is acting through R, but R’s own agency that breaks through and makes him human