Bioethics in the zombie post-apocalypse in the movie World War Z

Abstract

Purpose/Context: This article aims to discuss two ethical debates, the first on the relativization of the notions of life, disease, and treatment and the second on guaranteeing the rights of individuals in a context of global uncertainty in the film World War Z.

Methodology/Approach: To analyze this film, the methodological strategy of multimodal discourse analysis proposed by Xu Bo raises the analysis from three levels: the level of the cultural context where ideology and gender are located; the plane of the situational context where the construction of meaning is located through discourse and the plane of the meaning of the image.

Results / Findings: In this research, it was found that the ethical debate on the notion of life, disease, and treatment faces an update of the concept of “life” and of the survival strategies based on the dehumanization of the infected person.

Discussion / Conclusions / Contributions: World War Z exposes the survival actions of humanity in a new reality of global uncertainty that leads to the dehumanization of the infected to justify the actions against them and the exercise of instrumental reason to guarantee individual protection.