Zombies as corporate slaves: From office burnout to 'escaping work' fantasy

The toxic culture of overworking in Japan, India or any other place turns us all into blood-thirsty, brain-dead creatures

On his way to work one morning, Tokyo-resident Akira Tendo (Eiji Akaso) finds that all his neighbours have turned into zombies. As they chase him, Akira starts running and cries out in panic: “At this rate, they are going to mark me late at work.” The irony is evident: Even as he is about to become food for hordes of blood-thirsty, brain-dead creatures, Akira’s only thought is that he will be late for work. A little later, having escaped the zombies, Akira finds himself on the roof of the building. From here, he can see that the city has descended into complete chaos, and finally, he realises: “Maybe it is OK if I don’t go to work today.”

 

Earlier in the 2023 Japanese film, ‘Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead’, directed by Yûsuke Ishida, Akira joins a marketing firm as a young university graduate and finds himself stuck in a meaningless routine. His boss, Gonzô Kosugi (Kazuki Kitamura), is a sadistic tyrant who bullies and dominates his junior colleagues, and it is not uncommon for Akira and his fellow workers to pull all-nighters. The toxic work environment in Akira’s firm reflects similar conditions in many Japanese companies, characterised by rigid hierarchies and overtime, often unpaid. In the past, Japan’s notoriously toxic work culture has led to death because of overwork (karoshi) and suicide from work-related stress (karojisatsu).

 

When the zombie apocalypse occurs, Akira finds himself free from corporate slavery and draws up a bucket list: “Before I become food for the zombies.” This list includes going paragliding and setting off firecrackers. He sets off to fulfil his wishes along with his friend Kenichiro Ryuzaki (Shuntarô Yanagi) and another survivor, Shizuka Mikazuki (Mai Shiraishi). Later, in the film, Akira meets Gonzô again at a hideout for survivors. Gonzô runs the hideout like he ran his office, but Akira finally refuses to work for him anymore. “You’ll regret it,” Gonzô warns him, like a garden-variety toxic boss. “Even then, it is better than having a zombie-like existence,” replies Akira, linking the condition of workers in a toxic environment to brain-dead zombies.

 

A similar distaste for corporate culture was represented in another zombie apocalypse comedy — the 2013 Hindi film ‘Go, Goa, Gone’, directed by Raj and DK. At the beginning of the film, we meet its three protagonists, Hardik (Kunal Khemu), Luv (Vir Das) and Bunny (Anand Tiwari). The three of them work together, as mid-level executives, in a private company in Mumbai, and also share a flat. While Bunny is hardworking and conscientious, Hardik and Luv spend their days drinking and smoking up. Early in the film, as the three of them set out to go to work, the background song reflects their mood: “Khoon choosne, tu aaya khoon choosne / Bloody khooni Monday, kyun aaya khoon choosne? (To suck my blood, you’ve come to suck my blood / Bloody Monday, why have you come to suck my blood?).”

 

When Bunny is sent by their company to make a pitch to a client in Goa, Hardik and Luv also accompany him. Hardik has been recently sacked from the job, after their boss caught him cavorting with a female colleague in the office, and Luv has been dumped by his girlfriend. In Goa, Luv is invited to a rave party, apparently run by the Russian mafia, where liquor and narcotics would be flowing freely, and they hope to get laid. In the party, many guests try out a new drug, which turns them into zombies. With a full-blown zombie epidemic, unemployment, getting dumped, or worrying about making a presentation seem to be completely irrelevant to the characters as they try to survive.

 

“Zombies have always represented sharp criticisms of state and capital,” writes political scientist Khorapin Phuaphansawat in a 2023 paper, adding that the undead, as they are often called, “have embodied both the ‘mindless’ labourer deprived of soul and forced to work eternally as well as the fetishised consumer in a capitalist world.” In ‘Zom 100’, adapted from the eponymous manga series written by Haro Aso and illustrated by Kotaro Takata, the corporate worker is no better than a zombie. Similarly, in ‘Go Goa Gone’, the zombie epidemic results from consumption of a new, addictive product; its antidote, as the survivors discover, is another drug — cocaine. When the white powder is sprinkled on the zombies, they freeze, allowing the survivors to escape.

 

In the Hindi film, the criticism of the forces of capitalism is embedded and subtle. On the morning after the party, the three friends try to figure out what kind of monsters are tormenting them, till one of them realises that these are zombies. “India has ghosts and spirits,” says Luv, “where did these zombies come from?” “Globalisation,” replies Hardik. Tourism has often been seen as an archetypal product of globalisation, and also a re-enforcer of its consumption fetishism. Seen in this light, it becomes clearer why Goa is the setting of the film. The clichés about Goa — drugs, booze, girls, mafia, and even the promotional tagline of the state’s tourism department, ‘Go Goa!’ — are laid thickly in an ironic, even critical, note. The zombie epidemic is a metonym for overtourism plaguing India’s smallest state.

 

Both films also seem to suggest friendship as a possible way to survive the zombie epidemics. At the end of ‘Zom 100’, Akira and his friends drive off together. The zombie epidemic has not ended, but together, they will not only survive it, they will flourish. Akira invites Kenichiro and Shizuka to start adding to his bucket list as the highway stretches out in front of them. Similarly, as Hardik, Luv and Bunny, along with fellow survivors Luna (Puja Gupta) and Boris (Saif Ali Khan), arrive on the mainland, they find it has been overrun with zombies. But together, they seem, to quote the Bard, armed against a sea of troubles. Solidarity and community are the only ways, the films assert, to escape oppressive systems and survive the zombie epidemic of late capitalism.  

 

Uttaran Das Gupta is an independent writer and journalist