The Zombie Comes to the ‘Burbs: The Abject and Monstrous-Feminine in Netflix’s “Santa Clarita Diet”
by Brian Fanelli
As Robin Wood, Julia Kristeva, Barbara Creed, and other horror film scholars have pointed out, the mother figure in horror is traditionally associated with the abject and the monstrous-feminine, be it the Queen in James Cameron’s Aliens or frazzled mom Amelia (Essie Davis) in Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook. Netflix’s “Santa Clarita Diet,” however, presents an alternative to typical female monstrosity. Though canceled in 2019 after three seasons, the series is deserving of examination because of the way it challenges depictions of the traditional female monster and masculine stereotypes. The series’ zombie protagonist, Sheila Hammon, played by Drew Barrymore, may vomit green bile, loose body parts, and munch on neo-Nazis, but her abject nature is not depicted as a threat. Rather, the suburban mom and realtor is accepted by her daughter Abby (Liv Hewson) and her husband/business partner Joel (Timothy Olyphant). Her monstrosity is something that she quickly embraces because it makes her more adventurous and sexually liberated; furthermore, Sheila uplifts the women around her and poses a direct threat to patriarchal norms. Though relatively short-lived, “Santa Clarita Diet” was bold in its depiction of gender, while also rewriting the traditional female monster narrative and thus, the zombie narrative.
Before illustrating the show’s transgressive depictions of gender, it’s important to first define the abject and monstrous-feminine. In Powers of Horror, Julia Kristeva situates the monstrous-feminine in relation to the maternal figure. In short, Kristeva defines the abject as that which does not respect borders, positions, or rules and that which disturbs identity, system and order. The abject threatens life and must be radically excluded (qtd. In Creed 8-9). She further theorizes that the abject is situated in the Real – the state of nature before we enter culture, or, in other words, the realm of the feminine and maternal. The symbolic, meanwhile, is associated with paternal order (qtd. in Levina and Bui 3). Barbara Creed expands upon this theory and argues that the monstrous-feminine is abject and thus must be destroyed in the horror film.
“Santa Clarita Diet” is set in sunny suburban California and follows a family of four that must deal with the matriarch’s transformation into a zombie and the various ramifications it causes, including everything from nosy neighbors, to an ancient order of zombie hunters, to simply finding the next meal to satiate Sheila’s intense hunger. From the get-go, Sheila is clearly defined as the monstrous-feminine. In the first episode (“So Then a Bat or Monkey”), she displays several characteristics of the abject. When she and Joel show a house to potential buyers, Sheila unleashes a torrent of green vomit upon a bedroom floor. Even after she spews this bile all over the room, which is first shown in a medium close-up coming towards the camera, and then a long shot to show the full extent of her transgression, she still tries to sell the house with vomit tangled in her hair. Creed says that the corpse is the ultimate abjection because the body protects itself from “body wastes like shit, blood, urine, and pus by ejecting these things from the body just as it expels food that, for whatever reason, the subject finds loathsome” (9). Yet, unlike typical zombie narratives, Sheila is not a zombie that repulses viewers or her family. She may have turned off the buyers, but Joel doesn’t leave her after that scene, or the numerous other transgressions she undergoes. As the series progresses, he helps her kill people, usually bad men, to feed her unstoppable impulses. Additionally, in that same episode, she carries on, trying to close a deal as though nothing is wrong, even with vomit smeared across her face.
Furthermore, the end of the episode makes it hard not to root for Sheila as she undergoes her final transformation into a zombie. Sheila ‘s colleague, Gary (Nathan Fillion), makes unwanted sexual demands. She warns him several times in a bar to back off, but eventually, she responds by licking his fingers and then biting off two, replying, “I know; weirdest foreplay ever.” Joel eventually comes home and finds Sheila kneeling over Gary’s eviscerated body. With bits of flesh dripping from her mouth, she tells Joel, “I really want to make this work.” One would think Joel would leave her at that moment, but he doesn’t, even if there’s no going back. As Lorna Jowett and Stacey Abbot observe, “The graphic gore in this episode and throughout the series signals Sheila’s, and the show’s, transgression. Repeated images of Sheila covered in blood challenge conceptions of normality. This is, after all her ‘new normal’ and the comedic use of blood and gore insists that Sheila cannot be recuperated into traditional gender roles.” They add that horror often presents the mother as a monster, but Sheila is no abject monstrous female—or not in a bad way. “The fate of predatory Gary indicated that ‘Santa Clarita’ celebrates the monster as release from social expectations” (49-50).
Gary’s death establishes a pattern throughout the show’s three seasons. Sheila generally never kills anyone undeserving. Most of her kills are men who perpetuate the worst stereotypes of masculinity and the type of paternal order that Creed references. Gary is one example, but another major kill in season 1 is that of pesky neighbor Dan Palmer (Ricardo Antonio Chavira), a detective who suspects that Sheila just may have something to do with Gary’s death, even after she tells him to “mind his own fucking business.” Throughout season 1, Dan berates other men who don’t fulfill his standards of masculinity. He even belittles his son Eric (Skyler Gisondo), one of the most empathetic characters on the show. When Dan finds Abby and Eric alone in his room together, he says, “Of course nothing happened. You’re you.” He also tells Joel that Sheila wears the pants in the relationship, adding, “She sells the houses. She’s the closer.” Yet, what’s also transgressive about the series is how the main male characters, namely Eric and Joel, are such a contrast to characters like Dan. Eric becomes Abby’s best friend and accepts her mother’s monstrosity. His knowledge and book smarts are frequently employed to help the family deal with one crisis after another. He shows that the excessive machismo that Dan exhibited isn’t going to save anyone. Joel, meanwhile, is just as empathetic, and though he sometimes struggles with Sheila’s various changes, he ultimately accepts her and assists her in killing bad men, which, for the second and third seasons, primarily consists of neo-Nazis.
To add, there are a few male characters in the show who initially pose a threat to Sheila but evolve, due to her influence. Gary returns as a reanimated head and becomes a much more sympathetic character. By season 3, he even assists Joel and Sheila by working in sales for their new real estate company. They keep him in the basement in a vase and hook him up with a wireless headset. In that same season, Sheila and Joel fend off an ancient order of zombie hunters who want her dead. Camo-wearing, grunting, ex-sniper Tommy (Ethan Suplee) takes it upon himself to take out Sheila. However, realizing he has a daughter, she refuses to kill him. He tells her in Season 3, episode 5 (“Belle and Sebastian Protect the Dead”’), “You’re a monster. That’s all you’ll ever be. You eat people.” She responds that she’s not a monster, and she refuses to bite him, just after she tackles him to the floor in her house and he tells her, “Tell my daughter I loved her.” Unlike other zombies, Sheila has impulse control. Tommy becomes human to her, unlike the neo-Nazis. She encourages him to change his life and forgo hunting zombies just because it’s what his older brother did. He agrees and instead ends up working in a bird store.
Perhaps more importantly, Sheila has a positive influence on the female characters in the show, most notably her daughter Abby. In season 1, episode 4 (“The Farting Sex Tourist), she tells Abby that she can be anything she wants to be, even a poet. As the series progresses, Abby becomes just as transgressive and bold as her mother. In season 2, Abby hits a male classmate in the face with a lunch tray after he bragged in the cafeteria about harassing a female classmate online. Abby, with Joel and Sheila in tow, eventually goes to the principal’s house to apologize, but makes clear she doesn’t regret defending a fellow female classmate who was tormented, which causes Sheila to whisper to Joel, “Maybe we’re not raising a monster. We’re raising a superhero.” Furthermore, Abby encourages Eric to blow up a fracking plant with her, and by the series’ conclusion, she insists on joining Joel as one of the zombie-hunting knights, mostly to defend Sheila, the family’s matriarch. Abby’s character is interesting because she constantly raises questions about how much transgression is too much, especially when she blows up a fracking plant and uses violence against a male classmate. Yet, for the most part, Eric, Joel, and Sheila contain her negative transgressions while still allowing her plenty of agency.
Sheila’s influence also extends to her female neighbors. After Dan dies, his wife, Lisa (Mary Elizabeth Ellis), becomes more open sexually and starts dating women, namely another neighbor/sheriff’s deputy, Anne (Natalie Morales). Both Anne and Lisa find inspiration in Sheila to be who they truly want to be. Even though Anne is a devout Christian, she finds strength through Sheila to be as open sexually as she wants to be. What’s also evident is that Sheila’s zombification gives her the confidence that she always wanted. In season 1, episode 5 (“Man Eat Man”), Joel asks Sheila if she wants to be cured, and she responds, “I feel more confident now,” adding that she likes her newfound energy. This confidence is even evident in the work place, especially in the following episode (“Attention to Detail”) when Sheila stands up to her verbally abusive former boss Carl (Andy Richter) and insists on making her voice known at a meeting, where she pitches an eco-friendly housing plan. After the meeting, Carl bellows, “Your only job is to support me.” What’s apparent throughout the series is that Sheila will break free of any situation that tries to contain her transgressions. She and Joel eventually start their own company, and even when he and Abby chain her in the basement at the end of season 1, she breaks free. Neither chains or abusive men contain her.
In terms of narratives, “Santa Clarita Diet” has enough gore to mirror other zombie stories, but what makes it unique is that Sheila goes against negative connotations of the abject monster. She essentially only kills bad men, and even after she munches on limbs or spews green vomit, she is loved and accepted by Joel, Abby, and Eric. Her zombification gives her a new sense of empowerment that rubs off on her female neighbors. She is not one of the mindless undead, which is perhaps best illustrated when she decides to let Tommy live after he mentions his daughter just as she’s about to chomp on his neck. Additionally, the show belongs to the tradition of supernatural sitcoms that began in the 1960s with “The Munsters,” “The Addams Family,” and “Bewitched” that placed Gothic characters in ordinary settings, in this case bright and sunny suburban California where everyone drives an SUV. Yet, as Jowett and Abbott note, the incorporation of a zombie into such a sitcom allows “a more abject and inherently unstable presence to erupt into the familiar sitcom landscape.” They add that Lily Munster (Yvonne DeCarlo), Morticia Addams (Carolyn Jones), and Samantha Stephens (Elizabeth Montgomery) typically disrupted the traditional family home, while offering transgressive depictions of gender, but their monstrous nature was contained by network sitcom conventions. What’s different about Sheila , according to the writers, is the fact that she’s a zombie, and zombies are physically and morally abject, thus Sheila transgresses physical, emotional, psychological, and moral boundaries nearly every episode. Each time she’s narratively contained, she always breaks free.
Both Creed and Kristeva associate the monstrous-feminine with the maternal in horror films. Yet, even with her numerous abject qualities, Sheila is a deeply sympathetic, strong-willed, and funny character, accepted and loved by neighbors and family alike. She is not the main threat on the show. That role belongs to men who exude the worst and more stereotypical aspects of masculinity. In an interview with SYFY Wire, show creator Victor Fresco said his intention was to create monsters unlike others. “We wanted to create sympathetic monsters,” he said. “The undead are ridiculous, Santa Clarita Diet acknowledges, but so are we.” After three seasons, Fresco, with Barrymore producing, did just that. “Santa Clarita Diet” usurps the traditional zombie narrative and in the process creates a female monster that’s the hero of the story.
References
Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge. 1993.
Print.
Berlatsky, Noah. “Santa Clarita Showrunner Victor Fresco on the Tradition of Zombie Comedy.” SYFY
Wire. 3 July 2018. Web. 30 November 2019.
Jowett, Lorna and Stacey Abbot. “Victor Fresco’s Santa Clarita Diet (2017-present).” Horror: A
Companion (Genre Fiction and Film Comparisons). Simon Bacon, Ed. Peter Lang, Ltd. 2019.
Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia
University Press. 1980. Print.
About the Author: Brian Fanelli is a frequent contributor to Signal Horizon Magazine, HorrOrigins, and Horror Homeroom. His creative writing has been published by World Literature Today, Paterson Literary Review, Main Street Rag, The MacGuffin, Chiron Review, and other publications. He is the author of Waiting for the Dead to Speak (NYQ Books), winner of the Devil's Kitchen Poetry Prize, and All That Remains (Unbound Content). He has an M.F.A. from Wilkes University and a Ph.D. from Binghamton University. He is an assistant professor of English and chair of the Humanities Division at Lackawanna College.