Peter J. Leithart recently had a little fun with a New York Times editorial that implies that the rising popularity of zombies shows that Americans are subtly racist. He says that the argument—that zombies hungry for brains represent immigrants hungry for American wealth—is ridiculous, and he’s quite right. But he also says she’s asking a good question: Why zombies? Why now? He still hasn’t heard a persuasive answer.
So I think I'll take a stab at a persuasive answer: the zombies do represent something. But the zombies aren't foreigners, they're us.
There’s no denying the popularity of zombies—by which I mean the modern brain-hungry, shambling, disgusting, undead-or-plague-infected monsters, not the traditional figures from voodoo culture. The modern craze started in the late 1960s and 1970s with George Romero and John A. Russo’s Night of the Living Dead in 1968 and the movie franchises that followed it. But recently the popularity of zombies seems to have grown dramatically. Movies like Zombieland, 28 Days Later, and Shaun of the Dead seem to come out every year; books like Max Brooks’s World War Z and the young adult novel The Forest of Hands and Teeth climb the bestseller lists; and video games like Dead Rising and Left 4 Dead sell millions of copies.
There is a clear pop-culture fascination with zombies. Part of this, I’m sure, is just an expression of our culture’s enjoyment of seeing violence performed on seemingly deserving subjects: Zombies can be killed in a variety of creative ways, and since they don’t feel pain and are already dead, there’s apparently no need to feel guilty about it.
But what if this fascination is about more than just gross-out gore and action thrills? What if it represents a subtle, subconscious understanding that something is wrong—spiritually wrong—with our culture.
Zombies represent the appetite divorced from everything else. They are incapable of judgment, self-awareness, or self-preservation. Though they still move and act, they are not really alive. They hunger and are never filled. And they aren’t just hungry for anything—they specifically want to eat the living, and even more specifically the brain, seat of rationality and self control.
In Pauline terms, they are the sarx in its purest form. Without a soul to control it, the flesh is a slave to its own desires. The rise in popularity of zombies, then, may reflect a rise in anxiety over the elevation of appetite in modern life, a popular recognition that appetite has gotten out of control, and that unchecked, unreflective, and immoderate appetite is a form of death.
It’s not always subconscious, actually; Romero's Dawn of the Dead overtly uses zombies to satirize consumerism. The humans are besieged by the walking dead in a shopping mall, and one of them says that the zombies have gathered there because that's where they always went in life. Shaun of the Dead uses zombies in the same way, though more humorously. It takes a very long time for Shaun to realize that all of the shambling, vacant-eyed, disgusting people around him have actually become zombies, as their behavior really hasn't changed all that much. (At the movie’s end, Shaun’s friend Ed’s lifestyle doesn't seem to have changed at all after his own transformation into a zombie.)
The zombie phenomenon is very interesting theologically, as it’s sort of a “return of the repressed” way of recognizing the deadness of appetite-driven modern culture. As we become more and more zombified, as our culture becomes ever more adept at amplifying our desires through advertising, pornography, and a media culture obsessed with gratifying every appetite, we can see the inevitable results of that process shambling along on their rotting legs.
Another fascinating feature of most modern zombie stories is that, most of the time, the zombies themselves are not actually all that dangerous. They’re usually slow and clumsy, almost never use weapons, and are too mindless to formulate any tactics. They just plod forward toward their victims, and only their numbers, persistence, and resilience to damage make them much of a threat.
No, what really makes things scary for the protagonists in a zombie story is not the zombies’ power, but the humans’ own weakness. The survivors in Night of the Living Dead could have easily withstood the besieging zombies if they had stayed cool-headed and followed their most intelligent member’s plans. But instead they degenerate into infighting and hysteria, and that gives the zombies an opening to overwhelm them.
The theological lesson here is that it’s the frailty of our human wills that gives the sarx its power over us. When we’re faced by naked appetite, we are all too often defenseless and paralyzed. And of course, the worst fate that can befall the victim of a zombie—far worse than being eaten—is to be turned into a zombie oneself. What seems at first like merely an external physical threat can get inside us, corrupt our humanity, and turn us into just another mindless, ravenous drone.
So zombies tell us more than just that Hollywood likes to come up with new ways to show gore. They also tell us about our own souls. When we watch or read or play a story about them, we see ourselves as both zombies and the victims. We know it, but we don’t realize it. What we need to realize is that we’re already undead, and that the only cure is regeneration.
Ethan Cordray is a recent graduate of Wheaton College now working as a librarian in Jefferson City, Missouri. He has also written for Touchstone.
RESOURCES
Peter J. Leithart, Why Zombies?
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Comments:
And they carry with them (or exude) the same sense of horror/dread that vistiors of the dead experience.
So the real moral of zombie-movies is...don't watch zombie-movies.
An interesting thing about both Zombieland and Shawn of the Dead - two very amusing movies - is that an awful lot of the amusement comes from the freedom the protagonists have to violently and creatively destroy the zombies and how much guiltless joy both they and the audience took in them doing so. This freedom is the source of much of the humor in both movies.
There was no censure on the destruction of what were, until very recently, the neighbors, friends and family of the main characters. As I sat watching both movies I felt the non-zombies were fully justified in destroying them. Zombies being zombies, they *must* be annihilated. Their very existence is justification for their deaths, and the violent manner of their existence is justification for the violence of their own deaths. I give Shawn of the Dead (which was, at times, actually quite moving) more credit with addressing this literal objectification of a human more honestly than Zombieland (although the end of Shawn of the Dead was, let's be honest, a cute cop-out).
On the one hand I see this transformation from restraint to freedom as adolescent: both movies feature impotent man-boy protagonists who love video games. In both movies the video games come to life and yet the lack of moral consequences continues. And not just a lack of moral consequences, but a world where the protagonist has *a perfectly reasonable justification* for doing in real life what he spends hours doing in his imaginations.
On the other hand I see these as though-provoking commentaries on redemption, restraint and earthly justice, in that the protagonists and the audience are essentially acknowledging that the zombies cannot be redeemed (and thus MUST be destroyed) and that the protagonists are, by still being rational and responsible, those best suited to delivering that justice.
Even better: both main characters embrace their Zombie-killing responsibilities reluctantly. Both movies feature secondary characters who do it gleefully, and we are to understand that these people are (amusingly) unhinged and unhealthy.
Finally: an anthropologist working 1000 years from now will find, in viewing both movies, an excellent way to compare and contrast the essential characteristics of early-21st century Britain and America. They are sneaky-good commentaries on the cultural, social, economic, geographical and intellectual lives of both countries.
No one cares if you just were a supermarket bag boy, or that you are poor. Its just your survival skills and the ammo in your shotgun that matter. Want a handheld game system? Just take it from a store, money is useless now. Considering that most people in western society do lead "lives of quiet desperation," a zombie apocalypse has its upsides. Horrific or not, it gives people power.
And the zombie critique shows that consumerism--and its parent materialism--are not only death but also murder. A look at zombies in Harry Potter reinforces and deepens the zombie critique of materialism, this time through a fantasy lens as opposed to the horror or post-apocalyptic settings in which zombies are usually found. Rowling has made zombies more terrifying by finding a way to subject them to a mindful evil will that knows how to take advantage of their mindless voraciousness. SPOILER ALERT: In Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince, Rowling makes rather unique uses of zombies (called Inferi). The malevolent Lord Voldemort has found a clever way to control the Inferi and use them as a weapon, entombing them in suspended animation in a magically sealed cave where a part of his soul lies within an object where he has locked it. Voldemort uses Inferi, which are the animated corpses of his murder victims, to guard the piece of his soul he has split into an object (also using an act of murder). He has placed his hope of immortality in an object, a thing he hides and protects, rather than in a spiritual value such as love which must be shared, thence splitting the indivisible soul against its nature. At the crisis point of the scene, Harry Potter must disturb the subterranean lake and awaken the Inferi lying there. As they clutch and drag him under the water, he awaits death in a dark wet place in which he can never be found--worse than death, it is an annihilation of self, identity, and memory, a truly hellish place. Harry's escape by light and fire--which the Inferi shun--is a figurative resurrection, a rising from the dead, completely impossible by his own efforts yet also a reward of his prior obedience of Dumbledore. Harry almost falls to the murderous Voldemort's soulless corpses, yet rises stronger, surpasses his mentor, and stands ready to wage the final battle of love against evil in the final book.
Those are very good points. In my article I was limiting myself to exploring the significance of the zombies themselves and the human survivors, but I agree that it's very interesting that zombies are almost always presented as a form of apocalypse. There are never just a few zombies here and there; there always seems to be an endless tide threatening to wipe out civilization (and quite often succeeding).
It does become a secular version of the eschaton. Perhaps this reflects some subconscious knowledge that the excesses of the flesh are not merely personally destructive, but also harm our whole society. I'm not sure, really.
Craig Roberts:
I suspect I see a lot more potential spiritual value in zombie movies than you do. Of course, it's certainly possible to watch a zombie movie in such a way as to merely indulge the flesh (as I mentioned, a lot of the popular appeal is simply in the gore), and it would be better to avoid them altogether than to do that. But I think a thoughtful viewer can gain some valuable insights from a good zombie movie. They could be quite spiritually healthy in that way.
Everyone:
If you would like to see a very good zombie movie that I think pretty clearly depicts the themes I mentioned, I recommend Night of the Living Dead. Watch the 1968 version; I can't vouch for any of the remakes, since I haven't seen them.
I think the dysfunction of the band of survivors is the key facet of that movie. The zombies reveal the humans' true weaknesses. If they weren't such sinful people, they could have withstood the threat rather easily. It is a very pessimistic film, but I think that's quite different from nihilism.
I rather like your analytical foray. At least it's original. And you may be on to something.
http://www.leithart.com/2011/08/11/why-zombies/
I wouldn't want anyone think that Peter Leithart, a writer whom I admire greatly, held such a silly opinion.
The "zombies" I see are people walking around vacantly on autopilot.
Ethan wants to find the underlying subject of the zombie genre. Ok, let’s see where that leads him.
The first possible subject is racism.
Ethan finds the argument that zombie-movies point to racism in American society, ridiculous. Not a very good argument, but Ethan bases himself on a article by Leithart. Maybe the much admired Leithart has some better arguments. What does he write on the the racism thesis? ‘ But then doesn’t everything for a critic like Rafferty, or any critic at the NYT? I have to say I’m unconvinced.’
Unconvinced. Why? Because Lafferty works for the NYT? Because he is ‘like Rafferty’?
Convincing arguments? Not likely.
Is there or is there not some form of hidden racism in the zombie genre?
Let me quote wikipedia on this:
‘While George Romero denies he hired Duane Jones simply because he was black, reviewer Mark Deming notes that "the grim fate of Duane Jones, the sole heroic figure and only African-American, had added resonance with the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X fresh in the minds of most Americans. " Stein adds, "In this first-ever subversive horror movie, the resourceful black hero survives the zombies only to be killed by a redneck posse" ‘
From: ‘http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Living_Dead’
The meaning of this scene should be obvious to everyone who watches the movie to it’s very bitter end. Or did Ethan close his eyes?
Then there is the more recent ‘Resident evil 5’, where a white protagonist and his light skinned partner run around shooting in rags dressed black men and women.
No element of racism? I rest my case.
Leithart finds the idea of a fear of hordes of immigrants bearing down on America, ludicrous?
How short of memory people are. The novel ‘Camp of saints’ by Jean Raspail (1973) treated just such an event, and was hailed as a masterpiece by William F. Buckley. According to wikipedia it was ‘published five times in the US and was "widely revered by American white supremacists and is a sort of anti-immigration analog to The Turner Diaries.’
‘Night of the living dead’ is only one but certainly one of the most famous in the genre.
What else but racism can one find in just this one movie? Again let me quote wikipedia:
‘Other prevalent themes included "disillusionment with government and patriarchal nuclear family" and "the flaws inherent in the media, local and federal government agencies, and the entire mechanism of civil defense.’
Hmmm, racism, government, nuclear family and civil defense. What could account for the fact that Ethan misses just these points? Did he also closed his eyes when these scenes appeared? I don’t know, but neither do I know what zombies are all about.
Let’s see what Ethan does find as the true subject of the genre.
‘What if it represents a subtle, subconscious understanding that something is wrong—spiritually wrong—with our culture.’
It is according to Ethan: ‘appetite divorced from everything else’ , ‘the Pauline sarx in its purest form’, consumerism, appetite driven modern culture.
And how has it come thus far? It’s the soul that doesn’t control the flesh.
And what is the cure: ‘regeneration’.
In a few words it is suggested that atheistic culture is the cause and Christian redemption is the solution.
Interesting, but is it true?
Let’s analyse a few points in this argument:
- ‘culture driven appetite’ The argument stops here. It’s culture that is responsible. What and if there lies something behind that culture is not explored. If we do dig deeper then we find profit. Profit drives our economy. No profit, bankrupcy looms. The threat of the competition.
Each unbridled profit driven system will drive it’s actors to go further and further just to stay on top. Nothing exclusively atheistic about that. Protestant countries were among the first to practice capitalism. Lot’s of entrepreneurs are church going Christians. Not really an argument for Christian redemption as an answer to consumerism if Christians themselves
are part of the problem.
- ‘It’s the soul that doesn’t control the flesh’
The soul, what a nice concept. Does anyone know how it works? Is there any notion how the soul connect with our flesh, our brain? I rest my case.
While on the other hand there is plenty of evidence of where in our brains our appetites are regulated. See: a.o. Damasio’s ‘Descartes’ error, emotion, reason and the brain.
No opposition of the natural and the spiritual there.
- ‘Consumerism’
I won’t deny that such a thing and all it’s negative consequences exist. But is it really an expression of atheist consumerist culture versus Christian spirituality?
We can test that. Let’s compare a Christian nation, such as the US with a few atheist countries
such as the Scandinavian on the issue of consumerism.
In the following the consumption of the households is compared by country:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_consumer_markets
The US scores 71%, Norway 43%, Denmark 49%, Finland 55% and Sweden 49%.
So the consumerist appetite seem to be largest in our Christian nation.
But let’s go for a parameter that is a bit more concrete. Obesitas. In rare instances the result of a disease but in general the result of consumerism to the max. This factor is certainly the Pauline sarx in it’s most fleshy, fleshyness. On Ethan’s argument one would expect that countries where the appetites are not reemed in by the control of a regenerated Christian soul would score highest on the factor of obesitas. Well, the US is, surprisingly maybe to Ethan, one of the highest scorers on obesitas. Number 9 on the list of Forbes fattest countries: http://www.forbes.com/2007/02/07/worlds-fattest-countries-forbeslife-cx_ls_0208worldfat_2.html
While the Scandinavia countries do very well: http://www.vexen.co.uk/countries/best.html#Obesity
So, what rests of Ethan’s zombie theology? Superficially a soothing text for fellow Christians but after some scrutiny, not much I’m afraid.
For those among you who are interested in comparing Christian and atheist countries on real data, see the following:
Zuckerman’s ‘Society without God’
http://www.amazon.com/Society-without-God-Religious-Contentment/dp/0814797148/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1313663686&sr=1-8
and from a different angle: Wilkinson and Pickett’s ‘The spirit level’.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Spirit-Level-Equality-Better-Everyone/dp/0241954290/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1313663966&sr=1-1
I think Ethan’s thesis was interesting and I must thank him for putting my brain to a bit of exercise, also I must congratulate my friend Ethan that he has found some time off from his busy gaming schedule to devote himself again to do some intellectual work.
On a lighter side: the zombie combat manual:
http://www.lockflow.com/reviews/zombie-combat-manual-guide-fighting-living-dead
Pace, Ethan
Great piece. I find the contagion aspect to be the most frightening. That one would be killed is one thing, to be eaten another, but to become the horror you behold is the worst.
I love your article. My only question is why didn’t you consult me? If one Cordray doesn’t know the answer, the other will. Zombies are my forte of the Cordray line.
Robert Cordray
http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Cordray/e/B002SMYR7U/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1
