Dawn Of The Dead: Metaphor for Religion?

[evildave]

Having just watched the latest movie where the dead miraculously rise, I can't help but see the zombie infection as a metaphor for religion.

100% of their energy seemed to be focused on making more zombies of the few remaining pockets of humanity.

Basically, the vicrtims were still "alive", but crippled mentally. Turned into rabid, instinctive beasts with one mission: spread the infection.

The zombies in this movie never really spent any time eating people. In fact, it's hard to tell where they got all that energy from. You'd think they'd get dehydrated and start dying after a few days of standing around in a parking lot.

Of course, the non-zombies were portrayed pretty negatively by the movie as well. They certainly scraped up quite a load of unbelievable human refuse. At least the zombies were bright enough to realise they were all on the same team.

[Dancing David]

I have seen articles in such luminaries as the Green Egg that claim there is a link between Xianity and the legend of vampires. Although I am sure soemwhere there are spol draners that are not Xian.

[Keneke]

They are similar, certainly. But if it were purposefully so, there'd be a bit more correlation, wouldn't you think?

[evildave]

The zombie movie has lyrics from this song running in it as a lounge lizard style performance, and then a portion of the song in the end credits.

Disturbed - Down With the Sickness
http://www.lyricsxp.com/lyrics/d/down_with_the_sickness_disturbed.html

(Caution, the above link contains profanity and content that could be disturbing to sensitive people.)


Viruses of the Mind is another fine essay.
http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/Dawkins/Work/Articles/1993-summervirusesofmind.shtml

Religion's Misguided Missiles is a favorite. Especially since religious leaders went on to claim it was "atheism's fault" for the crime in a rather repetitious fashion.
http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/Dawkins/Work/Articles/2001-09-18misguidedmissiles.shtml

[evildave]

BTW, I was there in the middle of the day, in a mostly empty theater, and there were three *little kids* in there. I mean cry out for mommy with night terrors aged little kids. Six years old, give or take.

What are their parents and/or siblings thinking, bringing these kids in to see such a movie? Unbelievable.

I mentioned the kids to the elderly usher on the way out. "There were a lot of little kids in there!"

She said, "Yes, I asked a little boy if he liked it. He shook his head and said 'No!'".

The 'No!' was one of those emphatic ones with a hint of "I'll cry!" in it.

[toddjh]

Originally posted by evildave
BTW, I was there in the middle of the day, in a mostly empty theater, and there were three *little kids* in there. I mean cry out for mommy with night terrors aged little kids. Six years old, give or take.

You too? Man, the theater I was at was full of them! I didn't even see parents or older siblings with some of them.

Edited to add: On the other hand, I saw a lot of freaky movies when I was little (maybe not 6, but definitely 8 or 9). I was scared out of my mind at the time, but now I look back on them as fond memories. The worst of the bunch was Forbidden Planet -- a monster you can't even see? Having the lights on doesn't even do any good!

On the other other hand, I was 5 when E.T. came out, and I was so scared by that that I made my mom take me out of the theater. I don't know how I would've survived Dawn of the Dead.

Jeremy

[neutrino_cannon]

Not a perfect metaphor by any means, there are actually pletny of religions that are only mildly evangelistic, or not at all.

Zoroastrians come to mind. I don't even know if they let you join them at all, which is strange when you consider how long they've been around.

[evildave]

It's just one of those "Golly, gee whiz, WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?" things.

A few of those kids might be tough/desensitized enough already... but for a young child with no perspective, watching civilization crash under the weight of a wave of violent, zombified people probably isn't 'nice'. Especially when it starts off in the 'burbs with a familiar, safe-looking environment.

Any second, a wave of zombified people will come rushing in through the windows and doors, all snarling and screaming, trying to rip out your throat with their teeth.

Sweet dreams!

[evildave]

Originally posted by neutrino_cannon
Not a perfect metaphor by any means, there are actually pletny of religions that are only mildly evangelistic, or not at all.

Zoroastrians come to mind. I don't even know if they let you join them at all, which is strange when you consider how long they've been around.

Yes, an odd group, religiously speaking.

You get born into it, or you aren't part of it. Some think that a little evangelism wouldn't hurt, according to the religious tolerance site.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/zoroastr.htm

The 'Internet Sacred texts archive' has their 'Avesta'.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/zor/index.htm

Skimming their contracts and outrage stuff is interesting.

I wonder how they feel about 'Mazda' cars? Certainly an Allah/JHVH/Yaweh/Jehova car company wouldn't go very well in certain parts of the world.

[neutrino_cannon]

I knew they'd been around for a long time, but I didn't know it was that long.

So much for the world only being six thousand years old huh?

The archetypical montheistic religion eh? I knew they proceded the jews, but I didn't think there was any theological relation between the two.

How about that.

Now the one thing that I read that conflicted with my previos knowlege was that they were heavily persecuted by muslims. I had always been under the impression that muslims left jews, christians and zoroastrians alone because they were all "peoples of the book". This must clearly have varied under the different dynasties.

[Checkmite]

The original Dawn of the Dead cleverly likened the shoppers trapped in the mall to "zombies"; a point this remake seems to have not gotten. While a connection could be drawn between "zombies" and "religion", I'm not sure the makers of this movie were witty enough to intend it.

[Yahweh]

Originally posted by Dancing David
I have seen articles in such luminaries as the Green Egg that claim there is a link between Xianity and the legend of vampires. Although I am sure soemwhere there are spol draners that are not Xian.
The basic story is this (someone correct me if I'm wrong, I'm recalling this from memory):

In the beginning, God created man and woman from the Earth. He created man, Adam, and a wife, Lillith.

Lillith did not like being subservient to Adam, she demanded she be treated equally. Lilliths insubordinence infuriates God, God subsequently banishes Lillith from the Garden of Eden.

Upon this banishment, God curses Lillith to never see the light of day again, Lillith will be forced to feed from the blood of the beasts of Nod and Verse (Nod being the land East of Eden, Verse being everything else), Ironically Lillith is cursed with the immortality that Adam and Eve would eventually lose. To add insult to injury, God curses Lillith with 5 plagues in the form of children.

Lillith gives birth to the children in a forest, and I believe its the RPG "The Masquerade" picks up (it adds to the story speaking of "Clans of the Camarilla"). In the actual story, Lillith gives birth to the 5 children, the children bear the same curse as Lillith.

I believe each of the 5 children (or kin) of Lillith go about on their own journeys, the most popular being that of Losondaea. After about this point, the stories begin to manifest completely alien to what what you'd expect would come from the Gospels of the Bible.

If you take the time to read up on this, you find such as names of the Innana, Demiurge (this is popular in later Gnostic texts), Voe, Didonicus, Enoch (this name has casual significance to the Lillith story) etc.

The 5 children of Lillith feed on animals of Verse. Adam gets a new wife, this one fudges up as well (although the story of Genesis as present in todays bible looks nothing like the real life of Adam and Eve (http://wesley.nnu.edu/noncanon/pseudepigrapha.htm)), the children of Lillith would eventually feed on the humans who would soon be exiled from Eden.

And there you have it, a summary of the origins of the vampire as told by early Apocryphal Christian literature.

[evildave]

Yeah, sounds like some of the kooky supernatural horror stuff I've read.

In the Bible and in little 'graphic novel' thingies. (OK, yes it's a COMIC BOOK.) The vampire ones are probably like Chick tracts for goths.

[ceo_esq]

Originally posted by neutrino_cannon
I knew they'd been around for a long time, but I didn't know it was that long.

So much for the world only being six thousand years old huh?

The archetypical montheistic religion eh? I knew they proceded the jews, but I didn't think there was any theological relation between the two.Just about all of the scholarly sources I've located date Zoroastrianism to around 600 BC, while a few sources acknowledge that a minority of modern scholars argue for a date as early as 1500 BC. This is not as old as the Judeo-Christian tradition.

[evildave]

Of course, the roots of Hinduism seem to go back a long, long way. Somewhere between 4000 and 2200 BC.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/hinduism.htm

[Yahzi]

Originally posted by evildave
At least the zombies were bright enough to realise they were all on the same team.
Why is that? In all zombie movies, the brainless zombies always cooperate (like "28 Days Later"), even when the plot device doesn't make sense for them to do so.

Probably because zombies are all controlled by the Devil. Even in movies that don't have devils.

Aw, why am I complaining. I like zombie movies as much as the next guy...

[evildave]

I dunno. Why is it they get supernatural endurance, too?

You'd think after standing around in a mall parking lot for a week, they'd all get dehydrated and die out. Where do they get their energy from once they run out of living people to eat?

[toddjh]

Originally posted by evildave
I dunno. Why is it they get supernatural endurance, too?

You'd think after standing around in a mall parking lot for a week, they'd all get dehydrated and die out. Where do they get their energy from once they run out of living people to eat?

At least that happened in 28 Days Later. In Dawn of the Dead, they seem to be supernatural-type zombies, rather than virus-type zombies. Considering they only become zombies once they die anyway, I think it's fair to assume the plot calls for some demonic handwaving.

Jeremy

[evildave]

Actually, I've ordered '28 days'.

What a disease like the zombie conversion (as depicted) would require is some deeper understanding of how to package a contagion and use it to engineer changes to a human brain.

Sure, I can see "looking dead". The victims stop moving and breathing just before they turn into rabid bloodthirsty monsters. Your heart can stop beating for up to a minute before serious, life-altering brain damage begins - but that's not all that important for the zombies as they were portrayed. Other organs can go longer. Usually the victims were only "down" for seconds before they got up again.

The problem becomes how to "rewrite" instinctive behaviors such that the victim seeks and attacks without regard to personal safety when stimulated, and yet disregards other zombies. What cascade of reprogramming would be required to make him/her a raging, chasing, multiplying plague transmission machine, instead of a vegetable, or a very deranged and barely-functional human, as prone to attack other carriers as anything else?

And (in the case of this movie) then you still have to "solve" a bigger problem: dependence on water and food intake. What do they do? Photosynthesis? Soak up liquid out of the air? Just gradually consume themselves? They never showed these zombies actually eat anything but living humans, and one human won't be alive through the smallest part of a meal.

The transformation seems to require a complete reconfiguration of biological processes AND a specific sequence of reconfiguring the brain.

And very, very fast.

One minute, the guy is bleeding out and fading fast from shock, the next, he's up and feisty again, trying to kill his wife.

How does an organism cope with and recover from that amount of damage? How does the contagion spread in a body faster than it can bleed out and die from a big, nasty, gaping wound?

Most importantly, what attracts zombies to humans, and not each other? Nobody bothered to try to work that out in this movie. Of course, they danced around on the roof, stood near windows, etc. Plain stupid things that drew attention to themselves. They did everything they seemingly could to draw zombies to them. Was it sound? Was it smell? Was it sight?

Their ignorance killed them. After the TV sets stopped working, did they knock over the electronics store and try to get shortwave running? Other radio bands?

They had access to gasoline and LP fuel and a whole mall full of junk. Under siege like that, I'd have thought about getting the zombies to come over to a concrete faced wall and dropping burning coctails on concentrated groups of them. If they were getting water from somewhere, turning it off might make the zombies move on.

Then again, would more of the zombies have been attracted to a plume of smoke? Or any activity? It's hard to say. The survivors in this movie were generally about as stupid as the zombies were. They generally acted on assumptions and impulses and didn't test their assumptions or look ahead to what the results of these actions might be.

And what of the military? They had secure bunkers, satellites and underground nuclear missile crews behind fairly impenetrable doors, with months of food stashed away. They could have identified concentrations and masses of zombies and simply nuked them. There are even a few remote air bases you literally need to fly into. Oh, wait. They were all busy defending Iraq from the Zombie Menace. Silly me.

[COCT]

And of course... Jesus was the most famous zombie ever.

Here's an excerpt from my March 16th entry on my website, the Church of Critical Thinking. I began the entry with:
A 35 year old man in Jacksonville, Florida named Timothy White was just arrested for shooting his pizza delivery guy in the face. Twice. Because he thought he was a vampire. According to local WKMG, the man was armed with a knife, a sawed-off shotgun, and three pistols. He was described by friends as "a born-again Christian with an unusual preoccupation with zombies and vampires."

Don't all Christians have an unusual preoccupation with zombies? Well, one particular zombie anyway. Didn't Jesus rise up from the dead to roam the Earth? What makes Mr. White's preoccupation with zombies any more unusual than the Christian one? And doesn't the book of Revelations say that the dead will all be resurrected to be judged by Jesus? First Corinthians says "the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised." So the Bible teaches that the undead can walk the Earth. Can any Christian really blame this guy for being worried that his pizza delivery man might indeed be one of the raised dead?
If you're interested, you can read the rest at http://www.churchofcriticalthinking.com

(only the last 10 entries are on the main page, so I think you'll have to go to the archive for March 16)

COCT