My last semester at AACC, I had to write a paper for Independent Film class, and I decided to write it on George A. Romero’s collected works. Before submitting the actual paper, we needed to submit a one page proposal of our idea to the professor. Since I knew that even getting a zero on the proposal would still give me an A in the class due to some extra credit I’d accrued, I wrote a completely BS paper, and submitted it. I decided to post it here (with a few, small modifications) because I recently came across it, and I got a great giggle out of it. It’s worth noting that I wrote this right before Land of the Dead came out, so the more recent film (and the horrible remakes, which are blasphemy) are not referenced in any fashion.
Argument:
The Zombies in George A Romero’s films are a representation of Jesus, who has come back to punish Christians for a mistranslation of the Bible which has resulted in Catholics eating the body and the blood of Jesus.
Proofs:
Romero clearly mocks Christianity through his use of over the top Christian characters, such as Cuda in Martin and the Priest characters in Zombie movies. The priest characters in the Zombie movies insist upon the sanctity of the dead, and are following Christianity by “the book”, despite the fact that this has resulted in the Zombie population increasing exponentially. In following Christianity by the word as it is written, rather than thinking about things practically, they have aided the Zombies. This is evidence that doing things by the book may be wrong, and that the book is fallible.
Jesus is the only one throughout Christian mythology that has ever managed to rise from the dead to walk once more. Until the Zombies came. They walk around, feasting on the body and blood of the humans, which causes the humans to gain their undead status. When Catholics take communion, it is believed to be the body and blood of Christ, thus being imbued by the protection of Jesus Christ.
If the Bible is fallible, and we are eating the body and blood of Christ despite his wishes, it only seems fit that something should be sent from God to rectify this issue. God seems to like working
with plagues, which the Zombies could be taken as. The Zombies, like Jesus, have been created in our image, in fact, from the very bodies of our dead. They have come in order to force us from perpetuating a history of bad biblical interpretations. And even though the Zombies seem to die easily, there are so many of them that they keep on coming, overwhelming our forces. Though Jesus was killed by crucifixion, due to the fact that his spirit is eternal, he keeps on living.
However, the Zombies, like Jesus, still function on basic Christian principles, as they are meant to be, not as they are interpreted. They kill without discrimination, regardless of race, class, or religion. Just as Jesus taught us to love all equally regardless of sins, now everyone is being killed equally, regardless of their involvement in the misinterpretation.
George Romero was inspired by EC Comics, which was originally an educational comic that taught bible stories. However, this comic too was corrupted when it was turned over to Max Haines, who developed it into a horrific horror comic with near-pornographic lack of moral values.
The Zombies are also an attack on consumerism, and the mass media controlled mentality (see Dawn of the Dead’s Zombies in the Shopping Mall, for example). Christianity itself has become a business, with many people making profit off of alms and other charitable donations. The mass media injects corrupting influences onto the populace, which leads them away from more productive pursuits, such as reading the Bible. Humanity also seeks to find meaning in consumer goods, which is leading them away from the meaning that they have as children of God.
