This past Monday, after being a single parent for a week on our trip to visit my dad and stepmom in South Carolina, I needed to be by myself for a while. I am the kind of person that really needs to go off by myself every now and then. So I did what every person does when they need a peaceful retreat—I went to see a zombie movie! Since I don’t want the kids to be awake for a week straight and because Danielle finds zombie movies gross and stupid, I went to see World War Z by myself. For two hours I didn’t have a problem in the world, at least not compared to the people on screen. I loved the movie. It was perfect for me and exactly what I needed.
If you know me, you know that I have this little problem—I can’t stop thinking. My Myers Briggs personality type is ENFP. One of the aspects of being an ENFP is that I have a relentless inner monologue going and I am always trying to figure out what something means. Why did she say that particular word with that tone of voice? What are his motives for choosing to talk to that person first instead of the other person? What message are they sending by taking two days to respond to my email instead of one day? It is very difficult for me to experience something in the moment. There is always a commentary going on about the current moment in my head. The downsides of this inner monologue are that I read into a lot of things when there’s really nothing to read into and that I am almost never relaxed. Being an ENFP is why I’m good at what I do, but it is also why I am more stressed out than other people might be doing the same work. It is a blessing and a curse. That’s where the zombies come in. Those people being chased by zombies—their problems are worse than mine. So for two hours I was in a state of zombie-Zen. But then I left the theater and I started thinking again, and one question popped into my mind: why are we as a culture so obsessed with zombies (and other apocalyptic scenarios) right now? As I was waiting for my order at Sonic, the answer came to me. We are obsessed with the idea of the end of the world as we know it because, at least in the West, the world as we know it is ending.
Life isn’t as black-and-white as it used to be. Think about it: just fifty years ago there were all kinds of clear boundaries that don’t exist anymore. In much of the country, black people and white people (not to mention other racial groups) didn’t mix in public. Men were, at least publically, in charge of everything, including the family. When a woman was single she would work, but then when she had a family she stayed home with the kids. There was a firm sense of who was good (USA) and who was bad (USSR). Most people went to church and contributed to society in some way through civic groups. Things were black-and-white. There are some who look back and say, “It was better back then.” It would be hard to argue with that in light of some aspects of our current cultural reality—drugs and violence come to mind. These days, people walk into schools, movie theaters, and shopping malls and open fire, killing the innocent and then often killing themselves. We cannot really identify who “the enemy” is anymore because it might be someone in a cave in Afghanistan and it might be our neighbor who is growing more and more extreme and unstable. Families seem to be falling apart and a lot of parents don’t seem to have the slightest clue about how to actually care for their children. Apart from those obviously negative aspects of our current society, there are those difficult questions that many of us are not sure what the right answer is. Immigration policies, global warming, and same-sex marriage come to mind. For some, this is a very exciting time to be alive because of what they feel is a long overdue acceptance and openness to diversity. To others, this is a time of immense fear. To many of us, it is a mixture of both.
So that’s why I think we’re obsessed with all kinds of apocalyptic scenarios, especially zombies. In real life, the boundaries are gone. Especially for those people who fit into my demographic categories—White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (especially the male members of this group)—the world as we know it is ending, for good or for ill. Some might think that our feeling that the world as we know it is ending would make us want to avoid the zombie flicks because they would just cause more anxiety. However, the reason the zombie movies are so attractive to us is that within the world of the films there are clear boundaries that return, yet they are new boundaries. There are no longer boundaries between races, genders, sexual orientations, or nationalities. Those all disappear. There is one boundary, that clear dividing line between the living and the undead. You are either a living human being or you are a zombie. Occasionally there is the moral quandary that someone faces when her own three-year-old daughter becomes a zombie and tries to eat her face off. Can she do what needs to be done in that moment? Can she convince herself that that’s not her little girl anymore? Other than that, though, the lines are pretty clear between zombies and human beings. You’re willing to team up with anyone in the world if it means beating back the zombie apocalypse. So we like zombie movies (at least I do) because it gives us a break from wondering who or what is out to get us and how our society may or may not crumble. Things get pretty clear when zombies get involved. We may not be able to agree on campaign finance reform or tax rates or evolution but we can all agree that the zombies have got to go. Zombie movies are strangely and gruesomely uniting. They are very scary, but at least the people in the movie know what to be scared of.
This is, in some ways, a difficult time to be alive, and in other ways the best time ever to be alive. Every so often cultures have a way of tossing everything up in the air and seeing where it lands. Because of my profession, I think of 16th Century Europe as a prime example of this repeated historical trend. Interestingly enough, eventually at least, some good things have always come out of these upheavals. As Christians, although we will find ourselves getting anxious like everybody else, we need not give ourselves over to the fear that seems to permeate American culture right now. People, like animals, tend to do one of two things when they are overtaken by fear. One option is that we run to our holes, retreating and hiding, isolating ourselves and insulating ourselves from others to protect that which is valuable to us. When this happens we never listen to anyone else’s perspective and we only spend time with people just like us. The other option is that we bare our teeth and show our claws, going on the offensive. We show up with signs and megaphones telling people how much we (and supposedly God) hate them. We Christians are all too often the leaders of both of these groups—the isolationists and the hate-mongers—but it doesn’t have to be that way. As followers of Jesus, we are not to be driven by our fear, but by our love. As we read in 1 John 4:18, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear.” We are to be made perfect in love, not to allow our fear to separate us from others or to demean them.
All that being said, if the zombies ever do show up I’m going to have to re-evaluate everything I just wrote. Actually, I’ll probably just forget I ever wrote this, because like I said, when you’re dealing with zombies, everything gets really clear all of a sudden. There’s no more time for prejudice and division between human beings when the undead surround your town. Red, brown, yellow, black and white, male and female, Republican and Democrat, American, Iraqi, Chinese, and Nigerian, gay and straight, Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, and atheist can all agree on one thing—the zombies have got to go! That’s why we love zombie movies so much. In making life much more difficult and complex for the characters in the films, life gets very, very simple for us… at least for a couple of hours.
