JUST THE FACTS
When the Spirit Moves You…
In Night of the Living Dead the zombies are just walking corpses. There is no trace of a personality in any of them. There is no love, no compassion, no fear; just as there is no hate, no malice, and no deliberate aggression. They are no longer human beings by any of the conventional definitions just as they are no longer “alive” by any known definition of that word.
Vampires, because they are intelligent and retain the memories of who they were before they were transformed into the undead, are a different matter. If a vampire kills a human, it is an immoral act, even if the vampire claims exemption from moral laws because those laws were created for mortal man and they are no longer mortal. The issue of a separate morality has been endlessly explored in vampire fiction and is the ongoing plot thread in all of Anne Rice’s vampire novels, where her characters step back and forth across the line of “human” moral behavior and the belief that they are no more bound by moral restraint than a human is when slaughtering a cow. The vampire at least has an argument, however thin, to defend his actions, especially if he truly believes that he is now a higher being, or at very least, belonging to a separate species. This is the same view used in one way or another by centuries of humans to justify everything from slavery to eminent domain.
Zombies are not vampires. They don’t think and they don’t wrestle with complex issues of social and political philosophy.
Unless, of course, they possess a soul. If they possess souls, or if they retain any portion of their human consciousness or memories, then the issue suddenly becomes vastly more complex.
In Night there was not even an issue raised about zombies with souls, just as there was no obvious connection with any aspect of spirituality. The dead rise because of radiation. It’s weird science, sure, but it’s science. Then in Romero’s second zombie film, Dawn of the Dead, hard science seems to take just a bit of a sidestep into spirituality in that it is suggested that planet earth has become the standing room only area for an overcrowded hell. The catch phrase is: “When there is no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the earth.”1 Just as with the first film, the cause of the zombie resurrection is implied rather than clearly explained.
Looking back, though, it seems likely that Romero had at least some kind of spiritual connection in mind when he conceived the whole series. After all, an early working title for the first film was Night of Anubis, and Anubis is the jackal-headed Egyptian god who served as the guardian of the dead and the overseer of the embalming process.2 Anubis was also one of the gods who weighed the good and evil of each newly dead person and passed judgment on them. The bad souls linger in the underworld, the good ones are made into stars and cast into the heavens. The old working title implies both a spiritual link and a process of celestial judgment that has been imposed on mankind and his works. It’s this latter that appears to inform most of Romero’s Living Dead films and fits in well with his often scathing social and political commentary.
But then the rest of that second movie is played out in a way that reinforces the message that the zombies are soulless; just organic machines programmed by some totally unknown means to kill humans and eat them. There doesn’t seem to be any emotional or psychological component evident; the zombes are aggressive and they’re deadly, but they aren’t actually mean about it. There’s no evident personal hatred in them, no deliberate malice in their actions even though those actions are potentially lethal. If they are truly mindless and soulless, then their actions bear no more actual ill will than a hurricane, tornado, or earthquake. From that view zombies are a fact of a rather strange tweak on nature. They do, however, retain the smallest spark of memory, at least in as far as it is attached to gross motor skills. They can use simple tools (clubs, etc.), they can grab with their hands, they can make fists, they can climb ladders, and even turn door handles. Sure, you say, so can a spider monkey, but that doesn’t make it a human being.
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Art of the Dead—Tootie Detrick
Don’t Go Home
“I would like to see zombie films explore more of the connection between zombies and religion. I think that’s part of our primal fear of zombies: the thought of hundreds of dead people with no souls, who don’t feel pain or fear, coming after you and you are fighting to escape and stay alive. I tried to capture that in my painting, and people see it as a person reaching out for help to no avail.”
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In Romero’s third and fourth films, Day of the Dead (1985) and Land of the Dead (2005), the issue becomes much more complicated, which further complicates any forensic analysis.
In Day a scientist tries to rehabilitate a captured ghoul by working to rebuild some degree of conscious awareness associated with ordinary objects (pocket combs, a paperback copy of a Stephen King novel,3 etc.). The implication here is that pattern and object recognition might possibly stimulate active cognition and therefore some amount of reason. To a degree this works as the test zombie, known as Bub (wonderfully played by Sherman Howard4), seems docile toward the scientist, Dr. Logan (Richard Liberty), and even manages a single short sentence: “Hello, Aunt Alicia.”
Though speech alone is not enough to establish a reasoning intelligence (just ask a parrot to explain why he wants a cracker), speech coming from a creature formerly capable of it is at least suggestive of the potential for a return to some level of reason.
The other side of this process is explored in Stephen King’s 2006 novel The Cell in which a computer virus broadcast through cell phones wipes clean the mind of anyone using a phone at that moment. The wiped brains reboot into a new form—a telepathic hive mind that unifies the zombified masses. King’s book discusses personality and its loss but stays away from any exploration of the soul and its connection to organic life. Romero, on the other hand, at least suggests that the soul exists and is tied to the physical body even after death.
In Day, after the inevitable plot turn when the humans typically screw things up through infighting and pettiness and everything goes to zombie hell in a handbasket, Bub reacts with both grief and anger when Dr. Logan is murdered. He goes hunting for the murderer, the vicious Captain Rhodes (Joseph Pilato) and kills him; but instead of doing it the typical zombie way, he shoots the captain. This demonstrates intelligence (however rudimentary), a thirst for vengeance, and some understanding of the concept of justice. Whereas revenge brings with it its own complex set of questions about morality, it is a decidedly human action. So…if Bub is human to some degree, does he then have a soul?
In Land of the Dead, the zombie Big Daddy—played with remarkable sympathy by Eugene Clark—is a hulking brute of a ghoul who is clearly functioning on a reasoning level, and who ultimately leads his fellow zombies in an attack on a walled city of humans. Big Daddy’s assault directly follows a supply raid by the humans during which a number of laughing, mocking humans maim and kill several ghouls. This seems to both alarm and anger Big Daddy, and he leads his “people” in a fairly clever and successful attack. During the attack Big Daddy demonstrates cunning, planning, and the use of tools. When his fellow ghouls are killed, he cries out in pain; when one is beheaded, he puts the crippled ghoul out of his misery. Each of these actions, though minimized to the barely articulate level, is human.
He learns from his actions, and he teaches other zombies what he’s learned. For example, one plot device has the humans, who are raiding zombie-infested towns for food, using fireworks (called “sky flowers” in the film) to distract the zombies. For whatever reason zombies are attracted to fireworks. But Big Daddy shakes off his fascination with them and then jostles other zombies to take their attention away from the fireworks so they can focus on attacking the humans. That is reason.
He then organizes all the zombies in a raid on Fiddler’s Green, the last known stronghold of humans. This is also an intelligent action; but his real moment of genius comes when his zombie army comes to the edge of the river separating his town fro
m Fiddler’s Green. Big Daddy looks out at the city across the river and then down at the water. Humans would be stopped there without the use of boats; but zombies don’t need to breathe.5 Big Daddy jumps into the river, followed by his army, and then they apparently walk across the riverbed to the far shore. The moment when they emerge is a riveting scene, beautifully shot…but more than that it establishes that the zombies not only made their way across the river but did so in a way only zombies could accomplish. That shows self-awareness, reason, and invention. It’s advanced and adaptive problem solving.
Hard to imagine soulless and unthinking creatures figuring that out.
The actions of Big Daddy show more compassion and moral outrage than do the actions of nearly all the humans in the story. Just as Bub’s vengeance on Captain Rhodes shows more humanity than is shown by most of the humans involved in that story. In both cases—Bub and Big Daddy—we have a zombie with emotions and compassion; in both we have zombies with soul. If Bub and Big Daddy have souls, then we can infer that all the Romero zombies probably have souls.
Boy does that open up a can of worms, especially when you consider that we have to kill them in order to survive. So now the issue of whether zombies have souls is more complicated. Much more complicated.
Expert Witness
I asked my panel of experts to discuss these issues.
Dr. Kim Paffenroth, associate professor of religious studies at Iona College and author of the book Gospel of the Living Dead6 sees it this way: “Since some people consider killing animals immoral, they would (I would assume) also consider zombie killing immoral. However, given the examples of Bub and Big Daddy, I would think that killing them would then have to be justified, especially under theories of self-defense (or, in our current troubled world, perhaps national security or an undeclared state of war). That could still be done, of course, as the killing of another person can be justified, but it would represent a huge difference from simply machine-gunning whole crowds of zombies without considering the action any further.”7
“One cannot construe that zombies are immoral,” argues Rabbi Michael Shevack. “You can, quite the opposite, construe that they are perfectly moral, because they cohere with their own nature, and are acting, naturally, as themselves. Theologically, the only question is whether or not zombies are an aberration of God, and therefore, by their instinctive nature, however natural it is to them, they are abominations. This would certainly be implied by the fact that radiation, viruses, prions, interfere with the natural course of God’s Creation and therefore generate zombies. At best, zombies can be called amoral, with fairness to them, pending a serious discussion as to whether they are an aberration; but, like all aberrations, they were created out of creation, so, since Genesis has stated seven times (lest we forget it) that creation is GOOD—zombies must, in some fashion, have their right place and be part of that goodness, even in their fallen natures, if they have one. Nothing can arise unless the hand of God is in it. Including zombies. Unless of course, one believes in radical dualism, such as a competitor of Satan. I do not believe in such a radical dualism—so I believe that even zombies have their own blessed place, though what that place is as yet, I have not been able to discern.”
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Art of the Dead—Geff Bertrand
Zombie Nightmare
“The first zombie movie I saw was the black and white Night of the Living Dead by George Romero. I was very young and my peepers were glued to the TV because the idea of the dead coming back to life was very bone chilling. I woke up screaming many a night after that and had to sleep with a night-light.”
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And that brings up another and very subtle question, according to Rabbi Shevack: “Is a covenant between human beings and zombies possible? I wonder. After all, maybe they could be used to dispose of dead bodies, rather than turning what little open spaces we have now into graveyards. Maybe zombies can be harnessed as a way of getting rid of unwanted matter, and can actually be ecological-helpers. I don’t know, but it’s certainly food for thought.”
“I’m not a fan of labeling things as moral and immoral,” argues Professor Ladany, “because I think it takes away from individual freedom and cultural influence. I think of it rather as a healthy or unhealthy act. In the case of a predatory ghoul, if volition was not in his or her control, then it would be no more immoral than when any animal eats or attacks a prey or what seems to be a prey (e.g., a shark attack could be perceived as what happens when humans get in the way of sharks). Similarly, recall when Roy Horn (of Siegfried & Roy) was mauled by the tiger. People said the tiger went crazy. Chris Rock, however, pointed out that in actuality, ‘the tiger just went tiger!’”
Interfaith Pastor Joyce Kearney says, “Morality is a funny thing. If you get a bunch of people together—clergy and lay persons—and ask them about the morality of killing they’ll almost always tell you that it’s immoral and against God’s laws. They’ll cite the Commandments. Yet some of them either have served in the military or are family with someone who has; some of them may have killed in war, or while on duty as police officers. Some may hold the belief that assisted suicide is a mercy rather than murder. Some support capital punishment. Some will hold that killing in self-defense, or in defense of, say, a child, would be justifiable. If zombies existed and they attacked, what they would do would not be immoral because they have no thought and no soul and are therefore not bound by Commandments or any other religious or governmental law. People would fear zombies, and they would hate them, but I can’t see anyone pointing a finger and calling a zombie a sinner.”
On the morality of killing zombies, Dr. Gretz says, “The first question would be, ‘Would it be an illegal act?’ What would the police do? The supreme court would have to rule that the zombie was not really a person and had no legal protections and not only could, but should be put down (the level of dead before that happened would be interesting). Next, is the individual’s ‘spirit’ still residing in the body or has it left? If the spirit is gone—i.e., the person is literally dead in the religious sense—then there should be no problem once the Pope or some other authority said so. I think many people wouldn’t wait before trying to ‘kill’ the zombies. However, many others would probably hesitate long enough to become victims themselves.”
The Reverend Thomas Jefferson Johnson III, a Baptist minister from Trenton, New Jersey, weighs in on this: “If we delude ourselves into believing that we are a peaceful and nonviolent species—and all of history stands against that view—then we could never shoot a zombie even in defense because no matter what they are now they were once humans; but as I said, that would be delusional thinking at best, and at worst a barefaced lie. We are violent, and our church laws have tried, with varying degrees of success, to keep us from acting on our nature for the last six thousand years. As a man of God I would love to say that we are closer now than we’ve ever been to finally becoming a naturally moral people. But I just came back from Somalia where I was on a medical aid trip with the Red Cross. I’ve been in Iraq, and I said prayers over the butchered bodies of children in Rwanda. If we would do such things to each other—often in the name of God—then what makes you think we would even flinch when it comes to pulling the trigger on a zombie?”
Like most issues this one defies easy explanations.
“Consider this,” says Rabbi Shevack, “Rabbi Akiba,8 whose dictum became definitive in Judaism, says that if someone attempts to kill you, kill them first. It makes no difference if it is a Zombie at all. However, if, in attempting to kill them, you could have stopped them from killing you by simply maiming them, and you didn’t just maim them—then it is tantamount to murder. In the case of Zombies one has no choice, since the maiming of them has little effect. Morally one must go for complete destruction.”
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Zombies…Fast or Slow? Part 6
“Slow. There is something so terrifying about the slow attack that is inescapable. Serial killers can be fast, j
aguars can be fast, a train about to hit you on the tracks can be fast—but there is a more nightmarish quality to the shambling corpse whose only goal is to find the nearest living human to eat. There is something incredibly horrible about the idea of being taken down by a slow, dumb predator—we expect the smart ones to get us, but not those relentless brainless ones.”—Doug Clegg, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Vampyricon
“For me, slow, but I have no beef with the fast ones. But slow makes more sense. They’re inexorable, so why run? What’s the hurry?”—Novelist and comic book writer/artist Bob Fingerman
“Fast! (Unless they’re after my ass!)”—Best-selling mystery novelist Ken Bruen, author of The Guards and American Skin
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The Zombie Factor
In his excellent series of living dead novels, author Brian Keene takes a decidedly supernatural view and has a demonic force causing the dead to rise. Unlike many of the other zombie stories, Keene also has this otherworldly evil resurrect all recently dead things: animals, insects. It’s an attack on all life, not just on humanity, and as such is an unstoppable force.
Keene comments, “The zombies in The Rising9 and City of the Dead aren’t your father’s undead. These are not mindless, slow-moving corpses. They’re smart. Fast. And very, very hungry. They can hunt you, set traps for you. Use weapons. Drive cars. In the mythos I’ve created for both books (and indeed, all of my novels) the bodies of the dead are possessed by the Siqqusim, a race of demonic entities, led by an arch-demon named Ob. The Siqqusim have been with us for a long time. Their cults sprang up in Assyrian, Sumero-Akkadian, Mesopotamian, and Ugaritic cultures, where they were consulted by necromancers and soothsayers. Eventually, they were banished to a realm, which is neither Heaven nor Hell, but somewhere in between. Now, they have been unleashed upon the Earth once again. After we die, they take up residence in our bodies, specifically—in our brains. Once the body is destroyed, the Siqqusim return to the Void and await transference to a new body. The process begins anew. Finally, when they have destroyed all of the planet’s life forms, they move on to somewhere else, just like locusts, and start all over again. There are life forms on other planes of existence, other realities, and the Siqqusim have reign over them all.”