Zombies! “They’re Us!”

Abstract

This article is a “subversive-fulfilment” shaped, theological cultural analysis of George A. Romero’s zombie and its progeny. First, it demonstrates that these memetic artefacts intentionally and unintentionally transmit a critique of human nature through metaphor, cinematic devices, and by stimulating and exposing an apocalyptic fantasy. Then, it brings Christian theology into conversation with the worldview of these artefacts and apocalypticism, construing them using Christian categories. It finds that the Christian worldview construes the artefacts as a product of common “grace” and general revelation and of distorting the truth, particularly with respect to the cause of human aberration and the genre’s asoteriology; thus, the Christian worldview interacts in an affirming, confronting, and fulfilling manner. It construes the apocalyptic fantasy as a concurrent desire to realize an idolatrous autonomy and to escape its consequences. Therefore, it construes indulgence in apocalyptic fantasy as an act of false worship if these yearnings grasp apocalypse as pseudo-salvation.