Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Zombie allusions: They just keep on coming-as "an apt metaphor for those who feel the emptiness of consumerism"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/aug/28/church-best-hope-against-zombies?newsfeed=true


The church is our best hope against the zombies

Zombies are an apt metaphor for those who feel the emptiness of consumerism. The church offers the promise of new life

"Zombies unlike vampires, or even werewolves, have no glamour. Since George Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead, zombies in popular culture have been understood as the dead returned to life with an insatiable desire for human flesh. They are slow-moving, ugly, relentless and mindless. I have always been especially scared by them because, more than other monster, they represent our most unthinking and relentlessly hungry selves. They are interested in one thing only: consumption. And they can never be filled.
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One of the silly questions asked by those who enjoy the zombie trope is, "Where would you go if the zombie apocalypse happened? What would you do to survive?" Inevitably, many of the answers involve heading to the kind of places that might ensure one has sufficient weapons and supplies to stave off attacks. Equally, many folk would aim to get in the sturdiest, fastest vehicle they could find and head off to the wilderness. No one heads to church. And yet, insofar as the zombie metaphor has purchase on what modern society does to people, the church may yet be precisely our very best hope and also the kind of refuge it often historically has been."




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