#mutant massacre was one of the first events i read. left an impact

[wellnoe]

"I thought you would be happy to see me fall"

"Me too. Life's chock full of surprises."

Storm and callisto for day 3 of x-women appreciation week

[id in ALT]

[chiseler]

The Gospel According to George

When I was in my early teens, I went to some Halloween event dressed as Lazarus, or at least the way I’d always pictured him: Full Arabic robes, desiccated, rotting flesh, and a blood-smeared mouth. Nobody seemed to get the joke, which I found hard to believe. Even as a kid in Sunday School it seemed pretty clear to me Lazarus was a zombie. According to the Bible story, he’d been dead long enough for his corpse to begin putrefying. Then Jesus came along, raised him from the dead, and unleashed him across the countryside. You never hear much about what happened to Lazarus after that, but I imagine he left a trail of carnage wherever he went.

But Lazarus was small potatoes compared with the impact the Zombie Jesus had on the world.

The big allegorical message of Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel I Am Legend is pretty obvious. Overwrought, even. And it bonks audiences over the head even harder in the two most faithful film adaptations: 1964’s The Last Man on Earth and 1971’s Omega Man.

After holding off hordes of undead, mutated, and downright sinful former humans for years following a plague, our hero (Vincent Price or Charlton Heston, take your pick) concocts a serum from his own blood (get it?) that could turn the vampires or mutants or zombies or whatever the hell they are into normal human beings again. His blood could save them, should they care to partake (get it?). Then they impale him with a spear, but he lets them have his blood anyway because he’s such a nice guy (GET IT YET?!). Then he collapses and dies, arms outstretched and Christlike. What I always found interesting about I Am Legend in simple allegorical terms is that it’s a story in which the undead could theoretically be resurrected a second time, but our hero isn’t even resurrected once. Nope, he’s just dead there in the pool with a spear through him.

The world’s awash with Christian allegories, from The Pilgrim’s Progress and Billy Budd to The Day The Earth Stood Still, E.T., and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Of all the films inspired, even loosely, by Matheson’s short novel, for my money none offer a more accurate and realistic portrait of contemporary Christianity than George Romero’s Dead series, in which he leaves all the ham-fisted crap behind. After all, why only have one paltry little Jesus when you could have a world swarming with Jesuses everywhere you look? Isn’t that a happier thought? Instead of merely telling the story of the Son of God, across the films Romero actually spreads it out, giving us the history of what happened after the Lord Jesus ascended into Heaven. And of the films in the series, in simple allegorical terms none comes closer to capturing the very essence of Christianity than 1979’s Dawn of the Dead.

But let’s back up a minute first.

Unlike the novel, Romero’s Night of the Living Dead starts at the beginning. Here comes the newly resurrected Jesus (Bill Hinzman) wandering through a graveyard and  anxious to spread the Joyful Word of the Lord: He is risen, indeed! But who does he run into first? Doubting Thomas (well, Johnny) and his whiny, simpering sister, Doubting Barbara. Try as He might, though, Jesus can’t get them to listen. Not at first anyway. But bless him, he keeps trying, and eventually even that snickering Johnny sees the light. Johnny, we must presume, even becomes the first of the new disciples.

Well, before you know it, the Pennsylvania countryside is overrun with Born Again Christians, all trying to spread the Word and extoll the virtues of the Holy Communion. You’ll be much closer to God if you just eat a little flesh (and that includes intestines, as was explained at the Last Supper) and drink a little blood.  By film’s end the Born Again Christians have successfully converted most of the unbelievers in that abandoned farmhouse, even as the local pagan and philistine community try to stop them.

Ah, all those happy Christians and all that communion. It was a good start, an accurate portrayal of the early spread of Christianity despite overwhelming resistance, but  it wasn’t until Dawn of the Dead that the allegory comes fully together to illustrate what Christianity had become in the two millennia since the Zombie Jesus first walked the Earth.

As the film opens, thanks to the fact that Jesus was raised from the dead Christianity has spread over the globe, save for a handful of heathens who remain resistant to the Word of God. They do everything they can to stop the spread of the Good News, including using violence  (isn’t that just like a heathen?) but of course it’s useless. Their machine guns and machetes are no match for a solid faith, and the ranks of the Born Again continue to swell.  When simple, crude violence proves futile, they try to hide, but you can’t hide from God. He’ll find you, alright.

Meanwhile, what’s life like for a Christian? Well, you get Born. But that’s not enough, because you are figuratively dead in your sin, so you get born  Again, then you take some communion and convert a heathen at the same time (even those pesky Hare Krishnas come to see the light), you travel with a community of like-minded friends and fellow Christians, you stop for more communion here and there along the way to reaffirm your faith, then you all go shopping at the mall.

Second down the list after communion, Christianity really is all about buying things. Tourists buy fake relics and prayer hankies in the hopes God will grant them magic powers. You tithe a certain percentage of your income to the church so they can build a new gymnasium. In certain sects you can shorten a dead loved one’s stretch in Purgatory if you buy enough votive candles. At Christmas you buy as much shit as you can to celebrate the birth of Bill Hinzman, show up those stupid heathen neighbors of yours,  and prove how much you love God. If you’re a televangelist you buy fancy cars and houses and hookers to prove how much God loves you. If you’re the Catholic Church you buy real estate and funny hats and the silence of all those little boys you raped so those followers who don’t read the papers will continue to believe you’re the earthly embodiment of godliness. Buy, buy, buy. And what better way to symbolize that than with a trip to the mall?

The genius of Romero’s allegory in Dawn of the Dead is that the mall not only represents “the mall,” but the kingdom of heaven itself. It’s clean, it’s bright, it’s filled with beautiful music and jam-packed with all sorts of nice things to buy. Sometimes it may seem closed to us, but all we need to do is wait a little while, continue believing and taking communion whenever we can and converting more heathens. It doesn’t matter if the crowds outside grow, because there will be room for everyone in God’s Holy Mall. If you continue to have faith, some day soon a group of Heavenly bikers will show up and open the gates to allow all the believers inside (where, yes, you can have even more communion!). And the shopping can’t be beat!

Yes, even more than Matheson, it was George Romero who finally showed us all the true meaning of Easter. Thank you, Bill Hinzman!

by Jim Knipfel