It's Not About The Zombies. It's About Us.

I was talking with a friend recently about monsters and the prevalence of zombies on our screens. For better or worse, this got me thinking. There are three types of fantasy monsters that keep recurring in our cultural storytelling: vampires, werewolves, and zombies. The history of these legends and the ways in which the stories change over time is a fascinating study on its own. I’m more interested about what is happening right now in American culture, and what our take on the stories - particularly the zombie genre - reveals about us.

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I think it's worth making a general distinction between how these three monsters have been used as archetypes or stand-ins for the monsters with which we wrestle in the real world. I am painting with a broad brush that is dipped in the stories with which I am familiar. Indulge me. If you would like to broaden or brighten my pallet with your additional observations, feel free. I am exploring this topic, not closing it.

The Girl With All The Gifts

When I first heard about The Girl With All The Gifts, I was intrigued. It was getting rave reviews as a clever and thought-provoking take on the zombie apocalypse genre; once I saw it was heading to the big screen, I figured I would see if it deserved the hype.

It does. I say that with a lot of qualifications, however. It is both clever and thought-provoking, a story that stands out in a genre that can quickly devolve into mere gore. As far as a story that uses zombies as a means to explore humanity in all its vagaries, it makes my list alongside Jonathan Maberry’s Rot and Ruin series, Isaac Marion’s Warm Bodies, World War Z, and the better seasons of The Walking Dead.

This will be two reviews in one, because the movie's altered presentation of the story changes it quite a bit, at least as I see it. 

The Walking Dead And The Problem of Gratuitous Evil

A commonly recurring question in theodicy has to do with the problem of evil (pain, suffering, etc). It's not necessarily the existence of evil per se; there is broad (if not begrudging) acknowledgment that the goodness of the God of the Bible is not incompatible with a generalized presence of evil in God's creation. It's more the question of gratuitous evil, evil for which which we can see no good reason why it should exist. William Rowe phrased this evidential problem of evil in this way:

• There exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse (he uses the story of a fawn dying in a forest fire, and the true account of young girl in Flint, MI who was brutally murdered).
• An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.
• (Therefore) There does not exist an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being.  

It's a fair question. Even if the general presence of evil is compatible with a good God's existence, what about specific cases of evil? Why would God not have intervened in what seems to be gratuitous suffering?

Flesh and Bone, Fire and Ash: Jonathan Maberry’s Storm Lands of the Soul

“Tom once asked us if we knew what we would fight for. What we would kill for. What we would die for. He said that if a person did not know that answer to those questions, then they should never go to war.”

Of the many quality YA authors right now, you should be reading two in particular: Neil Shusterman and Jonathan Maberry. They offer great characters, intense story lines, philosophy, ethics, honor, love, and sacrifice embedded in books that will make you reset your alarm. 

Let me be clear: Shusterman’s Unwind and Maberry’s Rot and Ruin are disturbing. Some scenes will haunt you. But it is the unsettled, not the comfortable, who are inspired to be better people in a world in need of  goodness and hope.

I’ve reviewed the first two books in Shusterman’s trilogy (Unwind and Unwholly) as well as the first two in Maberry’s series. This post will look at how Flesh and Bone and Fire and Ash take a great story and make it better.

Honor, Idealism, and the Monsters Within: A Review of Jonathan Mayberry's Rot and Ruin Series

“When writers tell a story about monsters, we’re usually using them as a vehicle in order to tell a story about our own world.” - Jonathan Mayberry

In an attempt to better understand the entertainment shaping my kids and the rest of today's youth, I submit my latest review of books impacting a YA audience. My goal is not to critique the art form as much as look at how the story reflects and shapes the readers' worldview. 

This review will look at Jonathan Mayberry's Rot and Ruin series. According to Amazon.com,  Rot and Ruin was Booklist's Ten Best Horror Novels for Young Adults and a Bram Stoker and Pennsylvania Keystone to Reading winner. It was also nominated for several state Teen Book Awards, the Cybils Award, the Eva Perry Mock Printz medal, the Dead Letter Best Novel Award, and four Melinda Awards). Dust and Decay was the winner of the 2011 Bram Stoker Award. Rot and Ruin has already been optioned for the big screen.
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As part of the ongoing evolution in the horror genre (such as World War Z, Warm Bodies, and The Walking Dead), this series uses the zombie motif to address some surprisingly deep questions. Here's the primary one that lurks in the background: If zombies are basically amoral animals ruled by instinct, and they can feel no pain, why should people treat them with any respect at all? When faced with the dilemma of how we ought to interact with other living things, we usually begin by making several important distinctions.

• First, we note that a plant is different from an animal. I can spray poison on a thistle but not a hamster. So far, so good.
• Second, we consider the ability of something to feel pain. Lobsters are not the same as dogs. That’s a core argument that proponents of animal rights make as they fight for a world that is as free of all forms of pain as possible. 
• Third, we make a difference between moral animals (that would be people) and instinctive animals. When my cat brings a barely living bird into my backyard and eats it, I don't think she’s immoral.  If a person would do the same thing to a human victim, he or she would be a monster. 

What argument can be made against people who dismember, torture, and dehumanize a zombie? The argument would most likely be that this type of bestial violence destroys the souls of the perpetrators even as they desecrate their victims. 

And that is exactly the argument that Jonathan Mayberry makes in this surprisingly insightful series.

World War Z

"The monsters that rose from the dead, they are nothing compared to the ones we carry in our hearts.”

In an attempt to enter into and better understand the entertainment shaping my kids and the rest of today's youth, I submit my latest review of books effecting a primarily YA audience. My goal is not to critique the art form as much as look at how the story reflects and shapes the readers' worldview.

This review will look at World War Z a novel by Max Brooks. Inspired by Studs Terkel's The Good War, this book is being rightly credited with transforming the zombie genre.*  Paramount's film starring Brad Pitt hits theaters on June 21st. It remains to be see how well this movie will translate onto the screen.

There will be spoilers.

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World War Z unfolds through a series of interviews with the key players who helped humanity survive the zombie apocalypse. It's been 12 years since VA day in America, and the UN has commissioned a Postwar Commission Report. This book chronicles the interviews of one reporter as he journeys around the world to get to the truth about what really happened.

Patient Zero, a 12-year-old Chinese boy, was bitten by an animal.  That much is pretty clear. The how and why of the spread is a story of human ineptitude, greed, misinformation, and tragedy. As opposed to much of current zombie lore, World War Z for the most part looks away from the gore and looks instead at how the world as we know it would change as people perpetuate or fight the plague. In the process, the author’s literary eye scans entire nations as well as the most heartbreaking individual stories. 

The approach is nothing short of brilliant. Brooks examines religion, politics, family structures, international tensions, the pharmacutical industry, the military, economic systems, the impact of geography, weather, and national mindsets…the list goes on. I expected a predictable story of gore and despair; I found a thought-provoking and honest look at death, life, hope and the human condition.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth

In an attempt to enter into and better understand the stories, worldviews, and messages shaping my kids and the rest of today's youth, I submit my latest review of trending books, films, and TV shows effecting a primarily YA audience. My goal is not to critique the art form as much as look at how the story reflects and shapes  the readers' worldview.

This review will look at Carrie Ryan’s The Forest of Hands and Teeth, the first book in a hugely popular zombie apocalypse series. As is increasingly the case with popular YA novels, a movie is in the works.

There will be spoilers.
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Mary has lived inside a fence all her life. The Unconsecrated (zombies) lurk in the woods, and no one knows if there are any other survivors. The Guardians protect the fences, while the Sisterhood indoctrinates the survivors. Police at the walls of the city; church at the walls of their hearts and minds. The community is ordered, purposeful and exasperatingly pragmatic. Humanity has a long road ahead, and purpose rather than passion will pave the way.

Mary is the now-to-be-expected YA rebel. Though her mother told her stories about the ocean, of freedom and goodness and hope beyond the fence, Mary does not believe her. She also does not believe in a God who allowed her father to become one of the Unconsecrated. One day her mother gives up on her own stories and goes to the fence, allowing herself to be bitten so she can join her husband. Mary holds her until she dies.

This loss of parents is a common plot twist in YA literature.  In every single book I have read in the past year and a half, one or both parents are either gone or dead. Every. Single. One. I’m not sure there is a more obvious marker of the yearning in our youth for stability and love in a culture of divorce and abandonment.

In the brief span between death and Unconsecration, Mary's beliefs about God crystalize:

     “ I stop believing in God… I wait for [the Scriptures] to calm me, to infuse me with light and grace. But it does not come, does not fill the hollow ache inside me. I wonder if I will ever feel whole again now that I no longer believe in God.”

Absurd Heroism: Camus and the real Walking Dead

I have been blogging my way through The Walking Dead and Philosophy, a fascinating book that has so far addressed issues of logic (zombies like the Walkers are not possible),  the nature of humanity (but philosophical zombies are, apparently), and issues like justice, rights, and social contracts.  

Ms. Robinson-Greene ("Better Off Undead") raises the next big problem: the existential dilemma of soulless people. A gloomy fact about self-reflective creatures is that they are capable of recognizing what Albert Camus called absurdity, "the confrontation between the longings of humans and an indifferent universe.”

   
The Walkers in The Walking Dead provide a great example. Not only are they dead and zombified, rotting while cannibalizing the world, but virtually no one exists to grieve who they are or celebrate who they were. There is only blind, pitiless indifference.  Stephen Crane, your universe has arrived.

   
Camus’ existentialism would claim that our ordinary life is not philosophically that much different from the world after a zombie apocalypse. “We make demands on the universe that it simply doesn’t (and can’t) care about. We want justice out of the world. We want the guilty punished. We want the innocent to be spared suffering. But that isn’t the way the world works.”

   
 Camus said there are three options for those who see this relentless gloom pressing in from all around: Commit suicide, pretend life is not absurd, or turn to religion. In the face of these absurd choices, Camus recommended we become “absurd heroes.” If nothing else we can shake our fists at gods and men, even while knowing the gesture is meaningless. What is more heroic than fighting in the face of inevitable failure? 

   
And inevitable failure is what awaits the survivors in The Walking Dead. We found out at the end of Season Two that everyone is infected.  Is there anything meaningful left to do? They can rage at the sky, but who cares?  Despite all their rage they are still just rats in a zombie-filled cage. The hero in this Camus-haunted world is anyone who keeps fighting (and if the premier of Season Three is setting the tone, that's going to be everybody all the time).  If there is a silver lining behind the zombie cloud, it is the solidarity that comes with a shared sense of doom.

Much Undead Ado About Nothing

As mentioned in an earlier post, the debate about what it means to be human has taken an interesting direction following the recent fixation with zombies. The Walking Dead and Philosophy opened with two essays arguing that the consideration of philosophical zombies (P-Zombies) - theoretical beings identical to human beings but lacking consciousness, qualia, or sentience -  mitigates against a purely materialistic view of the world.  

There is a clear difference between P-Zombies (who are biologically identical to humans) and actual humans.  Something besides biology seems to be necessary to explain consciousness, mind, thoughts, ideas, and emotions.  

I find the intellectual speculation to be both insightful and entertaining.  The zombie analogy provides a way to decipher the nature of humanity, at least at a theoretical level.  Robert Delfino and Kyle Taylor (“Walking Contradictions”)  take the discussion in The Walking Dead and Philosophy a step further. Is the idea of real zombies even coherent, or are we just making a lot of undead ado about nothing? 

Their argument builds from two key laws in logic - the Law of Identity and the Law of Non-Contradiction -  to argue that a thing cannot exist in such a way that is incompatible with its nature. A thing with mutually exclusive properties cannot exist (like a square circle, or a sane University of Michigan fan). In the same way, a being with mutually exclusive properties cannot exist either. Since the Walkers try to hold two mutually exclusive properties in tension (both physically alive and physically dead), they would seem to be impossible.  
   

 But not so fast!  Some quasi-living beings (such as viruses and viroids) appear to do just that. One type of fungi can take over carpenter ants and make them act like, well, zombie ants.  And if you’ve seen Twilight, you know that zombie actors can even carry commercially successful films.