God is Undead

Regular readers might now that, in the last six years or so, I developed an interest in God and the undead. This was precipitated by a kind invitation to give a Holy Week retreat for the seminarians in the Archdiocese of Brisbane on the subject of postmodern culture’s fascination with the undead, which later developed into my second book Redeeming Flesh: the Way of the Cross with Zombie Jesus.

Although I have moved onto other research threads, I started to think about the zombie research thread again after starting on Netflix’s newest zombie offering, the K-drama All of Us are Dead, which deals with the fallout of a zombie apocalypse taking place in a high school.

I have found the Korean zombie genre to be fascinating on a number of levels. First, they do not quite resemble the Romero-style zombie that you see in George Romero’s movies and made famous in our day by The Walking Dead. They are closer to the type of zombie represented in 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later. They are turned by a virus whilst alive (or turn almost instantaneously after death), they are faster than the Romero zombie and are far more vicious, even when attacking individually.

What is unique about the Korean zombie offerings is that the often puzzle-based ways in which survivors deal with zombies are often accompanied by some other kind of study of the human condition. In the very excellent series Kingdom, it was political intrigue, in All of Us are Dead, it is the place of the young, their aspirations and their fears.

What I also found intriguing about All of Us… is the way in which the signs of faith are ironically worked into the series, at least in the early stages of it. Indeed, the very first sign we see is that of a cross, until you see that it is the backdrop of a brutal bullying - that verges on a scourging - by a set of students on a lone victim. In another scene, a bible is held in full view of a zombie - and simultaneously the audience - which is then used as a means to cave in the head of the same lone victim, now turned into a zombie. In a third scene, a Christian pastor is giving a sermon which turns a congregation seeking protection from the Almighty, into fierce protestors at a checkpoint, directing their ire at the very survivors of this outbreak. The God depicted in All of Us is one that appears to be passive in the face of his children’s suffering, or is even a contributor to it, legitimising the most inhumane of acts.

At one level, these devices could be seen to be ham-fisted jabs at the Christian faith (ironic considering that South Korea is one of the more Christian populaces in Asia). What puzzles me is the fact that these references to the faith are present at all. Though I think All of Us… does not do as good a job in exploring theological themes as The Walking Dead, I think there are several reasons.

As I lay out in Redeeming Flesh, part of the reason for this integration of faith and the undead is that death presses against our very human attempts to defeat it. The zombie, in a permanent state of death that threatens to destroy us all, embodies a defeating of this defeat.

Another reason I argue in an essay in Church Life Journal, there is a liturgical dimension to the zombie that is not all that apparent unless you view it through the lens of Christian worship. The zombie is the convergence point of a liturgy of consumption which, on the one hand, represents the postmodern attempt at immortality - what Graham Ward calls a “postmodern angel” - a state of being adorned in technologically generated decorations which endlessly extend the reach of one’s desires and the longevity of one’s own existence. Such things can be the drugs that extend life, or the social media personas that live on long after one has died.

As I argue in the essay, this is the inverse of the liturgy that was initiated by Christ himself. Unlike the postmodern version of immortality, Christ begins with a willingness to lay down His own life, letting it be consumed by torturers, sanhedrins, and the bays of the mob who yell “Crucify Him! Crucify Him”. Unlike the postmodern attempt to fight off death, Christ stands in for the postmodern consumer, taking on the death that would have been the fruit of postmodern consumption.

Thus, even with a treatment of faith as clumsy as that doled out by All of Us…, it is fascinating how the spectre of faith continues to linger.

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