I just got done watching “Night of the Living Dead.” Again.  I can’t get enough of the whole Romero series (Night, Dawn [78], Day, Land) and the more I watch them, the deeper the messages seem to get, or at least more personal.  At the very least, they make me THINK.

Today in Feature Film Writing we had to speak for a little bit about a character in literature, cinema, whatever that we tend to associate with.  Although my choice of Riley from Land of the Dead wasn’t that profound (or maybe obvious) compared to other choices (Jean val Jean from Les Mislerables, etc.), the more I think about his situation, the more I find myself thinking about my situation.

The moment in Land of the Dead that sticks out the most is when Riley, Charlie and Slack are in prison and Slack asks Riley what his story is.  His response is “I don’t have a story.  Nothing bad ever happened to me.” The guy is in prison, and he is still able to say nothing bad ever happened to him.  He is in a world overrun with walking dead, and he is still able to say nothing bad ever happened to him.

This speaks to me on so many levels, believe it or not.  On one level, I see awful things happen around me all the time.  This world isn’t in the greatest state.  People die of cancer, people watch their neighborhoods wash away in a matter of minutes, etc.  But nothing bad has ever happened to me, and while I may not necessarily think about it regularly in those terms, I do tend to look at the glass being half full.  At least, I try to.

Going deeper, I see the whole scenario as even a possible representation of spirituality.  The dead are those who’ve yet to find Christ and those alive in Christ must fend off the onslaught.  If this is the case, then, how do I reconcile that with the fact that in the Dead series, the humans tend to be enemies.  All this crap about zombies happen, but in every movie, humans turn on each other, and in the end, humans are the end of other humans.  I can’t remember the exact line, but in Dawn ‘78, a priest says something along the lines of “In a world where the dead are coming to life, we must stop killing or lose the war.”

Are we as Christians cannibalizing our own?  It’s not a thought one likes to think about.  I certainly don’t.  But what comes to mind at this point is the Brennan Manning statement (used by dc Talk on the Jesus Freak album) that “the number one cause for athiesm in the world is Christians...” Good intentions can only go so far, but if we’re not acting in love for one another, and I mean true RESPECTFUL love, we’re going to lose the war.  Love and respect seems to have been lost, and outrageous fundamentalist efforts, while well intentioned, seem to have the opposite effect from what is desired.

I’m almost certain that’s not the statement Romero was going for, even in the slightest.  It really isn’t even a direct thought stemming from the movie, just the result of long, drawn-out, and partially scattered thinking on the nature of human vs. human activity in a world full of zombies.