Zombie Walks

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As October nears its creepy climax, signs of the macabre have become abundant. A trend that has reached new heights in recent years is the zombie walk. Various cities or regions host large groups of brainless, reanimated corpses in parade (rather like a Tea Party, I should imagine) to welcome in the darker half of the year. In a most unconventional display of cultural unity, groups of strangers meet for the purpose of sharing their fascination with the undead. Given the inherent potential for overly enthusiastic participation, these events are usually held during daylight hours and are becoming as accepted as trick-or-treating on Halloween.

Fear of death is sublimated in a conquest of the same with less definitiveness than traditional resurrection, but with a more gritty and graphic triumph of life. Organized religions have had difficulty maintaining numbers in much of the “developed world” while this new danse macabre has taken on a life of its own. Many find claims of divine authority in institutions that refuse to make clean breaks with sex scandals or threats of Quran burning somewhat disingenuous, while nobody questions the motives of zombies. They simply do what it takes to survive. An honest zombie stumbles toward eternal life.

Credibility is less easily commanded than it had been in former times. While many voices, such as Tea Partiers’, are claiming the need to erase the sixties and seventies and subsequent decades from the calendar so that the authoritarian Father can be returned to power, thinking people are asking what the plan might be. Is it time to break down that putative wall between church and state and declare America a plutocratic, evangelistic Republic? Never mind that inevitable conflicts will break out over who has the right to set doctrine and public policy – most citizens will be found out walking with their fellow zombies, welcoming in the darkening season.

Movie by Faith

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Yesterday’s New Jersey Star-Ledger carried an article by film critic Stephen Whitty entitled, “Where script meets scripture: Recent films take a leap of faith.” The phenomenon he observes is that mainstream, big studio-backed film-makers are more and more turning to plots and scripts that emphasize faith. It is not always standard, revealed religion-type faith, but a belief that there is something else. Something beyond that with which our daily lives presents us. People are seeking, but traditional religions are having a hard time convincing them that they have the answers.

In a striking contrast, films that present a spiritual danger frequently revert to the stock image of a Catholic priest as the means of deliverance. When is the last time a Protestant exorcist took on a demon on the big screen? Torn though it is with its long and checkered history of imperialism, exploitation, and scandal, the Catholic Church with its obscure rituals is effective where the machinations of the Protestants are not. This too is a leap of faith, one that believes in the efficacy of ritual despite its origin or lack of scientific theory. Science provides a way of understanding the world that many people experience as cold and comfortless. Even many scientists choose simply to trust in what their spiritual guides teach them.

Over the weekend my wife and I watched Sleepy Hollow. It is an annual tradition; it is our October movie. In this film Tim Burton plays off the superstition of Sleepy Hollow – in fact real, in the movie – against the science of Ichabod Crane. In the end, Ichabod has to face the supernatural on its own terms in order to bring the world back to science. Having sent the headless horseman back to perdition, Crane once again returns to a New York City at the start of a new millennium, full of the optimism of science. It is the dilemma of the modern western world. People are tugged, torn even, in two diametrically opposed directions. Our experience leads us to believe in a “demon haunted world” while science placidly informs us that all can be explained. Movies do reflect the human outlook in many respects, and the end sequence has yet to be shot.

Fearsome Fish

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It must be October. As I was looking up a word on Dictionary.com, I noted one of their “the hot word” features entitled, “Scientists discover a fish they name ‘dracula.’” The fish, which is native to the eastern part of Asia, was discovered in 2009 but is just now starting to draw attention. The name apparently derives from its fangs. Vampires, however, have their ancient origins in creatures that draw the life force from humans. In the ancient world the “life force” could take different forms: blood, breath, and even semen. Soon a whole array of life snatchers populated the ancient mind – incubi, succubae, Lilith, demons, and any of a number of other contenders for the human essence. The fear of being drained is a very ancient one indeed.

While in my adjunct office at Montclair yesterday I met a colleague. We discussed the visit of the exorcist to campus that I missed but he attended, and while discussing the mythology class we both teach he mentioned how vampire movies make use of mythic themes. I have been using this information from the beginning for my class, but I was fascinated that another part-time instructor would latch onto the same film motif as I did to illustrate modern myth. The vampire is such a part of our culture that people often forget its religious origins.

I attended a public performance of a two-man play at a local library this week. The play was a conversation between Edgar Allan Poe and Bram Stoker. Naturally, vampirism played a strong element in the single-act show. While Poe and Stoker were not contemporaries, they did both share an awareness of how religion tied in with the macabre. The Frank Ford Coppola movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula makes this connection explicit as an enraged Vlad Tepes stabs a cross in his chapel with his sword, starting a flow of blood that he greedily drinks.

Vlad Tepes on a good day

We’ve just crossed into mid-October and I already find myself surrounded with vampires. It is characteristic of religion to deal with our deepest anxieties, and the more we reflect on vampires the deeper we find they reside in the religious sensibilities of both fish and phantom.

Jersey Devils

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My trips to the DMV always seem to involve the paranormal. Admittedly, this is sometimes partially my own fault. Against my wife’s advice, I took The Lure of the Dark Side – a book I was reviewing – with its Satanic cover, when I went to renew my driver’s license a few weeks ago. Back when we first moved to New Jersey, and I had to sit for an excessive part of the day in that waiting room, I was reading a book on the Jersey Devil. I first heard of this exotic New World beastie when I was a ghost-story fixated teenager reading some Scholastic October special. Since I lived a state over, in the western end of Pennsylvania, I figured I didn’t have too much to worry about.

The Jersey Devil is an anomaly that involves two distinct aspects. One side of the story is pure folklore; Mrs. Leeds gave birth to a devil in south Jersey and the monstrous thing has been haunting the state ever since. The other side involves the sightings of an allegedly physical cryptid by reputable individuals, especially since the early twentieth century. An unlikely combination of horse-head, wings (often bat-like), and hooves make this one odd-looking creature, based on eyewitness accounts. I have to thank my friend Susan for pointing out the suggestion that this could be a hammerhead fruit bat, although how even a small population of the African rain-forest dwellers could survive in New Jersey without producing a single road-kill specimen would itself be beyond belief. The shape and size of the bats accounts for quite a bit, but the hooves just don’t fit. That, and the Jersey Devil seems to prefer chickens, ducks, and small dogs to the eponymous fruit of the hammerhead bat.

Whatever, if-ever, the real Jersey Devil might be, the story has all the makings of a Halloweenish blend of religion and monsters. There are several versions of the story, but the one most commonly told is that Mrs. Leeds, in labor with her thirteenth child, declared that this one had better be a devil. She got her wish. The child emerged, sprouted wings and flew up the chimney to terrorize south Jersey and Philadelphia over the next several decades. The beast gives the state’s hockey league an instant identity and even led to the breakdown of a priest in the sixth season of Seinfeld. The first season of the X-Files featured a Jersey Devil episode (although it turned out to be a very humanish kind of Bigfoot), and Bruce Springsteen recorded “A Night with the Jersey Devil” for his home-state fans back in October of 2008. Only the gullible take stories of cross-species (cross-metaphysical beings?) seriously, but the story, like the Jersey Devil itself, seems to be immortal.

Gods and Demons

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In ancient times people were sometimes possessed by gods. They were called “prophets” and they gained a breed of knowledge hidden from most other people. Demons were believed to exist, but they did not possess people. Instead, demons were used as explanations for misfortune, whether malevolently premeditated or not. Demons reflect, in today’s society, the concept of pure evil. Fr. Vincent Lampert, one of America’s 24 official exorcists, visited Montclair State last night to discuss evil, and according to the New Jersey Star-Ledger, he believes evil is a reflex of how people treat one another more often than a “figure with the hooves and horns.” No doubt there is a public fascination with demons, but few people understand their religious pedigree or what other explanations may be used to categorize them. According to the paper, Italy claims 300 exorcists – demonstrating that demons show culturally determined characteristics.

The 2005 movie The Exorcism of Emily Rose, lays out how science and religion differ on the issue of the demonic. Anneliese Michel, a young German woman, died in 1976 after being subjected to a prolonged treatment of exorcism. Her story was the “inspiration” for the film, and it raises the question of the reality of the demonic in the physical world. Fr. Lampert is more circumspect, noting that real life exorcisms are not as dramatic as those shown in the movies. He does, however, recall having seen a person levitate, but not during an exorcism. The human behavior he’s seen while on duty may all be readily explained by mundane physical and mental phenomena.

What does seem certain in all of this is that demons are not the behooved and behorned antagonists of films like Constantine or countless other graphic-novelesque portrayals of evil. Their Pan-based characteristics hearken back to the days when Christianity had to make plain its dismissal of foreign gods. In the ancient world hooves and horns were symbols of strength generally associated with powerful, if sometimes capricious, deities. In other words, what were one culture’s gods have become another culture’s demons. Movie makers understand the simultaneous revulsion and draw of the demonic character, but it seems that Fr. Lampert strives for a more balanced perspective. Evil has many faces, and most of them do not conform to Hollywood standards. Perhaps if all religions were respected demons would lose their power to torment and people would learn to get along with each other.

Where Wolves Dare

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It’s the fall of the year when an old man’s thoughts turn to werewolves. Not that I’ve ever believed there were such creatures, but they do have a pedigree in ancient religious ideas, and even today skin-walkers play a role in some Native American traditions. While I lived in Wisconsin I found out about the Beast of Bray Road, a cryptid that is seen on occasion south of Nashotah, where I lived. Unfortunately I learned about the beastie too late to make any attempts to see it, but the documentation of the creature is in good hands with local author Linda Godfrey.

When I moved to New Jersey, scrabbling for a living tended to outweigh concerns about werewolves. Nevertheless, I did hear of an odd account in a south Jersey newspaper from 1925. According to the Woodbury Daily Times (now defunct), a farmer in Greenwich, south of Camden, shot an up-right hopping, dog-like creature that had twice raided his chicken coop early on a December morning in 1925. According to the paper, hundred of people went to view the unidentified animal and some even photographed it. Now, 85 years later, the story is barely remembered. Was this just another gun-toting Philadelphia suburbanite shooting an annoying dog, or had a “werewolf” passed through New Jersey all those many years ago? Periodically accounts of dogs running on hind legs are posted by late-night drivers in the Garden State, but no photographs or other evidence ever seems to be forthcoming.

Werewolves are less about monsters than they are about struggling with inner conflict, according to many psychologists. Our animal nature, deeply sublimated, sometimes makes a ferocious bid for freedom and otherwise sane individuals believe themselves to have turned into wolves. When I look at my crazy employment history, somehow I can relate. Some day I hope to transform into a fully employed academic or editor who has a steady income and an appreciative employer. My chances of seeing a werewolf, however, may be slightly better. I think I’ll head to Greenwich to poke around a bit, but I’m going to wait for a full moon, Friday the 13th, or a full-time job – whichever comes first.

Read Linda Godfrey's new book

The Problem with Demons

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One of the perks to life among a university community is the special programs that come to campus. As an adjunct instructor with a schedule so confusing that even Escher would get lost, however, I do not often have the opportunity to take advantage of such programs. More’s the pity since next week Montclair State University is hosting an event called “The Real Exorcist.” One of the very few authorized exorcists of the Catholic Church will be speaking on campus. The event overlaps with a previously scheduled class at Rutgers.

A little disappointed, last night I sat down to watch Paranormal Activity, the indie movie that made such a splash last year. Assuming it was a ghost story, I wasn’t too concerned about watching it alone on an October night. When I discovered it was a demon story, however, I wasn’t sure watching it alone was such a good idea. You see, in the hands of paranormal investigators the demon has undergone a transformation. Ancient Mesopotamians believed in a set of lesser gods who caused misfortune, although they don’t seem to have been pure evil and they didn’t call them demons. By the time we reach nascent Christianity, demons are cohorts of the Devil and are utterly malign and capable of possessing a person making them do the bidding of their dark lord. That’s where they remained on the divinity scale until modern day investigators using scientific equipment found them. I confess to having watched Ghost Hunters a time or two. Here the demon has morphed into a non-human disembodied entity – the very antagonist of Paranormal Activity.

Being aware of the origin of concepts is often a comforting place to be. When I realize that no special revelation has suddenly validated the existence of a baleful creature set to do me serious harm, a relief encompasses me. The problem with demons is that they don’t evaporate so easily. “Invented” by the Mesopotamians to explain misfortune, by the change of the era they had evolved into (largely) an explanation for epilepsy and mental illness. Now today they are back as haunting entities that have no human sympathy since they were never human. Paranormal investigators take them very seriously, despite their checkered theological pedigree. I guess I side with Shakespeare on this one: “there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio…” After all, it is October and the nights are growing noticeably long.

Exorcists, Serpents, and Rainbows

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Tuesdays are release days for many new media products. I’m not sure why, but I accept it. This past Sunday’s paper ran a couple of stories by Stephen Whitty concerning the Blu-ray release of The Exorcist, counted by some critics as the scariest movie of all time. The press around the original release of the film in the early 1970s was enough to prevent me from seeing it until I was in my forties. I’m done using the word “release.” In an interview with Linda Blair, the iconic Regan MacNeil of the film, Whitty quotes her as noting that the rumors of “curses” on the filming of the movie were without basis. “But other people seemed to be trying to find something that didn’t exist,” she said. That sage statement could refer to considerable aspects of a society hungry for religious answers, but ill-educated on the religious facts-of-life.

Although sorely critiqued at the time by those whose religious sensibilities had been offended (Blatty is no theologian), Whitty nevertheless notes, “It may be a film full of gross obscenity. But in the end, ‘The Exorcist’ is a recruiting poster for that old-time religion.” He correctly observes that beliefs in possessing demons and that challenged social conventions will lead to evil permeate the movie. Traditional Catholicism wins out over that foreign Pazuzu every time. Even for those with more progressive beliefs, the film is difficult to watch. Religion, in addition to criticizing films, also provides some of the best plots.

Not to be counted among those best, but illustrative of the point, is Wes Craven’s The Serpent and the Rainbow. Ever since my days at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh students have been after me to watch this film. Confused, dream-like, and at times difficult to follow, the movie opens with a claim to have been based on a true story. It isn’t the typical zombie movie either, although it features zombies. More of an attempted scientific thriller, the film explores the dangers of tetrodotoxin, “the zombie drug” when in the wrong hands. Understated in the movie, however, is the religious nature of Voodou. This is perhaps the most obvious failing point in the story. If the movie were to be really scary, the viewer has to believe that this is possible. The skepticism of science blocks the potential for unbridled religious expression. That is perhaps why The Exorcist has retained its power over all the years. Unlike more rational explorations of the world, it allows the audience to believe in personified evil that only old-time religion can cure.

Dark Side of Religion

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Back in August I received a book to review for Relegere, the new online journal for Studies in Religion and Reception. The volume I received was The Lure of the Dark Side: Satan and Western Demonology in Popular Culture, edited by Christopher Partridge and Eric Christianson. I found this assignment to be a felicitous one for many reasons: the book was very interesting, the topic is intriguing, the authors are scholars who take popular culture to be worth serious study, and it exposes the roots of many perceptions of Satan and the demonic in western society today. While I cannot present the whole review here – I would encourage interested readers to explore the appropriate issue of Relegere when it is published – I would feel remiss if I didn’t at least mention a few of the highlights here.

Scary cover

First of all, the book is a collection of essays that cover the media of music, film, and literature. Many of my students like to point out the propensity of death metal bands for choosing ancient Near Eastern gods and themes for their band names and songs. The first two essays in this book explore black metal and its self-proclaimed Satanic intent. What is interesting here is that what many black metal bands declare as their “religion” does not, in fact, fit with mainline Satanism at all. This aspect of the book is worth reading just to see how religious ideas, both unholy and holy, easily become distorted when transformed into an artistic medium. By far my favorite essays, however, were those that analyzed horror films according to religious themes and concepts. It was refreshing to see serious scholars discussing vampires without flinching, noting how they are part of the same fabric from which religion is cut.

One of the recurrent criticisms of academic writing is that it generally reaches only academic audiences. Certainly at the prices common at academic presses the average layperson would need to be exceptionally motivated to pay out the cost to read what are admittedly generally dry and technical books. Equinox has fortunately released an affordable paperback version of this volume, making the price less of an issue. The content is, for the most part, readily accessible to the general reader. The cover is a tad lurid; when I took it along to the DMV to renew my driver’s license I felt a bit self-conscious in the waiting room. Beyond that, this was a rare academic book that should find a wide readership. For me, the bibliographies and filmographies demonstrated my own deficiencies in keeping up with popular culture. I would recommend it for those with a sturdy constitution who want to know the correct way to dispatch a vampire in the twenty-first century.

Sinful Moonsters

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Wednesday night a student asked me about the moon god Sin. The name “Sin” has nothing etymologically in common with the usual English word for wrongdoing; they are simply homonyms. Nevertheless, when students first encounter this odd juxtaposition they often think that there must be something to it. This particular student pointed out that many activities classified as sinful take place at night, under the moon. Could they be connected? Linguistically, no; but it did get me thinking about the idea of the moon’s baleful influence on various creatures of the night.

Serious academic works seldom take vampires, werewolves and witches, some of the moon’s most infamously unholy acolytes, to be worthy of valuable research time. Meanwhile Stephanie Meyer and company are laughing all the way to the blood bank. Popular culture gives credence to the children of the night that the academic world ignores. I tried to do a little research on the moon and its mythology only to find that most moon books deal either with serious attempts at astronomy or serious attempts at astrology, neither of which I was seeking. I wanted to know when the moon had slipped from being the gentle god/goddess of the night into its role as the overseer of evil.

Evidence was scant, but it seems that in the Middle Ages, maybe influenced by late Roman ideas, scholars began to recognize the moon’s potential as a dismal influence. The moon has long been popular in folklore as a source of lunacy and luck. Lovers crave the moonlight, but so do teenage vampires and raging werewolves. This is, apparently, a concept of no great ancient pedigree. In any case, the moon here has nothing to do with sin.

Dark Night of the Ark

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Vampires continue to be the rage of the age. My own interest began back in the days of Bram Stoker, Bela Lugosi, and Barnabas Collins. Stoker’s Dracula is one of the earliest novels I remember reading. Dark Shadows was a regular, gloomy fixture of 1960s daytime programming, and black-and-white vampire movies were often available on Saturday afternoons on commercial television. I have not kept pace with the current fetishism surrounding our toothy friends, but I did read Justin Cronin’s new novel, The Passage. I didn’t know the book featured New Age viral vampires, but they do make for a compelling story.

What particularly captured my attention in Cronin’s work, however, was the crossover between religious and monstrous themes. I have mentioned this connection previously, so I was glad to see confirmation that religion still features in monster stories. The religious element comes in the form of a virus developed by the military to create super-soldiers (a theme X-File affectionados might find familiar) that ultimately goes awry. The result is a girl who is part of a project named Noah; she lives the tremendous lifespan of the biblical hero without the debilitating effects of old age. She is also the ark by means of which humanity might survive the ordeal. The novel is apocalyptic and yet vaguely hopeful. It is also very difficult to lay aside for too many minutes at a time.

The tie-in of Noah and vampires is a novel one. The point of comparison is longevity – those who imbibe the blood of others do not age and wither as mere mortals do. Noah’s survival is a matter of grace (or science in the case of the novel). The last mortal to breech the two-and-a-quarter century mark (thank you, Terah), Noah is symbolic of those who stand out as examples of righteousness in a wicked world. It was refreshing to see the theme so creatively rendered by Cronin. The biblical flood is a kind of prepocalypse, a foreshadowing of what might recur if evil prevails. The Passage has left me strangely sentimental for both vampires and ark-builders alike.

Paranormal Prophets

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At the suggestion of a friend, I watched The Mothman Prophecies last night. Very loosely an updated version of the collapse of the Silver Bridge in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, the movie both satisfied my monster movie habit and my interest in things biblical. As a monster flick, it was satisfying in maintaining tension, never clearly showing the creature. As a representation of prophecy, it falls into the camp of Nostradamus.

Reports of the “mothman” began in 1966 and continued over the next year. It was reputedly seen near the Silver Bridge, the artery that connects Point Pleasant with Gallipolis, Ohio. After the tragic collapse of the bridge, resulting in nearly 50 deaths, the paranormal prophet was never seen in the area again. While in West Virginia last year, a friend introduced me to a couple from Point Pleasant who stopped into her store. They looked a little embarrassed when the mothman came up in conversation.

Point Pleasant's mothman statue from WikiCommons

Prophecy, in the vernacular, refers to predicting the future. Although some biblical prophets correctly intimate future happenings, mostly the image of prophets in the Bible is that of effective speakers. Prophets are individuals who participate in the reality of the world by adding their powerful words to the mix. If their words regard a future event – fairly rare in the Bible – they affect the outcome because their words have influence in the world. It is a supernatural view of the spoken (or written) word, to be sure, but it is a long cry from predictive ability. It is a matter of perspective.

Interestingly in the movie, Alexander Leek, the specialist on mothmen (apparently there are many), suggests that they see farther because they are higher in the sky than humans. In other words, it is indeed a matter of perspective. Certainly the mothman must go down as one of the oddest cryptids sighted. I give them no credence as prophets, but I will think twice before driving over bridges from now on.

The Mist in the Pulpit

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With the teaching schedule I have, vacations are not viable. One semester blends into another like some demonic tapestry with blurred edges between the somewhat discrete components. Breaks just aren’t part of the picture. While my family is on a well-deserved vacation, I’ve been home doing class prep and lecturing. On those nights when I have no classes, I sometimes watch a movie to hear the sound of human voices. This week one of my picks was The Mist.

My fascination with horror films stretches back to my college days, concurrent with my first degree in religious studies. Never a slasher fan, I’ve preferred the more thoughtful movie that has a (hopefully) profound message. I’d never read Stephen King’s novella on which this movie was based, so I didn’t know what to expect. All I knew was “there’s something in the mist.” The build-up was great until the creatures were shown – after that it became a standard monster flick. A human menace arises in the form of Mrs. Carmody, a religious zealot who is convinced the mist is the apocalypse. As the survivors try to form some plan of action, Carmody’s preaching becomes more and more strident and self-convinced as the “wicked” die and the “righteous” are spared. Not having read the book, I’m not sure if her over-the-top rhetoric originated with King or with Frank Darabont, the screenwriter/director.

I have often posted on the relationship of monsters and religion, but The Mist is almost too easy to cite. Perhaps released too late to make it into Douglas Cowan’s Sacred Terror, the connection between religion and fear is patent and bald. Mrs. Carmody’s religion, apart from being very generally Christian, is hard to identify. She insists on human sacrifice while constantly referencing the Bible. Although there are examples of human sacrifice in the Bible, that particular cultic activity is never advocated for monster invasions or the apocalypse. Carmody is a parody of religious over-reaction to the unfamiliar and dangerous. In her insistence that others take her point of view, the caricatured Carmody becomes a danger that threatens the community. It is left indeterminate whether her followers survive or not.

The religious agitator is a trite and tired character, but one that has instant recognition value. In The Mist, however, I came for the mystery and stayed for the monsters. Mrs. Carmody could have said much more by saying much less.

Blogging the Blob

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It has no shape. It has no brain. It oozes in where it is not wanted and wreaks havoc on the innocent people of the local community. It is in the hands of an apocalyptic clergyman. No, it isn’t the Republican Party, it is The Blob (1988). Having just watched the remake of the 1958 sci-fi film of the same name, a number of elements relevant to this blog (blob?) stood out in sharp relief. The most notable change from the original movie comes in the form of the role played by Reverend Meeker, the (apparently) Catholic priest turned tent-preaching revivalist. Of course, the whole government conspiracy plot is also new to the film, but that is best left to other blogs.

As noted in previous posts, religion and horror genres share much common ground. While it is hard to take a blob seriously – the role of Bob the blob in Monsters vs. Aliens is precisely comic relief – the idea of a crazed minister unleashing chaos is perhaps a little too believable. The real source of terror in the 1988 version of The Blob is not the monster but those who control it: the government and the church. When the government demonstrates that it cannot control the monster it has generated, it moves into the hands of Reverend Meeker. Here it rests until, after a sermon about the end of times, the reverend pulls out his jar of blob and indicates that as soon as he receives a sign from God, it will be released.

In a strange way this strange film proved prescient. The move of religion into politics was underway already in the Reagan years, but it was a threat few took seriously. It was not until W’s reign that the implications began to become clear. A religiously motivated electorate resembles a blob in significant ways. Once released it is difficult to contain, even by its creators. In aspect it is laughable, but in consequence it is deadly. It stops at nothing short of total domination. This film, which never made the impact that many horror films achieve, may turn out to be the scariest movie of its era after all.

Not your parents' blob

Zombies, Golems, and Robots – Oh My!

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A truly great metaphor is hard to kill. Despite detractors and naysayers, the zombie has clawed its way into the modern psyche as a denizen of the living death of a world we’ve created for ourselves. Joblessness, environmental disasters, tea parties – just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, the dead refuse to stay dead. Elsewhere on this blog I’ve written about the origin of zombies in Voodoo, and I mentioned in passing the connection with the golem. The golem is a mythical Jewish creature that serves the role of protector of the oppressed (one can’t help but think of the Democratic Party). It is strong, dedicated to its task, brainless and soulless (one can’t help but think of the Religious Right). Like the zombie, the golem has no inherent ability to think for itself, and it must be animated by a magical word written on its forehead.

Golem around the corner

One of the most famous golem stories involves the Golem of Prague, defender of the oppressed Jews in that city in the Middle Ages. The Prague connection also forever ties the golem together with robots in Karel Capek’s 1921 play, R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), the very origin of the word “robot.” Like the golem the robot putatively has no soul. It too is controlled by a code written precisely for it. Unfortunately on my one trip to Prague back in 1991, I didn’t know to look for the golem – I did find the statue of Jan Hus, however. Right around the corner the golem lurked, standing guard over the oppressed. It is a powerful image when the world is in such a state.

We need a hero

With the recent release of George Romero’s Survival of the Dead, the zombie has been given renewed life. Watching the Republican Party gearing up for a major thrust at the very soul of America, lining up the local BP station to support big oil, spouting false rhetoric about what the Bible says, I think I’d rather take my chances with the zombies. Does anyone out there happen to have a golem for sale, just in case?