The WashPo ruminates on the social significance of the activities of the brain-eating collegiate undead.
The 2005 inaugural Zombies game drew about 70 Goucher students. Since then, as many as 200 have played, making it one of the most popular student activities — even though it’s not an official student activity — among the school’s roughly 1,500 students. The game has spread to other campuses, with thousands of students playing this month at Cornell University, Penn State University, Bowling Green State University and the University of Maryland, among others.
But as Zombies’ popularity has grown, criticism of it has grown, too — especially since last April, when a severely disturbed English major named Seung Hui Cho armed himself with two semiautomatic handguns and killed 33 people, including himself, at Virginia Tech University. In the immediate wake of that shooting, Humans vs. Zombies became controversial, raising a collegiate version of the prevailing question of our time: What is the balance between security and freedom? And it prompts another fascinating question: What can a group of young people learn about one
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See Kim Paffenroth, GOSPEL OF THE LIVING DEAD, for a theological examination of zombie films and culture. From Lazarus to Jesus, there is an obvious >symbolic
Sports are a way of organizing and channeling the combative instinct, and in a way this campus activity is just another kind of sport... but I agree, to devote one's life to spreading the gospel of Zombies is rather a waste of human talent.
Dennis: Here's an interesting quote at the conclusion of the Washington Post article that you posted:
"Weed daydreamed of buying a van and driving from campus to campus, an itinerant preacher spreading the gospel of Zombies to young people everywhere.
"We're never truly safe," he'd tell them. "And since we're not safe, let's have fun." "
Saint Paul responds to the "Party on the Titanic" argument in 1 Corinthians 15:32-34. Human nature hasn't changed much in 2000 years. Responsible citizens set an example, rather than seeking excuses to run wild. Which one inspires a greater sense of security in young people and families?
32 ....If the dead are not raised: "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die."
33
Do not be led astray: "Bad company corrupts good morals."
34
Become sober as you ought and stop sinning.
(http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/1corinthians/1corinthians15.htm)