I have a few bad habits that I greatly enjoy. I drink too much coffee, I spend too much time on the internet, I go out of my way to find mind numbing movies to watch, and after my third beer and I start looking around the crowd to see who I can bum a smoke off of. All of this I will eventually repent of once I get a steady exercise routine established, but until that day let me tell you about what I thought of Diary of the Dead!
Now I have been a reluctant fan of George Romero's work for some time now. I say reluctant as at first I had to get out of the zombie-fan closet, but that doesn't seem to be an issue these days any more where we're all far more interested in investigating the profane that exploring holy mysteries. But once one gets past the Hollywood gore that furnishes Romero's handiwork, there is some pretty-cutting social commentary.
The ones that stick out in mind are Dawn of the Dead, which is a commentary on consumerism that is played out as we watch survivors of the Zombie apocalypse seek refuge in a shopping mall. Land of the Dead critiques classism as John Leguizamo plays the struggling Latino punk who tries to work his way into the last surviving condominium on the planet, protected in the centre of the sanctuary that survivors have constructed to repel the zombie hoards, and Day of the Dead has this scientist-knowledge seeker vs. military authority them to it.
Diary of the Dead is, I think, Romero's most cutting film to date but, sadly, also his most dystopian. The film is an examination of the contemporary chaos that the individual finds himself within in this maelstrom of media, where the individual has so many sources of truths available. News channels, blogs, youtube, facebook, etc., it is an overwhelming experience to just filter this mess into a coherent narrative. It is also a film that comes out after six years of war, and reflects the struggle to find solid ground in a political landscape where "the first death is truth."
Our heroes in the movie are film students who are remaking a "The Mummy's Revenge" type-flick when news of the zombie outbreak hits them. Jason, the main hero, takes it upon himself to document the events after so that "who's ever left at the end" will have some sort of record as to what happened. What's interesting in this is his efforts to show the truth, or rather, create his own narrative within the maelstrom, which is contrasted with the mainstream media's effort to hide/edit that the outbreak is happening. Here Romero is highlighting the tension that’s happening in our society with being engaged in this “arm's length war.”
There are other tangents I could go on with, mostly about what happens to the National Guard when young men with guns are left without a centralized authority to answer to (I'll let you draw your own conclusions), but what I really want to address is the near end of the movie. Jason has been tragically bitten by a zombie and his girlfriend must now, alas, shoot him in the head so as to save them all from his inevitable zombie fate. Now what I find fascinating here is the prayer that she utters just before he gets it between the eyes: "Saint Michael the archangel, defend us in battle..."
I think there's something that's very important that's herald in Romero's choosing this particular prayer, partly because it is a prayer that's fallen out of circulation since Vatican II (which some friends of mine think has left the Church's left flank exposed in the ongoing spiritual warfare) but mostly because it is the prayer for strength against the Devil. The whole enchilada:
Saint Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle;
be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray:
and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host,
by the power of God,
thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits
who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.
Amen.
I find this prayer appropriate for the film as it is unique in that it takes the notion of Evil incarnate head on, and if we take that as a given, then Evil can be reputed and repented. Because the film is about the snares of the World, the thousand lurking ideologies that dilute, confuse, and separate us from our experience of the Truth, it neatly summaries what the devil ultimately wants: he wants derision, he wants confusion, and most of all he wants us to be separate from each other.
Part of the challenge for the modern day man that Romero is eluding to in the film is this intangibility of evil and truth, and that if we do not have these things then we have no accountability for the wrongs in our society and hence we are left on our own, zombie and survivor alike.
This much is reflected in the Psalms where we have prayers for the unification of the righteous, and “see how the wicked are in derision.” Hence the role of the Church is to provide a cohesive force where people can be united in righteousness, to stand FOR something in the World. The film ends with the question is the human race worth saving. The answer is we already have been, saved that is, we just need to put that answer into practice.
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