Zombie Jesus: Identifying Christian Resistance to White Supremacy through American Zombie Films

Introduction

The zombie has become a central figure in popular culture, featured in long-running television shows, video games, and films. The zombie’s prevalence is such that even those outside of this sub-genre’s fandom understand zombie lore at a basic level. While there may be many complex sociological and entertainment-based reasons for this sensation, often overlooked is how the zombie converses with crucial questions such as power, racial capitalism, and resistance. Furthermore, people rarely associate the zombie with religious values, despite the zombie’s historical roots in Vodou, a Haitian religious tradition that blossomed out of the Afro-Haitian slave community in the 16th century. Furthermore, more recent zombie films illuminate theological questions, particularly regarding liberation and revelation. Even though manifestations of the zombie have morphed drastically over the past century, its origins in the context of religion and racial injustice provide a framework for analyzing American zombie films—with these theological questions in mind—from the 1930s to the present day. While earlier films adhere to this Haitian context and portray zombies as representing economic exploitation, later films build upon this association. They also introduce characters who challenge this representation’s simplicity and allude to Christ’s revolutionary life and revelatory death and resurrection. As such, this historical analysis of zombiism through film offers a conceptual resource rooted in liberation theology, specifically the Black liberation theology of James Cone. This theological framework illuminates how zombie films showcase resistance to epistemic violence and challenge the political, economic, and theological relationships that sustain colonialism and imperial domination under the umbrella of white supremacy.

The choice of liberation theology as a methodological framework is fruitful for the analysis of these films because the films reflect—and in some cases challenge—the economic, social, and racial justice concerns central to liberation theology. Liberation theology is also helpful in this analysis because it focuses on integrating theological revelation into current social, political, and economic contexts instead of relegating it to a solely historical and therefore disconnected sphere.^[1] Boff and Boff’s Introduction to Liberation Theology is particularly helpful because it separates the liberation approach into three stages, which Boff and Boff refer to as “mediations.” These mediations “correspond to the three traditional stages involved in pastoral work: seeing, judging, acting.”^[2] This framework positions a historical discernment of why the oppressed are oppressed (socio-analytical) first before seeking a response from God through the Biblical text (hermeneutical) and then applying this knowledge of God’s plan for the oppressed to action in the world (practical).^[3]

This article consists of three parts reflective of these three mediations of liberation theology. In the first part (socio-analytical), I will explore how zombiism reflects economic and racial injustice. In order to begin this analysis, I will outline the Afro-Haitian context out of which zombiism emerged. I will then analyze two early American zombie films, White Zombie (1932) and I Walked with a Zombie (1943), that reflect these origins—though as Hollywood perversions. In the second part (hermeneutical), I will explore the Biblical and zombie apocalypses. I will situate God’s revelation through Jesus as an act of solidarity with the Black struggle in America and then assess how Night of the Living Dead (1968) presents Ben, the Black male protagonist, as a Christ figure tasked with confronting and resisting white supremacy. In the third part (practical), I will analyze Get Out (2017) as part of this zombie canon. I will consider how its commentary on neoliberal multiculturalism and the myth of post-racism continues this resistance and offers a revolutionary resolution to injustice and a material obtainment of liberation.

PART I (SOCIO-ANALYTICAL): ZOMBIISM REFLECTING ECONOMIC & RACIAL INJUSTICE

“‘Liberation’ means liberation from oppression. Therefore, liberation theology has to begin by informing itself about the actual conditions in which the oppressed live, the various forms of oppression they may suffer.”^[4]

Zombie Origins in Haitian Vodou

Zombiism emerged from Haitian Vodou and the cultural context of slavery in Haiti. Vodou sprang out of this Haitian context, but it has many roots in African culture. African diaspora scholar Patrick Bellegarde-Smith articulates this relationship:

Born in the Americas, Vodou responded to the spiritual and temporal needs such as in health care and psychology of the majority population by amalgamating rituals from west, west central, and south central Africa…. A strong family resemblance exists within the religious systems, moral ideals, and social organizational structures of most African cultures, particularly as concerns ancestral veneration and the cosmic, esoteric, or occult interaction between worlds and universes.^[5]

The amalgamation of these beliefs formed new cultural interactions in Haiti—then French Saint Domingue. Notably, while many nations were represented in the slave population, most of the slaves were from Dahomey (present day Benin), and the rituals from Dahomey therefore prominently influenced Vodou.^[6] For example, Dahomean linguistics are prevalent in Haitian Kreyòl, and Haitian Vodou has incorporated theological concepts of spirit possession and deified ancestors from Dahomey as well.^[7]

While these African traditions blended in Haiti, French colonizers forced the colonial religion of Christianity—specifically Roman Catholicism—onto the slave population. As a result, Vodou contains certain Christian elements as well. While many scholars refer to Vodou as a syncretic religion due to this Christian component, Bellegarde-Smith pushes against this characterization by citing that “Vodou (and Kreyòl for that matter) is an organized response to oppression…from African foundations” and is as such synthetic but not syncretic.^[8] In other words, certain Christian elements may appear in Vodou due to the proximity of colonial Christianity and the colonizers’ enforcement of this religion, but Vodou does not encompass Christian thought overall. For example, Vodou acknowledges Catholic saints but only as transposed figureheads for the African pantheon. As such, these saints hold the same characteristics and myths associated with the African deities.^[9]

Just as Haiti’s colonial history is rife with tragic suffering and injustice, the current realities of this impoverished nation continue to reflect Vodou’s emphasis on spirits. While scholars refer to this Haitian religion and way of life as Vodou,^[10] practitioners do not define it as such but instead say that they serve the spirits (sèvi lwa).^[11] According to anthropologist Karen McCarthy Brown, this way of approaching life and religion “comprehends and ameliorates suffering” in Haiti.^[12] Similarly, the Haitian understanding of self is wrapped up in the concept of possessing many souls and relating to various spirits (lwa). Each person is said to have a nam (soul), the “animating force of the body,” as well as a gwo bonanj (big guardian angel) and ti bonanj (little guardian angel) which all comprise one’s life force.^[13] Furthermore, though less commonly acknowledged, the zetwal (star) is another dimension of a person which relates to fate and uncontrollable realities regarding mizè (suffering) and chans (luck).^[14] All of these components reflect the West African “multiple soul complex” in which Vodou is rooted.^[15] This multiple soul complex indicates the complexity of spiritual thought in Vodou and the way in which practitioners focus on the spiritual world in order to make sense of the material. Indeed, everything in Vodou has spiritual roots, and mind-body (or soul-body) dualism is not part of the Haitian belief system.^[16]

Nevertheless, the figure of the zombie engages with these borders and distinctions as it speaks to the history of political and economic oppression through slavery. Zombification is not part of Vodou properly speaking, but it is a folk belief derived from Vodou beliefs and is engrained in the culture and mythology.^[17] According to Afro-Caribbean religion scholar Elizabeth McAlister, there are two types of zonbi in the Haitian tradition. The zonbi astral is a soul fragment which a bòkò (sorcerer) traps^[18] and sells to a new owner to whom the zonbi serves as a good luck charm.^[19] The zonbi kò kadav is a walking corpse whose spirit is extracted from the body, which is then sold into slavery or human trafficked, often as punishment for some criminal act.^[20] Just as the zonbi kò kadav embodies an enslaved worker, McAlister points to the zonbi astral as a sort of spiritual slave.^[21] Importantly, however, the zonbi here has more agency. It can “eat” (attack with illness) the life force of its owner if the owner does not care for it properly.^[22] This concept of “eating” also shows up in other aspects of Vodou such as a ritual involving revenge.^[23] While this agency indicates a form of vindication for Haiti’s past colonization, the zonbi is still distinctly rooted in this history.

McAlister attempts to unpack the contradiction of the zonbi’s servitude within a culture previously ensnared by slavery. She states that “the production of spiritual (and bodily) zonbi shows us how groups remember history and enact its consequences in embodied ritual arts.”^[24] McAlister expands upon this idea:

Sorcery narratives are provoked by, and are a rendering of, the basic mechanisms of capitalist production, that is, the creation of value for some through appropriating and consuming the energies of others. Haitian spirit-workers have redescribed this aspect of capitalism in religious ritual. Seen this way, zonbi-making is an example of a non-western form of thought that diagnoses, theorizes, and responds mimetically to the long history of violently consumptive and dehumanizing capitalism in the Americas from the colonial period until the present.^[25]

McAlister importantly notes the nature of the zonbi responding to ongoing oppression. In a more contemporary context, Haitian literature such as the novel Dézafi (1975)^[26] portrays the zonbi representing Haitians under the dictatorial regime of the Duvaliers, a father-son duo known as Papa Doc and Baby Doc (François Duvalier and Jean-Claude Duvalier, respectively) from 1957 until 1986.^[27] Through different media and decades, the zonbi has represented political and economic suppression, but the myth-making surrounding zombiism also stresses the potential to awaken and revolt.^[28]

Indeed, Vodou in general was essential to the success of the Haitian Revolution in 1791-1804. In their eventual success, Haitians won independence from France and became the first nation founded by former slaves.^[29] Because Vodou was already so embedded in the culture, it became part of political action which in turn inspired other slave revolts in America.^[30] In particular, Vodou priests were leaders in the Haitian Revolution, showcasing how politics intertwined with religion just as, on the other side, the French politicized Christianity and French culture in their attempt to suppress the slave population.^[31]

Early zombie films also discuss suppression and colonization within their depictions of zombiism, and they do so through this Afro-Haitian setting and cultural context of Vodou. While zombiism in Haiti includes both the zonbi astral and the zonbi kò kadav, early zombie films such as White Zombie (1932) and I Walked with a Zombie (1943) depict the zonbi kò kadav—the walking corpse—in lieu of the zonbi astral. These films feature lifeless Black bodies as zombies and they do not depict a nuanced understanding of the multiple soul complex. Instead, they uphold a Western understanding of body-soul dualism—and indeed utilize this dualism—in order to cater to American audiences’ judgment of the horrific.^[32] Through perverting Haitian zombiism and emphasizing the divide between the bodies and souls of Black characters, these films reinforce the idea that fragmentation is an inherent quality of Black identity. This racist and clichéd pathologization is an imperialist imposition that ignores the depth, beauty, and wholeness of the Black experience. In order to capitalize on what the films present as the horrific nature of the foreign Other, White Zombie and I Walked with a Zombie conflate and exploit the zombie lore from Haiti and maintain power dynamics along the construct of race. However, these films also serve as a critique—if a clunky one—of colonization by showcasing capitalism’s dehumanizing exploitation of Black bodies and suggesting that this dehumanization is akin to horrific zombification.

White Zombie (1932)

One of the earliest American zombie films, White Zombie, comments on French colonization in Haiti and, in doing so, misrepresents Vodou. Voodoo—the Western conflation of Vodou—plays a central role in White Zombie, but the film is not concerned with accurately or respectfully depicting the tradition of Vodou. Indeed, the film follows an evil white voodoo master, “Murder” Legendre (played by Hungarian American actor Bela Lugosi) who turns a white female character, Madeline Short, into a zombie in order to have her as his own forever. The name of the film speaks to this plot point, but it also indicates the correlation in 1932 of zombies with Blackness. Specifying “white” in the title suggests that this whiteness deviates from the zombie norm, particularly when the film’s other zombies are predominantly Black men Legendre puts to work in his mill.^[33] While this association upholds the zombie’s origins in the Afro-Haitian tradition and therefore carries a degree of authenticity, the film does not show respect towards or a nuanced understanding of Vodou. Legendre’s relationship as a master to the mill-working walking corpses in particular highlights the film’s acknowledgement of the zombie’s origins in Vodou.

Although Vodou does involve spiritual leaders having ownership over zonbi, Legendre’s exploitation of Black bodies as a white man—as evidenced by the French name and Hungarian actor—goes beyond the Vodou tradition and alludes to concepts of occupation, power, and slavery. The film depicts white men holding power and exploiting Black bodies (and even the white female body of Madeline Short). It calls upon the Vodou tradition just enough for the film to have a sense of reality and therefore a more horrific impact on American audiences with a limited understanding of Vodou as a complex spiritual practice. In other words, White Zombie’s horror relies on othering the enslaved African-descended people. White Zombie portrays African spirituality in opposition to Western values and presents it to Western audiences as a commodity to fetishize and consume. This one-way distorted lens perpetuates difference among these groups of people and therefore upholds the construct of race. This in turn reinforces divisions along racial lines and contributes to justifications of slavery.

However, this film also reveals a concern with power dynamics and abuse by using the zombie as a metaphor for dehumanization under the conditions of slavery. Through their laboriously slow stride and blank stares, the zombies show no sign of personhood and thus portray the lack of subjectivity that harmful systems such as slavery and capitalism demand. In slavery and capitalism alike, one’s value depends on their productivity, and one must sacrifice their own subjectivity in order to fit into the harmony of the collective system.^[34] Film scholar Christopher Sharrett reflects on how, in White Zombie, “the zombie is a tool of a terrible manipulator whose interests are involved in personal capital and slavery,” and therefore the film has “value as social/political commentary.”^[35] The zombie showcases what is behind the curtain of the magical and mystical nature of getting rich by representing cheap labor and high production.^[36] Even though White Zombie capitalizes on the Other, it does work to critique slavery. By framing the slave workers as zombies, White Zombie reflects the dehumanization inherent in this kind of exploitation for the sake of capital.

I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

Another early zombie film that holds similar contradictions as White Zombie is I Walked with a Zombie. This film involves discourse surrounding the Haitian zonbi tradition, and it encourages audiences to associate Blackness with the zombie. It does so by introducing Carre-Four,^[37] a tall Black man, as the main zombie figure—indeed the “zombie” to which Betsy, the “I,” in the title and opening image, refers.^[38] Carre-Four often graces the screen without a shirt or shoes.^[39] These images highlight his exposed black skin and imply his association with the native culture the film stereotypes as primitive. This stereotype becomes particularly pronounced given the role of Mrs. Rand, the plantation owner’s mother. Because of Mrs. Rand’s desire to help the natives, she becomes a sort of voodoo master herself in order to share her medical knowledge in an understandable medium.^[40] By contrasting Mrs. Rand’s Western medical background with the natives’ inability to understand or comply with anything beyond voodoo, the film enforces harmful stereotypes which misrepresent Vodou.

Despite the film’s obvious stereotyping, however, it attempts to address slavery and colonization. As horror film scholar Murray Leeder states, “if [the film] doesn’t quite stage a coherent critique of colonialism or an exploration of the long-term effects of slavery, it at least raises these matters and places emphasis on the white characters’ ignorance of and complicity in continued systems of exploitation.”^[41] Although I Walked with a Zombie does not approach these issues with much nuance, it does clearly grapple with and attempt to make sense of imperialism. As Robin Wood expresses, I Walked with a Zombie is “built around an elaborate set of apparently clear-cut structural oppositions: Canada-West Indies, white-black, light-darkness, life-death, science-black magic, Christian-Voodoo, conscious-unconscious, and so on—and it proceeds to systematically blur all of them.”^[42] The film’s blurring to which Wood alludes illuminates the harm and sacrifice inherent in such imperial binaries. In other words, I Walked with a Zombie does not necessarily uphold a rigid and clear-cut critique of colonialism and slavery, but it does call this violence into question through blurring presupposed categorizations and structures.

Both White Zombie and I Walked with a Zombie emphasize the West’s associations of the zombie with Blackness, Haiti, Vodou, and the body—specifically the body over the soul. While these emphases are notably a Western bastardization of zombiism, both the Haitian zonbi and the American zombie attempt to unpack and articulate the same set of issues. McAlister expresses this idea as such:

Like the Haitian zonbi, the US film zombie must be understood as being embedded in a set of deeply symbolic structures that are a matter of religious thought. In both contexts, the zombie narrative and rituals interrogate the boundary between life and death, elucidate the complex relations between freedom and slavery, and highlight the overlap between capitalism and cannibalism. What I want to stress especially is that in each context, race is the pivot on which these dynamics articulate themselves.^[43]

These films acknowledge the complex relationship between the Afro-Haitian zonbi and Haiti’s history of slavery. In their acknowledgement, however, these films continue to support productions of race by emphasizing the otherness of Black people. While White Zombie and I Walked with a Zombie exemplify the West’s ability to capitalize on the racialized foreign Other, they simultaneously critique this exploitation by drawing attention to the fact that slavery under colonialism essentially created this horrific state of zombification. Because of these contradictions, White Zombie and I Walked with a Zombie do not in and of themselves offer redemptive power against white supremacy, but they do begin to frame and contextualize some of these discussions.

PART II (HERMENEUTICAL): VIEWING THE ZOMBIE GENRE AS LIBERATION THEOLOGY

“Once they have understood the real situation of the oppressed, theologians have to ask: What has the word of God to say about this? This is the second stage in the theological construct—a specific stage, in which discourse is formally theological.”^[44]

Liberation and Apocalypse

A religious understanding of personhood and sin illuminates the connections between zombiism and white supremacy. Not only does zombiism confront the lines between life and death—a task with which religion is also concerned—but liberation theology specifically addresses the zombie-like condition of living physically while being dead spiritually.^[45] Liberation theology aims the Gospel at “non-persons” with the goal of gaining the “liberation of all persons and the whole person.”^[46] In this approach, sin is denying God’s liberating activity through Jesus Christ and therefore denying full personhood.^[47] In The Sin of White Supremacy, constructive theologian Jeannine Hill-Fletcher posits that “we must see clearly the effects of the sins of the past and the continuing sins of the present that make White supremacy a structural reality.”^[48] She also states that “a world that is saturated and structured by White supremacy can only be described as a kingdom of evil.”^[49] Through this approach, liberation theology—and particularly Black liberation theology—interacts with American zombie films in that they both explore the ways in which race and personhood relate to harmful systems such as capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism which extract personhood and uphold white supremacy. Just as the zombie emerged from the Afro-Haitian slave community and addresses exploitation and colonialism, so too does Black liberation theology approach the Gospel from the perspective of the oppressed in order to seek liberation from white supremacy.

Jesus’ teaching and ministry provides a starting place for challenging oppression. According to Black liberation theologian James Cone, Jesus’ radical and revolutionary teaching about the Kingdom of God offers insight into liberation.^[50] Through Jesus Christ, God reveals God’s self and God’s vision for a restructured world.^[51] Jesus’ special relationship with the poor and oppressed throughout his ministry speaks to the idea that in this restructured world, God takes sides and chooses the oppressed.^[52] God loves the oppressed specially and—through Jesus’ Passion—has established solidarity with them in their suffering.^[53]

The cross is therefore a liberating event because it represents the revelatory nature of Jesus’ ministry and his solidarity with the oppressed. Jesus’ active ministry questioned the unjust status quo to the point where Jewish religious leaders demanded his death, and Roman leaders acquiesced.^[54] Some Christians cite Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross as justification for self-sacrifice and suffering under structures such as capitalism. Liberation theology, however, pushes against this and considers Jesus’ Passion as an expression of solidarity with those who suffer, not a valorization of the suffering itself.^[55] In his book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, Cone applies Christ’s death to an American context and states that “in the United States, the clearest image of the crucified Christ [is] the figure of an innocent black victim, dangling from a lynching tree.”^[56] In connecting Christ’s execution to the murders of African Americans, particularly in the era of Jim Crow, Cone situates African Americans as the oppressed ones—a term that he gives to the historical Jesus^[57]—in this American context and suggests that Christ shares in suffering alongside Black Christian communities in America. Indeed, these communities root their faith in identifying with Jesus’s suffering and victimhood. This is particularly powerful because, as Cone states, “[Jesus’] death is the revelation of the freedom of God.”^[58]

The cross expresses the human rejection of Jesus, but Jesus’ resurrection serves as God’s vindication of those unjustly put to death. Through Jesus’ resurrection, God protests and transforms oppression into the possibility of freedom for the oppressed.^[59] As Elizabeth A. Johnson articulates it in Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology, “the resurrection appears as the sign of God’s liberation breaking into this world.”^[60] Therefore, Jesus’ resurrection indicates his presence with the oppressed in the here-and-now—the Black struggle in America.^[61] Cone’s aforementioned theology in The Cross and the Lynching Tree also ascribes these Black lynched victims, and the Black struggle more broadly, with an aura of divinity due to Christ’s eventual resurrection. While Christ’s sacrifice on the cross is an act of solidarity which ought not be valorized to justify suffering, Christ’s resurrection takes this even further and deems sacrifice in general “unworkable.”^[62] Therefore, Christ’s resurrection coupled with his resistance to the Roman Empire throughout his life highlights his opposition to imperialism that demands people sacrifice their subjectivity and suffer. While white salvation may focus on suffering in this life for a better next life, Black liberation theology points toward a different salvation.

The salvation within Black liberation theology implicates this world in the present day. Jesus’ death and resurrection inaugurates a new apocalyptic time, but believers must grapple with its incompleteness in the here-and-now. Charles B. Cousar defines the in-between nature of the current moment as the overlap of the old and new ages:

The death and resurrection begin God’s promised new age. Jesus inaugurates a new creation (Gal 6:15; 2 Cor 5:17)—the beginning of God’s transformation of human history and the universe. When Jesus returns, the transformation will be complete, and the old age will come to an end. In the meantime, the present is a time of the overlap of the two ages (1 Cor 10:11). Believers find themselves citizens of two worlds and are forced to negotiate their lives accordingly.^[63]

As Cousar indicates, this overlap forces humans to reconcile the knowledge of the full new age (God’s coming cataclysmic and apocalyptic intervention) in the face of the ongoing old age and the present hardship and suffering which define it. Therefore, this in-between time calls for applying God’s revelation through Jesus—that God is in solidarity with the oppressed and wills their liberation—to this present moment.^[64] Indeed, salvation according to Black liberation theology focuses on liberation from bondage in this life as opposed to waiting for an alternative in the next life.^[65] Because God’s reign accounts for and includes this world and time, the lack of salvation in present unjust situations violates God’s saving will.^[66] Until Jesus’ second coming, believers must continue to grapple with and make sense of this in-between time and what God’s revelation means for the current moment in which white supremacy operates.

The Biblical apocalypse offers a revelatory and ultimately liberating outcome through Christ, and a close look at zombie films shows that some of these same theological elements are present. Just as God’s revelation through Christ in the Biblical apocalypse calls believers to reevaluate their complicity in upholding the status quo, so too does the zombie apocalypse unveil current injustice. The concept of the zombie apocalypse gained prevalence in 1968 with George Romero’s film Night of the Living Dead and his two subsequent films, Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985), which complete the Night trilogy. This contemporary manifestation of zombiism depicts hordes of white undead bodies and is now ubiquitous throughout the entire zombie genre. Romero’s portrayal of zombies as the undead speaks to their nature as both resuscitated—undead implying that they were once but are no longer dead—and unnatural non-human beings. These two characteristics connect to the Biblical sense of the apocalypse. Not only does the zombies’ resuscitation grotesquely mirror Jesus’ resurrection, but the non-humanness of the zombie—which notably, is a continued trope from the 1930s conception of zombiism—provides a reveal just as the Biblical apocalypse encompasses God’s reveal. The humanity-lacking zombies reveal a political concern that when humans conform to the status quo and refuse to challenge or even acknowledge the injustices perpetuated by white supremacy, they defy humanity—their own and that of their fellow person—and themselves become unconcerned, unaware zombies.^[67] Furthermore, like the Biblical apocalypse, the zombie apocalypse forces humans to confront this revelation in the here-and-now.^[68]

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

While the zombie apocalypse relates to the revelatory nature of the Biblical apocalypse, an exploration of Night showcases where resistance and liberation factor in, particularly regarding Christ. As an iconic American zombie film which indeed popularized the zombie apocalypse, Night of the Living Dead serves as a key “text” to apply some of this theology and identify how this foundational zombie film relates to theological questions regarding God’s response to oppression. On one level, Night corresponds with the hermeneutical mediation of liberation theology because just as hermeneutics deals with reinterpretation, Night also reinterprets zombiism in the American context. Beyond this analogy, Night’s influence over the entire zombie genre situates it as quintessentially representative of the genre and therefore rich for broad interpretation (and reinterpretation). Night still interacts with themes of race and power—which the earlier two zombie films address within the Haitian colonial context—and it also provides insight into resistance and liberation.

George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead opens with Barbara and her brother Johnny visiting their father’s grave in the Pennsylvania countryside. They encounter a zombie who kills Johnny and lumbers after Barbara. She finds refuge in a farmhouse, and soon Ben arrives on the scene and secures the house from the surrounding zombies. Barbara and Ben discover several others sequestered in the house, and the group hears news on the radio of the zombies running rampant across the entire east coast—the first indication of the apocalypse—as well as the groups of men banding together to hunt them down. Eventually, the zombies’ growing numbers overwhelm the group, and Barbara’s now zombie-brother Johnny drags her away. While all the other characters fall victim to the zombie horde, Ben finds shelter in the cellar and survives the night. In the morning, he confronts the posse—one of the vigilante groups of men the radio mentioned—who mistake him for a zombie, shoot him in the head, and burn his body alongside other zombie corpses.

This quintessential American zombie film comments on oppression and white supremacy more directly than White Zombie and I Walked with a Zombie, though there are still key parallels. As the previous section addresses, Night distinguishes itself in that instead of Black, typically male zombies, it introduces the horde of white male and female zombies of all ages who are cannibalistic and infectious. With this new cannibalistic zombie, “Romero visually render[s] the metaphors of eating another’s life force” which is present in Haitian Vodou.^[69] Furthermore, although Night inverts the race of zombies to white, this “inside-outness of earlier racial associations also presents a meta-commentary on the same subjects as do Haitian zonbi: the intersections of capitalism and consumption, slavery and cannibalism, bodily excess and race.”^[70] Specifically, much of Night’s commentary on race comes through the presence of Ben (actor Duane Jones) as the Black male protagonist.

Ben’s Blackness—a stark contrast to the rest of the entirely white cast—emphasizes his presence in the film and identifies him as a noteworthy character to American audiences steeped in racial discourse. Given the political and social context of 1968 America grappling with racial injustices and the Civil Rights Movement, Night’s first audiences—which comprised many African Americans—took particular interest in the film’s treatment of this Black character.^[71] Though the filmmakers claimed color-blindness and indeed never allude to Ben’s race during the film, screenwriter and film scholar Ben Hervey asserts that this color-blindness emphasizes Ben’s race even more.^[72] Because Night’s initial audiences regularly encountered issues pertaining to race, this social context conditioned audiences to read the film as a discourse on race regardless of the filmmakers’ intentions.

Beyond Ben’s race, his interactions with other characters situate him as a divine figure and emphasize the gravity of his protagonist status. Throughout the film, Ben acts as an authority figure set apart from the other characters. Directly after appearing in a swath of bright car headlights alluding to heavenly light, Ben proceeds to usher a now traumatized Barbara to safety within the house and, a few moments later, kills a zombie that lumbers after her.^[73] In killing this zombie, and others within the film, he demonstrates his zombie-fighting skills and his seemingly instinctive knowledge of targeting the brain in order to truly kill the zombie. The film never shares how Ben came into these skill sets and knowledge, which further indicates an inherent ability that a typical human, like Barbara, would not normally possess so quickly after the start of the apocalypse. Not only do Ben’s fighting skills far outdo Barbara’s ineptitude,^[74] but Ben’s calm and confident demeanor in scouring and securing the house also situate him as a superior survivalist and leader. Indeed, the fact that Ben survives when all the other characters are turned into zombies again emphasizes his untouchable and divine character. This characterization, however, does not ultimately render Ben immune from all suffering.

Ben remains the only character to survive the threat of the zombies through the night, but the morning light brings the posse, a group even more horrific than (though not unlike) the zombie horde. Though the posse initially appears as a positive entity, it shares several traits with the zombie horde itself. The posse reflects the zombie horde not only in looks—a mass of white people walking along the plain—but also in mindset. Just as the zombies emotionlessly hunt for flesh, the posse strikes and kills zombies without so much as blinking.^[75] Tony Williams builds upon this idea, stating that the posse’s lack of morality situates its members as the actual “living dead” to which the title of the film alludes.^[76] Through viewing the posse as reflecting the zombies, a new critique of imperialism appears. In this American context, the posse—as white, cis-presenting men—represents the privileged and powerful who uphold white supremacy. By insinuating that the posse are as monstrous as the zombies, the film suggests that white supremacy is monstrous too.

The role of the posse in Ben’s death highlights Night’s nuanced representation of racism and power. As the posse approaches the house in which Ben has sought shelter, he cowers inside, looking out through a window as if hiding from a threatening force.^[77] In the posse’s emotionless killing of zombies, they do not check to see that Ben is still human before shooting him in the head and dragging his body via hook to a burning pile of zombie corpses.^[78] The presence of the hook, the fire, and of course the lone Black man falling victim to a large mob of white men all allude to the problem of racism and white supremacy in America and position Ben’s death as a lynching.

Indeed, Night situates Ben as the character tasked with confronting white supremacy, and a reading of Ben through the lens of Black liberation theology reveals his role as a Christ figure. As the only Black character amid the horde of white zombies and white posse, Ben reveals the dynamics of racism and, in McAlister’s view, “must save humanity from the affliction of whiteness.”^[79] Not only do Ben’s divine characteristics situate him as emblematic of the Messiah, but Ben also stands alone against white supremacy just as Christ challenged the Roman Empire. Furthermore, the posse ultimately kills Ben for challenging this norm which parallels Christ’s death resulting from his radical way of living. As Cone’s theology illuminates, Christ stands in solidarity with Ben as a sufferer, but Ben as a Christ figure also perpetuates and amplifies this message of solidarity. The ending of Night challenges this association, however, because while God resurrected Christ, Ben’s death in the film is final, and Night concludes with the terror of the posse and the ongoing zombie apocalypse.^[80] This disheartening ending points to an additional theological question: when the zombie apocalypse seems to have no end or alternative in sight, where in the zombie genre is hope?^[81]

While Night does not present a hopeful outcome, subsequent zombie films continue to address resistance and hope. Although Ben’s death in Night is final, the next two Romero films in the trilogy offer a sort of legacy akin to the spirit of resurrection. In discussing Ben’s divine nature in general, McAlister cites the broader Night trilogy, all of which feature a capable Black male protagonist who upholds this special status—Ben, Peter (actor Ken Foree), and John (Terry Alexander) in Night, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead, respectively).^[82] Furthermore, other zombie films unrelated to the series such as I Am Legend (2007) continue this trend of a Black male protagonist—in the case of I Am Legend, Will Smith’s character Robert Neville—up against the white zombies. These characters continue Ben’s role as the Black Christ figure confronting white supremacy and preserve his legacy throughout the zombie genre. All these protagonists embody the perpetual work of fighting and resisting which, while not necessarily hopeful, does convey the ongoing battle necessary to undoing systems of oppression. Theologically speaking, the spirit keeps working even though the horrors of the zombie apocalypse and white supremacy continue to consume and threaten.

PART III (PRACTICAL): CONTINUED RESISTANCE AGAINST INJUSTICE

“Liberation theology is far from being an inconclusive theology. It starts from action and leads to action, a journey wholly impregnated by and bound up with the atmosphere of faith. From analysis of the reality of the oppressed, it passes through the word of God to arrive finally at specific action. ‘Back to action’ is a characteristic call of this theology. It seeks to be a militant, committed, and liberating theology.”^[83]

Get Out (2017)

Another film that embodies the resistant spirit in Night but pushes it to one of action is Get Out. Get Out begins with a young interracial couple, Chris Washington and Rose Armitage, traveling to upstate New York so Chris can meet Rose’s white family. Rose’s father, Dean, is a neurosurgeon, and her mother, Missy, is a therapist who uses hypnosis in her practice. That evening, Missy hypnotizes Chris to help him quit smoking. During this interaction, Missy encourages Chris to focus on the traumatic memory of the night Chris’ mother died and the guilt Chris feels over his inaction. Through Missy’s hypnosis, Chris finds himself in what Missy calls the “sunken place,” a realm wherein Chris’ body remains immobile as his mind sinks into a black abyss. Not long after this experience, Dean and Missy host a party for older white guests who take an interest in Chris. When Chris steps away, Dean auctions off Chris at a Bingo game turned slave market. Chris soon discovers the reason behind these strange occurrences: the Armitage’s family business of surgically implanting the brains of white people into kidnapped Black bodies. As another one of Rose’s victims, the Armitages prepare Chris for surgery. He escapes his hypnosis and binds, however, kills the Armitage family, and gets rescued by his friend, Rod.

While many people may not initially consider Get Out to be a zombie film, it harkens back to some of the origins of the zombie and, like Night, redefines zombiism in relation to modern day racism. Stony Brook University English Literature doctoral candidate Caitlin Duffy explores these connections:

In Get Out, we see a return (though not exact) to the original conception of the zombie. Of course, because American audiences are more familiar with the Romero zombie, it’s difficult to notice Peele’s fresh addition to the zombie sub-genre. By placing the souls of their black victims into “the sunken place” and using their victims’ bodies as vehicles for white brains to control, the Armitage family behaves as a new sort of [bòkò].^[84]

While Duffy importantly notes that American audiences are more familiar with the Romero zombie and the subsequent iterations it inspired, Peele’s addition to the zombie genre—while connected to Haitian zombiism—relates to Romero’s conception of zombiism in 1968 as well. In an interview with the New York Times, Jordan Peele discusses the similarities between Chris and Ben, citing that their shared positionality as Black men in white contexts “is the very skill that helps them. …[Ben] is a man living in fear every day, so this is a challenge he is more equipped to take on…. Chris, in his racial paranoia, is onto something that he wouldn’t be if he was a white guy.”^[85] In both continuing the theme from Night of a single Black protagonist in an overwhelming white supremacist setting and alluding to Haitian zombiism, Get Out situates itself within the zombie genre. It presents Chris as the Christ figure who—like previous Black male protagonists in zombie films—continues resisting oppression. Chris displays this resistance through active revolt against white supremacists who shatter any illusion of a post-racist America.

Peele’s critique of post-racism in Get Out uncoincidentally follows the sequential elections of Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Obama’s election in 2008 and the mystique of perfection surrounding him correlates with the idea of the post-racist America Get Out critiques. Dean tells Chris that Obama was the best President in American history and that Dean “would have voted for Obama for a third term if [he] could.”^[86] Dean may claim liberalism because he supports America’s first Black president, but Dean also becomes a slave auctioneer of Chris’ Black body.^[87] These two inconsistent images emphasize the contradictory nature present in neoliberalism and a not-so-post-racist America. Furthermore, the business of the Armitage family relies on selling captured Black bodies to white people in order to then conduct the brain transplant. This exemplifies neoliberal multiculturalism, a term which, as Will Kymlicka defines it, operates “with the logic of diversity as a competitive asset for cosmopolitan market actors, indifferent to issues of racial hierarchy and structural inequality.”^[88] The Armitages only value Black people to the extent that their bodies can be exploited. Although the Armitages claim liberalness and praise Obama, they are not concerned with racial equality but instead with how Blackness—both as a culturally desirable and as a bodily concept—can be sold for profit.

These characters’ neoliberal emphasis on Black bodies further solidifies the discourse on Blackness and zombiism present in White Zombie and I Walked with a Zombie. In sending Chris to the “sunken place,” Missy disconnects Chris’ mind from his body and allows space for a new white brain to take over.^[89] In doing so, Missy exploits Chris emotionally and spiritually by calling upon his trauma (associated with inaction surrounding his mother’s death) in order to accomplish this task. This lack of self-ownership—which the enslaved person did not possess due to various layers of exploitation—is reminiscent of the zonbi kò kadav and White Zombie’s representation of the zonbi kò kadav as the mindless Black walking corpses that Legendre controls. This highlights that even though the zonbi kò kadav is bodily, there are still more complex and holistic issues associated with this representation of the zonbi. Furthermore, Get Out clearly references slavery and positions Chris as a slave when Dean auctions off Chris to the highest bidder. In this way, Get Out, like White Zombie, situates the Black characters as exploitable figures which the white characters use to gain capital. The film comments on the dehumanization that operates within these two varying forms of slavery by likening the lives of Black slaves to a state of zombiism.

Indeed, Chris’ eventual escape from Missy’s hypnosis and the Armitage’s house reflects a slave uprising due to its violent but ultimately liberating nature. In order to escape the basement where the Armitages have bound, periodically re-hypnotized, and begun the surgery preparation on Chris, he uses the resources available to him. To avoid hypnosis, he stuffs his ears full of cotton from the armchair in which he is strapped. He then uses an antlered taxidermy deer head and a bocce ball as weapons against the Armitage family. This resourcefulness reflects racial formation theoreticians Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s comment that “the effort to possess the oppressor’s tools—religion and philosophy in this case—was crucial to emancipation…. The slaves incorporated elements of racial rule into their thought and practice, turning them against their original bearers.”^[90] While religion and philosophy are not directly part of Chris’s escape, he still takes up the tool of his oppressors—in this case physical house items—which he utilizes as weapons in order to secure his emancipation. In doing so, Chris regains subjectivity and control over his own body, thus resisting the Armitage’s desire to fracture and dehumanize.

Chris’ resistance demonstrates the action necessary in this in-between time in which the new age has begun, but oppression in the here-and-now demands a response. While Chris’ resistance takes on a violent form unlike Christ’s nonviolent resistance to the Roman Empire,^[91] the fact of Chris’ resistance is still significant theologically. Unlike Ben’s fate in Night amid the raging apocalypse and ongoing posse, Chris manages to defeat his oppressors. He overcomes his inability to act and defeats his oppressors, liberating himself through this practical action against the Armitages.

After Chris’s escape, however, the various endings of Get Out speak to different critiques of power as well as applications of God’s revelation through Jesus. In Get Out’s first, now alternate ending, Chris secures this freedom from the Armitages only to be arrested for the murder of this white family.^[92] Just as Christ’s death was a consequence for the way he lived, so too is Chris’ incarceration a consequence of him defying a rich white family in a white supremacist society. In a scene from jail, Chris’ TSA friend Rod encourages Chris to remember names and convey details to him, but Chris responds, “Rod, I’m good. I stopped it, ya know? I stopped it,” before putting down the phone and walking away from Rod (and the camera), flanked by a guard.^[93] Chris’ comment in this scene illustrates his resolve in the fact that because he suffered through this experience, no one else will fall victim to the Armitages. This also reflects Jesus Christ in that, like Christ, Chris gives up his life—concedes his freedom by committing crimes which justify (though unjustly) his arrest—for the sake of others. Albert Schweitzer’s conception of Jesus offers a visualization relevant to both Christ and Chris:

Jesus, and in the knowledge that He is the coming Son of Man lays hold of the wheel of the world to set it moving on that last revolution which is to bring all ordinary history to a close. It refuses to turn and He throws Himself upon it. Then it does turn; and crushes Him. Instead of bringing in the eschatological conditions, He has destroyed them. The wheel rolls onward, and the mangled body of the one immeasurably great Man, who was strong enough to think of Himself as the spiritual ruler of mankind and to bend history to His purpose, is hanging upon it still. That is His victory and His reign.^[94]

By evading his own surgery and killing the family, Chris brings the history of the Armitage’s heinous acts to a close. This defeat encompasses Chris’ victory and reign, but he does not accomplish it without sacrificing his own life. Get Out’s alternate ending emphasizes the brutality and yet reality of white supremacy, which, for Chris, results in his unjust imprisonment.^[95]

Get Out’s final cut ending, however, depicts a more salvific outcome. After surviving the entire ordeal and killing the Armitages, the final cut ending shows Chris getting rescued by Rod.^[96] Chris does not go to jail as in the first ending, but he continues to live in the world. In his commentary of the alternate ending, Peele shares that when he wrote the initial script for Get Out, the Obama-era country was more shrouded in the illusion of post-racism, and Peele sought to challenge that. At the time of shooting the film, however, Peele saw that people were addressing racism, “were being woke, and needed a release and a hero.”^[97] Like God vindicating the value of Jesus’ life through his resurrection, Chris’ successful revolt against the Armitages secures his freedom. Therefore, this new ending offers more hope—a theologically and politically satisfying resolution—but in doing so, it sanitizes the reality of a white supremacist society that incarcerates and kills Black people—particularly Black men—for much less than Chris’ “crimes.” As such, Get Out’s two endings complexify its theological implications and elicit bigger questions and debate about the nature and parameters of hope (as well as justice) within the zombie genre and the world at large.

Conclusion

The white supremacist justification of slavery in the name of exploitative economic gain continues to haunt this nation. Myths and cultural artifacts such as zombiism and zombie films attempt to make sense of this injustice. The figure of the zombie originated in the religious tradition of Haitian Vodou and—through religious ritualization—embodies the reality of exploitation under colonialism. As American cinema co-opted zombiism, it reduced the figure of the zombie to a horrific foreign Other crippled by mind-body dualism. Although these representations—evidenced by White Zombie and I Walked with a Zombie—depict Western perversions of Haitian Vodou, they still clearly articulate how zombiism relates to life-sucking exploitation, particularly of Black bodies, for economic means.

As zombiism evolved in this American cinematic context, however, Night of the Living Dead reworked the zombie genre and introduced new questions regarding race and resistance. Black liberation theology also speaks to these questions and therefore provides a helpful framework for building from this Haitian history and identifying theological strands of resistance in these films. Night’s protagonist, Ben, serves as a Christ figure who resists the oppressive forces of the zombie horde and the posse. The apocalypse in Night—and within the zombie genre more broadly—also presents an unveiling which parallels that of the Biblical apocalypse: God’s revelation through Jesus and the knowledge that God sides with the oppressed. While Ben’s death reflects the brutality of white supremacy and resists a hopeful ending, other zombie films continue this work.

The rest of the Night trilogy as well as Jordan Peele’s contemporary masterpiece, Get Out, feature Black male protagonists continually resisting white supremacy. Get Out pushes the boundaries of what is considered a zombie film, but it connects with and speaks to the same themes of exploitation and resistance central to other zombie films. Get Out showcases active resistance and successful liberation as Chris revolts against the Armitages. This film depicts action through revolution—a violent revolution with two proposed outcomes. This leaves viewers and believers alike with further questions about the necessity of violence in resisting oppressive forces, the validity of hope if it denies or undercuts reality, and the implications of justice. In a violent and white supremacist society, the potential for change without force may seem bleak and appeals to nonviolence and love without wrath, hollow. In order to uproot the kingdom of evil and establish God’s Kingdom on Earth, actual justice that transcends white structures—like the prison system which continues to target Black people—must reign. Justice and liberation can only be realized by confronting aspects of society which perpetuate the sin of white supremacy. Even though American cinema has altered the image of the zombie drastically over the past century, zombie films continue to unveil white supremacy. They represent economic exploitation along racial lines and offer conceptual modes of resistance to white supremacy and the structures that it upholds. This continual resistance brings us that much closer to realizing the Kingdom of God in the here-and-now—an existence filled with hope, wholeness, and love.