Zombie jihad?
Dec. 22nd, 2012 09:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blatherskiteI've mostly been active in the F&SF forum these days, and life happened, thereby preventing me from doing any blogging. I should have reposted some of my F&SF stuff here, and I'll see if I can find time to remedy that now and again. Meantime, here's a recent post:
Zombies seem to be the new vampires in terms of their popularity. In the forum, Dave Truesdale stirred the pot by wondering why nobody's seized on an obvious metaphor: "How about a radical/terrorist Muslim zombie apocalypse, where something turns all these terrorists in zombies, out to kill everything not like them?"
I don't think people have stayed away from this topic because of political correctness; I think that as you described it, this would be a lame-ass attempt to turn zombies into a metaphor for radical Islam. And my emphasis there is essential: there's a huge difference between radical Islam (the minority) and the more tolerant vast majority. (Students of history will recall that the most enlightened civilizations in Western history have been Muslim, not Christian, and that nominally Christian civilization will have much to answer for in the afterlife.)
To make Dave's premise into a story worth reading, you would need to do two things: First, find some kind of commonality between zombies and Islam that can be spun into a thought-provoking metaphor. That's easy: both are out to convert everyone in the world into more "people" like themselves. But that's also a trivial and shallow solution. To make this more than lame, you need to recognize that not all zombies will have the same goals. If they're all nothing more than one-dimensional brain-munching evils, it's a lame story to my way of thinking. Second, you need to find the human heart of the story -- something that shows you understand and empathize with the Other, even if you don't agree with them. That's much harder to achieve.
Dave continued: "Would it be more morally or ethically palatable to just outright shoot them in the head by whatever means (see the series THE WALKING DEAD), than the ethical dilemma some are dealing with now?"
Depends on how you portray the zombies and on the criteria you propose for "ethical" murder. If the zombies are mindless killing machines with no minds or souls, or are actively and one-dimensionally evil (i.e., possessed with consciousness, a knowledge of right and wrong, and a unexamined desire to kill despite that knowledge), then there's no ethical dilemma any more than there would be with swatting a mosquito. (Of course, if you're a member of the Jain religion, that's not such a simple issue. I note this to provide a cautionary note of moral relativism here.) But if you make this assumption, then they're no longer Islamic terrorists; Islam is a highly mindful religion, not a mindless one, and in contrast with the Western notion of jihad, is not inherently a militaristic religion any more than Christianity is. "Onward Christian [zombie-killing] Soldiers" anyone?
If, on the other hand, you assume that zombies are intelligent creatures, you have to come up with a plausible reason why anyone who calls themselves Muslim would want to become a zombie or would embrace their newfound zombie nature. I'm not an expert in Islam, but what I do know suggests that such a condition would be seen as abomination to anyone who practices Islam.
A more interesting solution would be finding a way to portray the terrible dilemma of a Muslim who became a zombie and had to grapple with the contradictions between his new state (the need to kill other humans to survive) and his religion. In that vein (sorry!), an old friend, Brent Buckner, wrote a powerful story entitled "Flesh and Blood" (published in "On Spec" and republished in "Divine Realms", if memory serves) about a devout Christian who becomes a vampire and finds a clever way to solve the problem. I won't spoil it for you, but it's brilliant and (to my knowledge) unique solution.
Dave: "This is something SF has done for decades, since its inception: transferring this group for that, making them aliens, etc."
Indeed it is one of the things I love about F/SF: finding ways to help us understand (and often accept) the Other. But it has to be done subtly and with human compassion for the Other if you want to make it work.
Zombies seem to be the new vampires in terms of their popularity. In the forum, Dave Truesdale stirred the pot by wondering why nobody's seized on an obvious metaphor: "How about a radical/terrorist Muslim zombie apocalypse, where something turns all these terrorists in zombies, out to kill everything not like them?"
I don't think people have stayed away from this topic because of political correctness; I think that as you described it, this would be a lame-ass attempt to turn zombies into a metaphor for radical Islam. And my emphasis there is essential: there's a huge difference between radical Islam (the minority) and the more tolerant vast majority. (Students of history will recall that the most enlightened civilizations in Western history have been Muslim, not Christian, and that nominally Christian civilization will have much to answer for in the afterlife.)
To make Dave's premise into a story worth reading, you would need to do two things: First, find some kind of commonality between zombies and Islam that can be spun into a thought-provoking metaphor. That's easy: both are out to convert everyone in the world into more "people" like themselves. But that's also a trivial and shallow solution. To make this more than lame, you need to recognize that not all zombies will have the same goals. If they're all nothing more than one-dimensional brain-munching evils, it's a lame story to my way of thinking. Second, you need to find the human heart of the story -- something that shows you understand and empathize with the Other, even if you don't agree with them. That's much harder to achieve.
Dave continued: "Would it be more morally or ethically palatable to just outright shoot them in the head by whatever means (see the series THE WALKING DEAD), than the ethical dilemma some are dealing with now?"
Depends on how you portray the zombies and on the criteria you propose for "ethical" murder. If the zombies are mindless killing machines with no minds or souls, or are actively and one-dimensionally evil (i.e., possessed with consciousness, a knowledge of right and wrong, and a unexamined desire to kill despite that knowledge), then there's no ethical dilemma any more than there would be with swatting a mosquito. (Of course, if you're a member of the Jain religion, that's not such a simple issue. I note this to provide a cautionary note of moral relativism here.) But if you make this assumption, then they're no longer Islamic terrorists; Islam is a highly mindful religion, not a mindless one, and in contrast with the Western notion of jihad, is not inherently a militaristic religion any more than Christianity is. "Onward Christian [zombie-killing] Soldiers" anyone?
If, on the other hand, you assume that zombies are intelligent creatures, you have to come up with a plausible reason why anyone who calls themselves Muslim would want to become a zombie or would embrace their newfound zombie nature. I'm not an expert in Islam, but what I do know suggests that such a condition would be seen as abomination to anyone who practices Islam.
A more interesting solution would be finding a way to portray the terrible dilemma of a Muslim who became a zombie and had to grapple with the contradictions between his new state (the need to kill other humans to survive) and his religion. In that vein (sorry!), an old friend, Brent Buckner, wrote a powerful story entitled "Flesh and Blood" (published in "On Spec" and republished in "Divine Realms", if memory serves) about a devout Christian who becomes a vampire and finds a clever way to solve the problem. I won't spoil it for you, but it's brilliant and (to my knowledge) unique solution.
Dave: "This is something SF has done for decades, since its inception: transferring this group for that, making them aliens, etc."
Indeed it is one of the things I love about F/SF: finding ways to help us understand (and often accept) the Other. But it has to be done subtly and with human compassion for the Other if you want to make it work.