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Films

Zombie Movie Morals (II)

Sarah Stone draws lessons about leadership.

The most acclaimed and popular films in the zombie genre seem to be moral allegories in which the zombies function as catalysts forcing the surviving humans into improvised families and communities whose continued existence depends upon ethical adaptation. These microcosms of humanity offer filmmakers the opportunity to examine how people respond when their perceptions of the basic rules of the world change, and to critique how they make decisions based upon these new rules. In an apocalyptic landscape, people can no longer rely on making decisions based on dogmatic assumptions. Those are luxuries of civilization.

If the dead were to come back to life, there would be several models for ethical decision-making from which the survivors’ leaders could choose.

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