Just in time for Halloween, I saw the comedy-horror movie Zombieland this week, a film about a post-apocalyptic world in which nearly every human being has been infected with a condition that turns them into cannibalistic zombies. (I’m told this is different from the type of zombies that are dead and come back to life. I am no expert in zombie taxonomy, so any corrections will be appreciated).
But what could possibly be in "Zombieland" that would interest the readers of In All Things? Well, they do give viewers the 32 rules to surviving a zombie world (Rule #1: Cardio; zombies can’t run very fast), which could prove useful if H1N1 evolves into something far more insidious this winter. Yet aside from that, a small detail I found interesting was the portrayal of a Catholic nun in the movie. The nun was credited with the Zombie kill of the week, and leaving aside the ethics of a nun killing a zombie (self defense?), I found it interesting that the nun was presented in plain clothes, and not a religious habit. Only because the narrator identified the character with the title “sister” did we know she was a nun. So years after Vatican II, when many women religious now dress is plain clothes, Hollywood has picked up on the phenomenon as well. A small, though perhaps telling, change in popular culture’s understanding of religious life?
