The walking dead

They come out of the night, shuffling towards us slowly, inexorably – pitiless, mindless and voracious. They care for nothing but their own continued existence. Unchecked, they will devour everything in their path. They are the Zombie Ideas: ideas that seemingly died long ago but nonetheless still walk among us. Creationism, the Efficient Market, Iraq as the wellspring of the 9/11 terrorists, faith as inherently superior to reason – Zombie Ideas, every one, and there are scores more. They should be dead, but they won't stay dead. I've been thinking about zombies a lot lately. Not that I particularly want to; it's just that you can't avoid it if you live in the United States. Zombies are a dominant theme in American popular culture, along with vampires and werewolves. But whereas vampires are dangerously romantic (that biting of the neck is pretty obvious stuff), and werewolves are doomed tragic figures (Universal Studios' 1941 picture The Wolfman, starring Lon Chaney Jr and Claude Rains, is still one of the most moving films of all time), zombies are pretty much without redeeming social value. They don't think, communicate, or feel. All they do is stumble along, looking for human flesh to feed on. It may surprise you to learn that the current idea of what zombies are like is a recent development and quite different from what people used to believe. Zombies traditionally were not resurrected corpses; they were living people who had lost all capacity for independent thought and action because they had fallen under the spell of a voodoo witch doctor. That was before October 1968, when a young, Pittsburgh-based, independent filmmaker named George Romero released Night of the Living Dead. Filmed in glorious black-and-white for a tiny budget and starring a cast of complete unknowns, the movie received surprising critical acclaim. Rex Reed wrote, " If you want to see what turns a B movie into a classic…don't miss Night of the Living Dead. It is unthinkable for anyone seriously interested in horror movies not to see it. " Forty-three years later, the judgment of the film as a classic still stands. It also was a socially significant film, although it wasn't meant to be. Romero made the unusual decision to cast an African-American actor, Duane Jones, in the lead, simply because he was the best actor who auditioned. Not only were black actors almost never given leading roles …