George Romero, Game of Thrones, and the Zombie Apocalypse

When George Romero died on July 16, the world was gearing up for the season opener of Game
of Thrones, and these two events have much more in common than simply their shared date.
Game of Thrones, at its heart a story of the Zombie Apocalypse, owes its central storyline and a
great measure of its success to Romero, as do other popular and critically-acclaimed versions of
the story, whether television (The Walking Dead, iZombie), film (28 Days Later, Sean of the
Dead, and Zombieland), fiction (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, The Making of Zombie Wars),
comics (Marvel Zombies, Afterlife with Archie, Blackest Night), or any of the other media or
products shaped by the zombie narrative. When we consider how important the Zombie
Apocalypse story has become in our culture, it is hard to know whether to call George Romero a
popular filmmaker, a social critic, or a prophet. Maybe hes a mixture of all three.

When Romero directed Night of the Living Dead in 1968 on a shoestring budget and with no-
name actors, he and co-writer Joe Russo were simply trying to make a cheap, stylish, and
entertaining horror film, but in the process, they also shaped a myth appropriate for an age full
of tensions and troubles. While the word zombie is never used in the film, Night of the Living
Dead represents the Ground Zero of the modern zombie story. 1968, of course, was a year
marked by assassinations, political unrest, the Vietnam War, changes in social and sexual
mores, racial violence, and other unsettling changes. Night of the Living Dead took on those
fears and worries metaphorically by transmuting them into ghouls outside a farmhouse, trying
to break in and attack the living.

Did Romero and Russo consciously set out to offer cultural critique in their story? Yes and no.
Romero talked in interviews about how the model of Richard Mathesons science-fiction novel I
Am Legend offered him a narrative of revolution, of the world being turned upside down, that
he very much liked and wanted to explore. But the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
to which some viewers think the films ending refers, took place after the completion of
principal photography, and the films topicality is largely a result of the shape of the narrative
itself. The Zombie Apocalypse has proven to be a particularly appropriate tale for an unsettled
world, as Night of the Living Dead (and the reaction to it) amply demonstrate.

As with many artists, in this film Romero was anticipated as much as he was responding. A story
about zombies who attack in waves, about humans who resist and quarrel about how to resist,
and about the fear that we will lose our identity turned out to be the right story at the right
time (a similar congruence comes just after 9/11, when the British horror film 28 Days Later set
off the zombie craze in which we still reside). In reshaping the zombie story from its origins as a
narrative about slavery and dominance in the Caribbean to a story about supernatural ghouls
who threaten all human life, Night of the Living Dead offered a contemporary example of a
trope familiar in the West for at least 600 years in which Death or the dead confront the living
in art and literature in times of crisis. Romeros modern zombie story is an updated version of
the Danse Macabre in which embodied Death reaches out to every member of the society and
yanks them into the next life. It is also a cathartic tale of ultimate horror that feels much like
our current experience, but which we can turn off or put down, grateful that however bad the
terrors of the present moment might be, at least the dead are not trying to knock down our
doors.

Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead are two of our cultures most-widely consumed
versions of the Zombie Apocalypse story Romero inaugurated, which is why it was particularly
appropriate to laud Romeros accomplishments as a huge international audience awaited the
first episode of the new season of Game of Thrones. In Game of Thrones, the often-
foregrounded storylines of characters vying to sit on the Iron Throne are now, finally, beginning
to be overshadowed by a storyline launched at the beginning of both the book and television
narratives when members of the Nights Watch were attacked by White Walkers (The Others)
and the walking dead they command. While the plots concerning royal succession are filled
with human interest, intrigue, sexuality, and violence, some characters (and many critics) have
suggested that all these are no more than the arguing of attractive children over toys. When
you see the dead walk (as some of the characters on Game of Thrones have), it becomes clear
that nothing else matters. The war between life and death, as Melisandre (Carice van Houten)
and Jon Snow (Kit Harrington) argue, is the only one that matters, and thus the Zombie
Apocalypse will determine Game of Thrones final outcome.

Like Night of the Living Dead in 1968, Game of Thrones uses the Zombie Apocalypse to wrestle
with the threats of our own age, not just the obvious ones, but also perhaps the ones to which
were simply not paying enough attention. So, as in Romeros films, Game of Thrones helps its
viewers to grapple with such menaces as international terrorism, economic unrest, refugees,
pandemics, and natural disasters. But by showing how easily we can be distracted from greater
menaces and how often people prefer not to believe that Winter Is Coming, it also encourages
us to pay attention to undervalued or often-dismissed threats. In what ways, for example,
might human beings be contributing to climate change, the decline of bees, the extinction of
animal species, or any number of potentially-apocalyptic crises that we ignore or discount?

Romeros films were recognized in his lifetime not just as entertaining and important, but as
culturally relevant, and his great final achievement may be that he bequeathed to audiences of
our own complicated and fearful time a master narrative with which we can confront our fears.
In the Zombie Apocalypse, the people of 2017 too can find meaning and comfort and learn
something about our own lives, and for that, we can thank George Romero.

Greg Garrett is Professor of English at Baylor University, where he teaches classes in fiction and
screenwriting, literature, film and popular culture, and theology. He is the author or co-author
of three dozen short stories, a dozen scholarly articles, and twenty-five books of fiction,
nonfiction, and memoir. Recently, he authored Living with the Living Dead: The Wisdom of the
Zombie Apocalypse. Dr. Garrett is also Theologian in Residence at the American Cathedral in
Paris and a licensed lay preacher in the Episcopal Church. He lives with his family in Austin,
Texas.