Ep. 6 | A Short Voyage from 'It’s a Wonderful Life' to 'Zombie Apocalypse'

Rabbi Daniel Lapin

Rabbi Daniel Lapin and his wife, Susan, take a lighthearted look at movies. Before World War II, about 0.3% of movies released were what we would call “horror movies”. By 1968, over 2% of movies were horror movies, by 2000 it was 4%, and by 2015 it was 12%. By then, zombies were taking over the (entertainment) world. To date, Hollywood has produced 1,000 more zombie movies than cowboy movies. The Walking Dead? Really? When did the zombie craze really take off? It was 1962. Yes, there’s that date again. Could there be any meaningful correlation between the extirpation of Judeo-Christian Bible faith from everyday life and the rise of zombie horror taking its place? As religion’s ability to help us cope with death declined, did we turn to “zombie-porn”? Michael Jackson, the boy who never grew old, and his music video 'Thriller'. The arrival of ten-minute movies - for your phone! - brought to you by Meg Whitman and Jeffrey Katzenberg. If you don’t consciously “choose life”, the automatic default is death. From abortion to euthanasia, what a large crowd of people does matters.