In
this essay I will be discussing George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) and how its themes locate family
and the home within the then-newly reformed horror genre. As the film is an
highly influential piece in the world of cinema which helped revolutionise the
genre as well as place one of the most successful horror auteurs on the map, I
find it necessary to introduce a brief overview of the state of the horror
industry in Hollywood in 1968. Night of
the Living Dead not only visually modernised the film industry, but
thematically as well. The films gritty look operated on a low-budget (despite a
bigger one available) added a documentary-like feel and a sense of realism to
the genre. This realism functioned as a mode of horror reflecting the inner
struggle of man/woman, which frightened audiences. The success of the film in
both fans’ and critics’ eyes comes as no surprise as each scene and each
character serves a strong purpose for Romero’s social criticisms. The main
source for concern the film depicts is that of the broken home and lost family
values. I will individually analyse each character and how their different age
groups all resulted in failure. Among the above I will explore the reasons
behind Romero’s pessimism.
Following
the release of Romero’s Night of the
Living Dead, 1968 can be seen as the year which redefined the horror genre
placing it into the modern era of horror. Not only did the film’s themes and
its critical and commercial success around the world contribute to the
modernisation of the genre, but also 1968 was the year that the Motion Picture Association
of America (MPAA) granted the R-rating which allowed more graphic violence to reach
audiences. While the modern era of horror up to this day has brought with it
more graphic violence and its share of critics since the release of Night of the Living Dead, “the most
important criticism of modern horror’s so called pornography of violence is
directed more explicitly toward ideological rather than stylistic questions.” (Waller
1987: 8) The aging teen generation of the 1950s became rather immune to cheap
B-movie science-fiction films without much scare-factor and by the end of the
1960s horror started to deal with more believable issues such as the threats
within ourselves and around us with growing social commentary. The film itself
is very much ‘ordinary’. It is ordinary in the sense that it is set in an
ordinary American house with ordinary middle-class people, without a great deal
of fantasy and excitement involved. In fact, the only fictitious element in the
film is the living dead themselves and its explanation – a Venus probe from
space has triggered radiation upon its inhabitants. While it is known to be
among the first films to modernise the horror genre, it also “signalled a
return to the classic ghoulish simplicities of the genre.” (Dickstein: 67 in
Grant 1996) The living dead themselves, too, are extremely ordinary (just like
its middle-class characters) and even natural. They are dressed just as they
were when they died – they vary in size and shape, some wearing clothes, some
naked. Their task is to scour food without much reason in animalistic fashion.
Any human emotional senses that they used to have are now gone. This element of
ordinariness is the scariest element of them all – simply because it no longer
is fantasy, it is reality.
The house in Night of the Living Dead functions as a symbolic and literal setting
for death. The house quickly transforms into a barricade indicating the lost
norms of the 1950s and the current social isolation of post-war American life.
In post-war America…many middle class people
were starting to live more prosperous, but more isolated lives; however, the
apparent ease and security of such lives carried dangers of alienation: a safe
home quickly becomes prison-like. In the 1960s and 1970s progressive criticism
of the bourgeois conception of the family reached its height. As the
anthropologist Margaret Mead wrote at the end of her life:
Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family
to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support,
we've put it in an impossible situation. (Margaret Mead, New Realities,
June 1978) (Harper 2005)
The house is located down in the
valley, the lowest place during the film. The film begins with Johnny and
Barbara ascending into a graveyard at the top of the hill but forces Barbara
and the others to find shelter and safety. This descent leads all the way to
the basement, ironically the safest place in the house despite Ben – the ‘hero’
of the story – having labelled it a “death trap.” The house itself functions
merely as a setting for human conflict instead of transforming itself into
somewhat a supernatural force. “Its simple, daily, practical nature is
transformed by necessity into that of a fortress, a last barrier against the
forces of destruction.” (Waller 1987: 18) The idea of it being ordinary and
real comes into place once more. It can however be argued that its practical
nature however does have a role in the deaths of four of the seven characters:
Helen, Harry, Tom and Judy. Helen is viciously murdered by her own daughter
with a garden trowel located in the basement while Harry is shot by Ben with a
rifle found in the house. Tom and Judy die when trying to make their escape
with a truck. The truck belonging to the farm gets lit by an accidental spill
of gasoline and with the truck almost literally grabbing hold of Judy’s shirt,
the couple bursts into flames.
Romero
is very critical with the film’s characters and offers little hope to anyone at
all. “The idea of the family is perhaps more harshly assaulted than any other
in the film.” (ibid: 28) Despite all characters being completely different,
there is no ‘right’ per se – everyone fails. Johnny and Barbara are siblings,
Tom and Judy a young couple, Harry and Helen a married couple and Ben a loner. Ben
may appear to be the most reasonable, articulate and intelligent of the bunch,
but he too has his faults and fails miserably. “[The film] depicts the failure
of the nuclear family, the private home, the teenage couple, and the
resourceful individual hero.” (ibid :4) It is necessary to pay a close analysis
to the families in the film, starting with Johnny and Barbara. A recurring
theme in Night of the Living Dead is
religion. The story begins on a Sunday when the siblings arrive at a cemetery
to place a wreath on their father’s grave on the behalf of their mother as a
religious ritual. Johnny’s childlike annoyance of a ritual he regards as
outdated is taken out on Barbara who takes the task in hand seriously, even
feeling the need to give a prayer, which Johnny once more rejects. Johnny’s
blasphemy and lack of respect for the dead of triggers him as the film’s first
victim, however in a courageous manner. The playfulness of the scene indicates
the love-hate relationship present with any brother and sister. He may appear
to be incredibly insensitive and boyish, but when the pair is attacked by the
first living dead, his struggle gives Barbara the opportunity for escape. While
she escapes unscathed physically, her psychological traumas lead her to her
demise. She appears vulnerable without her brother, unable to function until
Ben talks some sense into her. When the house is being assaulted by a group of
marauding zombies, she gets distracted when noticing that Johnny is among the
living dead and, ironically, dies by the hand of her own flesh and blood.
If Romero critiques the loss of faith within the youth, he certainly no less critiques the very values lost in an American nuclear family. Another recurring theme in the film is one of the very reasons of the success of the modern horror film – the shattering of taboo. This new mode of seeking pleasure through that which in reality is seen as forbidden certainly created excitement for the younger audience. Harry and Helen is a married couple but the glue holding the marriage together is their daughter Karen. There are many elements in the film that suggest an unhappy marriage, primarily through Helen, who is very much kept quiet by Harry’s hostility. Helen seems to be the sensible one of the Cooper family, but Harry’s egotistical rivalry with Ben seems more important to him than his family and dying daughter. “[Helen’s] desire to save the child gives her strength to use her bitterness as a weapon against her husband. “We may not enjoy living together... but dying together isn’t going to solve anything.”” (ibid: 20) The couple are separated when alive and eventually die separately as well. Ironically, once more, it is the better of the two, Helen, who suffers the more brutal death. Her love for her living dead daughter proves to be unconditional and refuses to kill her, even though she is merely walking flesh. She does nothing to prevent Karen from stabbing her numerous times with a garden trowel and merely accepts her fate as loving mother. The lack of authentic connection within the nuclear family is further emphasized through the death of Harry, who when shot by Ben receives no emotional reaction from Helen. Harry to Helen might as well have been one among the walking dead.
Romero’s
treatment of its teenage lovers Tom and Judy is perhaps the harshest of them
all. The changing thematic of the 1960s horror film no longer recognised the heroism
of the post-war teen generation. “The two characters in the house would have
been the romantic hero and heroine if this had been a 1950s teenage horror
film.” (ibid: 20) Post-1968 horror started to introduce such films dedicated
directly at a teenage demographic as ‘slice-and-dice’ and ‘teenie-kill’ films,
which owes much to Night of the Living
Dead’s success. If the deaths of Harry and Helen were cold with the married
couple dying alone, Tom and Judy on the other hand die together in an almost
romantic and poetic fiery death. Like Helen, Judy’s fate also is decided by her
insistence to follow her loved one. If it was not for Judy’s stubborn desire to
follow her love, their fates would have been different. Their deaths however,
serve no purpose or play a role as sacrificial deaths. No one benefits from
their disintegration in any shape, form or fashion. They are also well-mannered
and well-groomed individuals, yet still end up firstly blown up to ashes and secondly
eaten by the living dead. In the defence of the couple, it can be argued that
since there is little hope to mankind, being reduced to ashes is the better
option rather than turning into an emotionless zombie once killed.
Individualism
is the closest any character gets to survival. The lack of family cuts Ben away
from any emotional ties distracting one’s survival. Out of the whole gang he is
about the average age; old enough not be as naive as Tom and young enough not
to be as bitter and narcissistic as Harry. He clearly encompasses leadership
qualities and practical skills. He beats three of the living dead to death with
a tire iron and creates a torch from a chair and curtain to scare the dead
away. While it may appear that he is trying to act as the hero and aid the
survival of everyone in the house, his only real concern is that of his own.
When Barbara is in shock after losing her brother, her inadequacy to cope with
the situation puts his life into jeopardy, forcing him to deal with the
situation by slapping her on the face. Similarly when Harry starts to become a
serious hazard, he rather cold-bloodedly shoots him. Despite Ben’s survival of
the night of the living dead, he much
like the deep-rooted irony of Romero’s film dies the following morning. “Ben’s
fate is the final turn of the screw. Mistaken for one of them...Ben dies in the
daylight after having survived the night of the living dead.” (Waller 1985: 295)
Ben’s death is perhaps the hardest to decipher because he does almost
everything correctly, but ultimately
Ben’s death is the final stage in this movement [of despair and tragedy], after Romero has shown us failure of tradition and religious faith...the inadequacy of communal action and romantic love; the self-consuming destructiveness of familial ties; and the vulnerability the private home. (ibid: 296)
To
conclude, 1968 proved to be a significant year to the horror genre in general.
While censorship laws became increasingly less strict, the timing of Romero’s
film could not have been released at a better time. While its main function was
to entertain, the themes which I have explored certainly criticised the modern
state of the home and family-life in post-war America. Romero found a new way
of scaring audiences by creating a certain realism that people could relate to.
After individually analysing each character in detail, it is easy to conclude
that Romero’s pessimism was based on his views about mankind’s faults. The
house is only an institution destined for destruction, not by an outer force,
but by humans’ inner battles. If there ever is anything optimistic to be found
from the film’s characters, ironically, it does not survive. It can be argued
also in terms of entertainment and scare-factor that this creates a fine
setting for locating the horror genre, so it comes with no surprise that
Romero’s films following Night of the
Living Dead were even more pessimistic.
Bibliography
Book Sources
Grant, B.K. (ed.) (1996) Planks of Reason: Essays on the Horror Film. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press.
Waller, G.A. (1985) The Living and the Undead: From Stoker’s
Dracula to Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Waller, G.A. (ed.) (1987) American Horrors: Essays on the Modern
American Horror Film. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Online Sources
Harper, S. (2005) Night of the Living Dead: Reappraising an Undead Classic. [Online]
Available from: http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/50/night.htm
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