Part Two: Dawn of the Dead
Dawn of the Dead, which was made in 1978, picked up where Night left off: a world thrown into chaos at the hands of the living dead. Instead of dealing with issues such as racism and a crumbling family unit, Romero has, instead, used gentrification, consumerism with a hint of morality as his main subtext. Consumerism has a more prominent role in this film, but Romero used gentrification as his set up of the film.
Dawn follows the plight of four people on the run from the carnivorous horde plaguing the city of Philadelphia. There are two couples here: Stephen, a helicopter pilot for WGON, and Fran, a producer for WGON. They are lovers who were planning to start a life together. The other two are Peter and Roger who worked as SWAT for the city. Dawn opens with a television studio, you guessed it, as chaotic as what is going on outside of the studio. They are filming a “talk show” trying to figure out what is happening and how to stop it. What is interesting is that morality of the situation seemed to be the hot button issue and why the disaster had spun out of control. One can parallel this to modern day media where morality seems to be the justification to why the world is where it is today. Another aspect in the opening scene that also parallels today’s media is confusion that arises over a catastrophic event. One example of confusion in today’s media is 9/11 and the events following. It’s not to say that Romero was foreshadowing how today’s media handles situations in the world and it’s events. Like Night and Dawn who tries to explain the phenomena with explanations of voodoo to an outer space virus whereas today’s media tries to put into context of world conflicts as everything from opposition to western freedom to the gay lifestyle. One fine example of this choice in morality comes from the station manager who has kept up an old list of stations that serve people trying to seek shelter from the living dead even though some of the stations have closed for whatever reason. Fran tells the board operator to put up an updated list.
Here is the dialogue between the two:
Fran: Are you willing to murder people by sending them to places that have closed down.
Mr. Berman: Every minute that list isn’t up, people won’t watch us, they’ll tune out.
Mr. Berman has the mindset that the station is still going for ratings and not that it is just an emergency broadcast station. This isn’t too far from today’s media which has the mindset that they are all about the ratings and not what they are there for.
We then go into the second scene where the SWAT is stationed around a public housing high-rise waiting out a standoff between leaders of the housing high-rise and the negotiators. The whole scene in the apartment building is a metaphor for gentrification at that time. The military acting as the housing authority pushing its residence into central areas of the city much like it was back in the late seventies and early eighties. In one scene, there was an explanation for why the tenants kept its dead in the basement.
“They still believe there’s a respect in dying,” says Peter. The dying could be construed as the gentrification of all major U.S. cities at the time where the lower income families were being forced into the cities while the upper class were moving away from the cities.
After awhile, the four land on the roof of an indoor mall. It was the late seventies and the indoor mall was a new concept in the lives of consumers. The mall would be a key character in DOTD. For the rest of the film, all characters would represent an aspect of the consumer culture of America.
“What are they doing? Why do they come here?” Fran asks Steven.
“Some kind of instinct, a memory. What they used to do. This was an important place in their lives.”
Steven’s line invokes a subtext that is prevalent in the rest of the film; that the zombies are representatives of the consumer collective. Romero says on the commentary found on the theatrical cut of the film that, “It is a satire on consumerism. We want all this stuff. It isn’t enough and somebody wants it too.”
Tom Savini, who was the head make-up artist, stuntman, and plays Blades at the end, reinforces Romero’s comment about the consumers and how the commentary still holds up to the present, “go to a shopping mall today and there are zombies walking around lulled by the muzak into shopping.”
Even of the close-ups on the zombies, you see their wide-eyes staring ahead turning slowly trudgingly toward the hall of shops ahead. There is even a hare chrisna zombie that subconsciously reflect a sort of religious rite of being in the mall.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Living in a World of Excess: The Living Dead Quadrology of George A. Romero
George A. Romero’s most identifiable work came during a time when America was being reshaped. Romero’s four films showed an underlying subtext of: capitalism, economical, gentrification, and geopolitical points of view. Romero’s living dead was not only the medium for which he used to underscore this ideal, but his living dead was also his metaphor for explaining his rational in each of his four films.
Night of the Living Dead, which came out in 1968, was the first film in which Romero showed a world thrown into chaos. This point never more clear from the first scenes of the film in which we see a car driving up on a gravel road heading toward a cemetery. We are introduced to Johnny and Barbara, brother and sister, who have come to lay flowers at their father’s grave. As Barbara prays, Johnny begins to tell a story about the times that they used to come up here when they were children. Johnny goes on to tell Barbara how he used to scare her. It is the classic story of an older sibling scaring his younger sibling.
"They are coming to get you Barbara," Johnny says to Barbara, who is soon attacked by a zombie. Johnny tries to stop the zombie only to come up short in that fight. Barbara runs away as fast as she can. Romero once said of his quadrology that the zombies represent, "the new society eating the old society." Barbara's running represents her running away from her old world. Barbara, herself, represented the classic 50's woman.
Barbara finds a farmhouse, a symbol of rural America and a part of the American dream, and barricades herself inside. Later, she runs into Ben. At this point, Barbara is catatonic; a sort of silence that represents a segue into what the world is slowly evolving into. Ben, an African-American, soon takes over and boards up the house. Night represented something that was unheard of in the film industry at the time and that was having an African-American actor playing the lead in a film. Night was released after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The fact that an African-American played the lead also reinforces Romero’s ideology of the “new society eating the old society.”
As the film goes on, we are introduced to five new characters: Tom and Judy, a young twenty-some couple, and Harry, Helen Cooper and their daughter Karen, who has been bitten by a zombie. Harry does represent the “old society” in being a racist. Harry wants to do things his way and sees Ben as a threat. Harry and Helen Cooper represents the ideal of a nuclear family, but as the film goes on, we are made aware that their marriage has already fallen apart. “We may not like living together, but dying together isn’t going to help things,” says Helen Cooper. We are made aware that they may have only stayed married for the sake of their daughter, which was common among couples back in those days.
The characters: Tom and Judy represent another kind of couple and that is the young unmarried lovers. They act as a kind of moderator between Ben and Harry who engage in a struggle for control of the house and the fate of the people inside. Tom is the voice of reason between the two. Night, among other things, is a study of human relationships. We are given three sets of couples who represent the spectrum of human dependency. I mentioned that Harry and Helen depend on each other to raise their daughter. Tom and Judy, the young lovers who depend on each other for support. Barbara who relies on Ben for protection and Ben relies on Barbara for having someone to protect.
The fighting inside represent a microcosm of what was going on in the United States at the time. Like I mentioned before, the zombies represent a sort of change in the social structure of America, while inside Ben and Harry fight to establish their own identity of how things should be run.
The people inside eventually come to the agreement of getting out of the farmhouse. The plan fails when Tom and Judy are killed. We are shown a shot of the zombies, one by one, feeding on a little bit of the young couple. A countenance of the old taking back some of the new society.
Ben staggers back to the house weaving through a hoard of zombies. The conflict between him and Harry escalates into Ben shooting Harry which is his own way of bringing in a new society. The zombies at this point have started to overrun this new society that the people inside turning into. Harry manages to find his way into the cellar where he wanted to be in the first place and collapses on the floor. Helen finds her way down to the cellar only to find her daughter feasting on daddy. Helen soon falls victim to her daughter as well. The killing of the parents at the hands of their daughter represents the beginning of a time where kids were becoming more independent and less reliant on their parents.
The zombies have now gotten inside. Barbara, breaking out of her state, tries to hold back the group. She, in turn, breaking out of her 50’s role and asserting herself. We now have Johnny coming back to get her sister. The zombies run off with Barbara essentially destroying the ideal women of the 50’s.
At the end of the film, we are shown images of a posse that is formed for hunting down the zombies. We are shown bloodhounds and their handlers hunting down these zombies. It is an image that was too often shown during the civil rights movement. Romero said that he did not intend for this analogy. The final shot we are given is Ben coming out from the cellar and being shot right in the head mistakenly for a zombie. We are then shown a number of stills depicting the posse posing with the bodies of the dead.
Night is a film that delves into issues that were prevalent when the film came out. The film holds up today as a masterpiece and the issues of that time still hold water to this day.
Next: Dawn of the Dead: A film that deals with issues of gentrification, and consumerism.
Night of the Living Dead, which came out in 1968, was the first film in which Romero showed a world thrown into chaos. This point never more clear from the first scenes of the film in which we see a car driving up on a gravel road heading toward a cemetery. We are introduced to Johnny and Barbara, brother and sister, who have come to lay flowers at their father’s grave. As Barbara prays, Johnny begins to tell a story about the times that they used to come up here when they were children. Johnny goes on to tell Barbara how he used to scare her. It is the classic story of an older sibling scaring his younger sibling.
"They are coming to get you Barbara," Johnny says to Barbara, who is soon attacked by a zombie. Johnny tries to stop the zombie only to come up short in that fight. Barbara runs away as fast as she can. Romero once said of his quadrology that the zombies represent, "the new society eating the old society." Barbara's running represents her running away from her old world. Barbara, herself, represented the classic 50's woman.
Barbara finds a farmhouse, a symbol of rural America and a part of the American dream, and barricades herself inside. Later, she runs into Ben. At this point, Barbara is catatonic; a sort of silence that represents a segue into what the world is slowly evolving into. Ben, an African-American, soon takes over and boards up the house. Night represented something that was unheard of in the film industry at the time and that was having an African-American actor playing the lead in a film. Night was released after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The fact that an African-American played the lead also reinforces Romero’s ideology of the “new society eating the old society.”
As the film goes on, we are introduced to five new characters: Tom and Judy, a young twenty-some couple, and Harry, Helen Cooper and their daughter Karen, who has been bitten by a zombie. Harry does represent the “old society” in being a racist. Harry wants to do things his way and sees Ben as a threat. Harry and Helen Cooper represents the ideal of a nuclear family, but as the film goes on, we are made aware that their marriage has already fallen apart. “We may not like living together, but dying together isn’t going to help things,” says Helen Cooper. We are made aware that they may have only stayed married for the sake of their daughter, which was common among couples back in those days.
The characters: Tom and Judy represent another kind of couple and that is the young unmarried lovers. They act as a kind of moderator between Ben and Harry who engage in a struggle for control of the house and the fate of the people inside. Tom is the voice of reason between the two. Night, among other things, is a study of human relationships. We are given three sets of couples who represent the spectrum of human dependency. I mentioned that Harry and Helen depend on each other to raise their daughter. Tom and Judy, the young lovers who depend on each other for support. Barbara who relies on Ben for protection and Ben relies on Barbara for having someone to protect.
The fighting inside represent a microcosm of what was going on in the United States at the time. Like I mentioned before, the zombies represent a sort of change in the social structure of America, while inside Ben and Harry fight to establish their own identity of how things should be run.
The people inside eventually come to the agreement of getting out of the farmhouse. The plan fails when Tom and Judy are killed. We are shown a shot of the zombies, one by one, feeding on a little bit of the young couple. A countenance of the old taking back some of the new society.
Ben staggers back to the house weaving through a hoard of zombies. The conflict between him and Harry escalates into Ben shooting Harry which is his own way of bringing in a new society. The zombies at this point have started to overrun this new society that the people inside turning into. Harry manages to find his way into the cellar where he wanted to be in the first place and collapses on the floor. Helen finds her way down to the cellar only to find her daughter feasting on daddy. Helen soon falls victim to her daughter as well. The killing of the parents at the hands of their daughter represents the beginning of a time where kids were becoming more independent and less reliant on their parents.
The zombies have now gotten inside. Barbara, breaking out of her state, tries to hold back the group. She, in turn, breaking out of her 50’s role and asserting herself. We now have Johnny coming back to get her sister. The zombies run off with Barbara essentially destroying the ideal women of the 50’s.
At the end of the film, we are shown images of a posse that is formed for hunting down the zombies. We are shown bloodhounds and their handlers hunting down these zombies. It is an image that was too often shown during the civil rights movement. Romero said that he did not intend for this analogy. The final shot we are given is Ben coming out from the cellar and being shot right in the head mistakenly for a zombie. We are then shown a number of stills depicting the posse posing with the bodies of the dead.
Night is a film that delves into issues that were prevalent when the film came out. The film holds up today as a masterpiece and the issues of that time still hold water to this day.
Next: Dawn of the Dead: A film that deals with issues of gentrification, and consumerism.
Return of the Living Dead
There have been more than a handful of films that pay homage or been influenced one way or another by George A. Romero. The Return of the Living Dead, not only pays homage to Romero, but bases its film around Romero's masterpiece Night of the Living Dead.
Return of the Living Dead was released in 1985 without much fanfare in the zombie genre, but has steadily become a cult hit among fans of the genre. The story revolves around a medical supply warehouse and its two employees: Frank, played by character actor James Karen, and Freddy, played by Thom Matthews (grown up Tommy in the Friday the 13th series). Frank is showing Freddy the ropes at the warehouse when Frank confides in Freddy that "Night of the Living Dead" was based on a true incident.
Apparently, one of the reanimated corpses was put into a barrel and accidentally shipped to the warehouse where it is still housed.
Frank takes Freddy down to show him the barrel, but they end up releasing the corpses while at the same time breathe in the fumes from the barrel. Time passes and the two wake up and find out that some of their stock has suddenly come back to life.
One scene involves a test cadaver being reanimated. The other part of the movie focuses on a group of punks who are going to meet Freddy after he gets off work. One of the more memorable scenes from Return involves Trash, played by B-horror movie icon Linnea Quigley, as she does a strip tease while shouting her manifesto of what she fantasizes about happening to her. It's safe to say that she gets her wish.
Fast forward and the film moves into Frank calling his boss Burt, played by film veteran Clu Gulager, and telling him what happened. Burt decides to take the reanimated cadaver to the crematorium where Burt's friend Ernie, played by Don Calfa, runs the place. They turn the body into ashes, but the smoke that comes out is carried through the air and an ensuing rain washes it down to the nearby cemetery and here is where the film gets going.
Basically, the dead return to life, but only crave the brain of the living. All hell breaks loose and everyone is split up. We get the fundamentals of the zombie genre with Return of the Living Dead, but with a new twist: they crave brains instead of the rest of the body. Return is a great film because it tries to rework the whole genre without betraying its roots.
Return of the Living Dead was released in 1985 without much fanfare in the zombie genre, but has steadily become a cult hit among fans of the genre. The story revolves around a medical supply warehouse and its two employees: Frank, played by character actor James Karen, and Freddy, played by Thom Matthews (grown up Tommy in the Friday the 13th series). Frank is showing Freddy the ropes at the warehouse when Frank confides in Freddy that "Night of the Living Dead" was based on a true incident.
Apparently, one of the reanimated corpses was put into a barrel and accidentally shipped to the warehouse where it is still housed.
Frank takes Freddy down to show him the barrel, but they end up releasing the corpses while at the same time breathe in the fumes from the barrel. Time passes and the two wake up and find out that some of their stock has suddenly come back to life.
One scene involves a test cadaver being reanimated. The other part of the movie focuses on a group of punks who are going to meet Freddy after he gets off work. One of the more memorable scenes from Return involves Trash, played by B-horror movie icon Linnea Quigley, as she does a strip tease while shouting her manifesto of what she fantasizes about happening to her. It's safe to say that she gets her wish.
Fast forward and the film moves into Frank calling his boss Burt, played by film veteran Clu Gulager, and telling him what happened. Burt decides to take the reanimated cadaver to the crematorium where Burt's friend Ernie, played by Don Calfa, runs the place. They turn the body into ashes, but the smoke that comes out is carried through the air and an ensuing rain washes it down to the nearby cemetery and here is where the film gets going.
Basically, the dead return to life, but only crave the brain of the living. All hell breaks loose and everyone is split up. We get the fundamentals of the zombie genre with Return of the Living Dead, but with a new twist: they crave brains instead of the rest of the body. Return is a great film because it tries to rework the whole genre without betraying its roots.
An Ideology of Fear: Prince of Darkness
Arguably one of John Carpenter’s most underappreciated and underated films of his career, Carpenter delves into theology, science, and mixes in a skeptic paranoia that produces an effective and horrifying experience for his audience.
Prince of Darkness, which was released in 1987, tells the story of a priest that discovers a mysterious cylinder in the basement of an abandoned church. The priest enlists the help of physics graduate students to explain the cylinder and end up opening up a doorway that they could only imagined in their worst nightmare.
POD was a film before it’s time. Carpenter ‘s film broke away from the conventional horror film that only explained evil in black and white terms like William Friedken’s The Exorcist or Lucio Fulci’s The Gates of Hell. In those two films, it was the devil or zombies that were the root of the evil throughout the film.
One of the most fascinating aspect of POD is how science is incorporated into this film. Carpenter doesn’t try to justify this as just a good vs. evil type of film. He uses science as another explanation in the film to give reason for the cylinder. There are two sides on the issue of the cylinder: one you have the theology aspect being explained by Father Loomis (played brilliantly by Donald Pleasance) and then the science aspect being explained by Professor Howard Birack (played by Victor Wong).
What makes POD even more horrific to sit through is the score done by both John Carpenter and Alan Horwath. Each scene has it’s own distinct underlay of music or sound. The music gives you the feeling of uneasiness like one feels something unearthly while they watch the film.
Prince of Darkness, which was released in 1987, tells the story of a priest that discovers a mysterious cylinder in the basement of an abandoned church. The priest enlists the help of physics graduate students to explain the cylinder and end up opening up a doorway that they could only imagined in their worst nightmare.
POD was a film before it’s time. Carpenter ‘s film broke away from the conventional horror film that only explained evil in black and white terms like William Friedken’s The Exorcist or Lucio Fulci’s The Gates of Hell. In those two films, it was the devil or zombies that were the root of the evil throughout the film.
One of the most fascinating aspect of POD is how science is incorporated into this film. Carpenter doesn’t try to justify this as just a good vs. evil type of film. He uses science as another explanation in the film to give reason for the cylinder. There are two sides on the issue of the cylinder: one you have the theology aspect being explained by Father Loomis (played brilliantly by Donald Pleasance) and then the science aspect being explained by Professor Howard Birack (played by Victor Wong).
What makes POD even more horrific to sit through is the score done by both John Carpenter and Alan Horwath. Each scene has it’s own distinct underlay of music or sound. The music gives you the feeling of uneasiness like one feels something unearthly while they watch the film.
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