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.