Rotting Inside and Out: Night of the Living Dead and the Questions and Anxieties of 1960s American Cinema
spring 2017
“They’re coming to get you Barbara!”, Johnny teases towards the beginning of George A. Romero’s now iconic 1968 film, Night of the Living Dead. At this point in the film, no real danger has revealed itself. Still, it begs the question, who exactly does “They” refer to in the context of the film, and in late sixties America? Who is it that Barbara should be so afraid of? By the end of the film one is likely to conclude the answer: everyone. Night of the Living Dead is ground breaking and unique in many ways but it also includes itself in the conventions of American films of the time. It questions American values and traditions including religion, patriarchy, family, and technology. The film’s incredibly low $114,000 budget and relatively inexperienced cast and crew call for a questioning of what constitutes and what can be, a successful American film. It employs many of the style and techniques of other popular films of the period within a genre which is often dismissed in terms of artistic potential. Night of the Living Dead reflects many of the anxieties and fears of 1960s America and encourages viewers to question precisely where violence and danger resides in American life.
The film opens on a road, an American symbol of both socio-economic and geographic mobility which none of the characters will be able to access for the remainder of the film. The eerie music signals dread as siblings Johnny and Barbara drive into the cemetery where their father is buried. An American flag half heartedly flutters in the foreground of the shot, in line with a row of grave stones. This is the film’s first indication that there may be something rotten about values and institutions which are often thought of as central to American life. Its Sunday, and Barbara says to her brother, “I haven’t seen you in church lately.”. Old traditions and sacred rituals have been near lost or forgotten. There is an uneasiness surrounding the loss of traditional sources of morality and authority, perhaps most notably the home, the family, and the father.
Harry Cooper, a middle aged white man and father seems to embody a floundering version of patriarchal authority and masculinity in crisis. He is instantly threatened by Ben, who takes initiative in securing the house and planning escape. Unlike the other characters whose primary concern is survival, Harry’s main concern seems to be the reassertion of his own authority. As his wife Helen recognizes, “that’s important isn’t it… To be right, for everybody else to be wrong”. He is depicted as the most morally vacant character in the film. After Ben attempts to fill the truck with gas, Harry refuses to open the door to let him in, forcing Ben to kick it down. Perhaps most tellingly, when the zombies begin to break into the windows and doors Harry reaches for the gun instead of helping Ben hold them off. “I have to get that gun” he says. He needs to regain the phallic symbol of patriarchal authority which he perceives as being taken from him by a younger, black man. There is a perceived revolt against this older form of authority when Tom, the younger man, sides with Ben in his plan to stay upstairs. The youth have rejected the older form of authority which Harry feels entitled to. Harry’s impotence is further emphasized in relation to his wife Helen, who stays calm and acts logically in a crisis while Harry is erratic and emotional. But it is not only the father who is under scrutiny in Night of the Living Dead it is such central American institutions as the atomic family and the home.
In Kyle William Bishop’s American Zombie Gothic: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Walking Dead in Popular Culture he connects the fear of the walking dead with Sigmund Freud’s theory of the unheimlich (Bishop, 95). Freud writes that “the ‘uncanny’ is that class of terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar.” (Freud, 2). For Bishop, the primary source of the unheimlich in Night of the Living Dead stems from the zombies themselves. They are recognizable as the people we know and love but are monstrous and deformed (Bishop, 95). But beyond this Bishop notes that even the country home in which they seek shelter is rendered uncanny. It is this point which is much more relevant and interesting to the film and 1960s cinema more generally (Bishop, 96). He observes that in the film a quiet family home is transformed into both a fortress, and a prison. Depictions of the home and the family rendered uncanny are plentiful in the horror films of the late sixties and early seventies from Night of the Living Dead (1968), to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), and The Shining (1980). These examples are perhaps more true to Freud’s conception of the unheimlich than the case of rotting corpses walking the earth. Freud insists that the uncanny involves a revealing of something “hidden and secret” (Freud, 4). In this sense the source of the unheimlich does not manifest as a perverted version of something familiar, but reveals the perversion which has always been at the heart of the familiar. Instances of the uncanny are not limited to horror or science fiction but can be found in many films from this era where familiar institutions are questioned and something dark is revealed. In Night of the Living Dead its our most intimate social arrangements and institutions which are rendered uncanny.
Night of the Living Dead seems to suggests that there is something insidious, perhaps even violent at the heart of the atomic family. Barbara and Johnny’s sibling bickering is only the first, and least serious instance of family strife. Harry and Helen’s relationship hints at a loveless, or at least unhappy marriage held together by their daughter. And despite the more obvious danger, none of the film’s main characters are killed by the faceless zombie hoards which surround their shelter. Both Harry and Helen are killed violently by their own daughter who has been infected by the living dead before they made it to shelter. Barbara is killed when the zombies finally break into the house, but she is not grabbed by some unknown corpse, she is pulled out of the house by her now undead brother. Tom and Judy, are not killed by family members, but die together when they choose to stay inside the burning truck despite Ben’s urgent warnings. The film’s sense of danger does not come from some outside force imposing itself of the security of the family and the home. The fear comes from the fact that it could be the family and the home which represents true danger in the first place. Like many other films of the late sixties, violence and danger seem to be everywhere, even, and perhaps especially, within the institutions which are supposed to keep us safe.
Ben, the character with no direct familial ties in the film, survives the longest only to be shot down by the very search party who’s goal it is to save people. Ben is black, and the ending eerily reminds us of the relationship between black men and the police. What was likely a twist ending for many white viewers may have been all too predictable for some black or marginalized audiences. There is evidence for this reading in Duane Jones’ performance. He is not happy or relieved when he hears the police sirens and gunshots as he holds up in the cellar, he is cautious and skeptical. However, this kind of careful vigilance is in line with what we know of Ben’s character. But even after considering George Romero’s assertion that the casting of Jones was completely accidental and not meant to make a political point, the ending still functions as a bleak critique of officially endowed authorities (Williams, 26). This is not the only instance in the film where those in charge are painted as deceptive or ignorant. While watching the television for updates on what is being described as a “sudden general explosion of mass homicide” there is a conversation between a reporter, two scientists, and a military General. The scientists repeatedly try to tell the reporter that all the evidence indicates that the crisis on earth was caused by radiation brought back from space by a satellite. The General consistently sows doubt about this, acting as a propagandist trying to spin the story more favorably. This scene is relevant to the film’s relation to sixties America in a few ways. It hints at fears of the Military Industrial Complex that President Eisenhower had warned about in his farewell address near the end of the previous decade. He warns of a situation in which military interests drive economic, political, and academic activities instead of politicians, scientists, or the public. The mysteries of space would also likely be on the mind of American audiences, with the Apollo 11 Moon landing occurring only months before the film’s release. This relates to another aspect of nineteen-sixties American society which the film calls into question, the promises and pitfalls of modernity and technological progress.
Romero’s film is at best ambivalent about the redeeming powers of technology. Technology and information are often treated on equal footing as food in the character’s fight for survival. “We have a gun and bullets, food and radio”, Ben says as he attempts to reassure a catatonic Barbara. But technology often fails them and as discussed above, seems to have caused this horrific scenario. And a devout belief in the saving capabilities of technological innovation is as American as the atomic family and the suburban home. Perhaps the most iconically American of these technologies, the automobile, repeatedly fails or even kills the film’s characters. It is a car accident or malfunction which leads each of them to that empty house. Cars also carry symbolic weight in the American imagination as vehicles of freedom and mobility and the break down of their machinery signals a break down of what they signify. While the radio and television do deliver valuable information about the nature of their situation and how to kill the zombies, they too eventually fail when the power goes out just as the undead begin to break into the house. Furthermore, the fact that the violence was caused by space exploration, a category of technological and scientific progress especially relevant to the period, suggests a kind of retribution for going against nature. It is a consequence of meddling in things that are not fully understood. But its not just the cause of the violence which makes Night of the Living Dead so representative of this period in American cinema, it is also the nature and depiction of that violence.
Violence and danger in the film are depicted as inescapable, and omnipresent. In scenes where the hordes of living dead are attacking, they are shot from low angles and from relatively close up. The camera often slants towards one side or the other, emphasizing a sense of claustrophobia and disorientation. Like in many other sixties films, the violence is inescapable, all encompassing, and suffocating. While the film’s black and white stock prevent it from utilizing the bright red splashes of blood seen in films like Bonnie and Clyde and The Wild Bunch, it allows for a level of extreme and realistic gore. Bodies are shown falling or being cut apart. The zombies chew at and devour human flesh and bones while the heroes attempt to light them on fire. The only thing to rival these images of mutilated bodies for audiences would likely have come in the form of photographs from the conflict in Vietnam. The horrors of war could now be delivered to the public in magazines and on TV at unprecedented speeds. The film also utilizes many of the fast and abrupt editing techniques popular at the time. While the characters spend much of the film held up in the house, when they do rush outside, the cutting speed noticeably speeds up showing actions and reactions at an accelerated rate. The editing is utilized similarly when the gun is loaded and fired. The fast cuts mimic the mechanisms of the rifle. Perhaps most importantly the film is emblematic of the nineteen-sixties in that it ends in a flurry of violence and in a manner that is far from upbeat or traditionally satisfying. When Ben is shot dead by the police just as casually and indiscriminately as any of the zombies, the film switches to still images that likely resemble violent images Americans might see in the newspaper, either from their urban centers or from Vietnam. But as the men on the radio say, “the murders are taking place in villages, cities, rural homes, and suburbs, with no apparent pattern or reason for the slayings.” The violence feels ubiquitous, uncontainable, and arbitrary.
In both content and style, George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead is emblematic of the trends and tendencies of American cinema, and the social fears and anxieties of American culture in the late 1960s. It is not a purely progressive film—its depictions of women are limited to a mother, concerned girlfriend, and a hysteric sister who cannot cope with her emotions—but it still captures a feeling of social upheaval and uncertainty which resonated with audiences. As a low budget, independent film it is also representative of the kind of creative freedom and unplanned popular success that was able to flourish after the breakdown of vertical integration and studio block booking. It signals that trends of American cinema are not limited to Oscar nominees or art house pictures, but can be found in films that are made to entertain, thrill, and even just plain gross out. Night of the Living Dead is both incredibly effective, and deeply thoughtful in a way which is characteristic of the best films of the 1960s.
Works Cited
Bishop, Kyle William. American Zombie Gothic: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Walking Dead in Popular Culture. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010. Print.
Freud, Sigmund. The “Uncanny” (1919): n. pag. Web.
Williams, Tony. "Chapter 2: Night of the Living Dead." The Cinema of George A. Romero: Knight of the Living Dead. New York: Columbia UP, 2015. N. pag. Print.