Analysis Of Dawn Of The Dead

1466 Words3 Pages

Ricardo Fortuna
Cultural Studies and Pop Arts
Dr. Kurt Fawyer

Historical Analysis on horror on Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Introduction
This paper dwells on historical analysis of the horror on Dawn of the Dead film. This film is also known as Zombi. It is an American independent action horror film produced under the directorship of George A. Romero. The script was written by Romero and Dario Argento and produced by Claudio Argento, Alfredo Cuomo, and Richard P. Rubinstein. The film presents phenomena of an unidentified source that has caused the reanimation of the dead who eat human flesh and thereby causes mass hysteria. The film was made over about four months from the late 1977-1978 in Pennsylvanian cities of Monroeville and Pittsburgh. …show more content…

The Zombie catastrophe has captured more victims and spread from the countryside to the whole of Pennsylvania. They are everywhere and eventually outnumber the humans in the film. The dawn begins in the television studio as well as the housing project in Philadelphia. Eventually it moves to the shopping mall outside the city to show the suburban society instead of the rural society shown during the night. Here, Romero critiques the consumption of the society equating the Zombies to the mindless consumers, by using the zombies who are in the mall by instinct and alluding to the way American society’s consumer-oriented approach at the time. The incidences at the mall depict the opinion that everyone is participating in the capitalist system by trying to acquire more things. Romero thus dwells on the consumerism aspect of the American society where and the zombies represent the mindless in the society who go around searching for goods to define their lives instead of minding about the people around them (Bailey 98). The theme of racism and capitalism is depicted when police raid the minorities and the zombies who equate capitalism to the marginalization of …show more content…

The postindustrial American society defined themselves with reference to the goods they owned and not how much hard work they had put into the production of the goods. At the time, striving for material goods was a defining factor in individuals’ lives based on the television and advertising practices at the time. The society viewed shopping malls as crucial places of commerce and places from which people define themselves. Incidentally, all malls were built as consumption places and not places for production activities. As such, there were places for final consumers of goods and services. In other words, the society spent hours eating, relaxing and shopping in the malls, the convenience of worry zones as well as living a consumer’s dream. The notion that the consumer would always want to consume more of goods every time, was thus

Open Document