Answered step-by-stepFilm critic Robin Wood, in a now famous essay, defined the true...
Film critic Robin Wood, in a now famous essay, defined the true subject of horror in the following way:
"One might say that the true subject of the horror genre is the struggle for recognition of all that our civilization represses or oppresses: its re-emergence dramatized, as in our nightmares, as an object of horror, a matter for terror, and the 'happy ending' (when it exists) typically signifying the restoration of repression."
Cohen also gets at this idea in his "Zombie Oriented Ontology":
"The zombie figures the return of the injustices we quietly practice against people we prefer to keep invisible, groups against whom violence and exclusion are systematically performed, the forgotten, exploited, and dehumanized who return. Zombies can also serve as an allegory for a culture in its entirety or the earth itself."
With this in mind, and armed with an understanding of the time period, discuss Night of the Living Dead in the context of repression and/or oppression. Please address the following questions in your post:
- How might Romero's zombies represent repression and/or oppression of the time?
- What about the humans trying to survive the night? How might they represent "the struggle for recognition of all that our civilization represses or oppresses"?
- The movie doesn't have a happy ending. But might it still signify the restoration of repression? If so, how? If not, why?
- Most of you probably weren't born in 1968. I wasn't. But I think this movie is still relevant today, particularly in what our culture oppresses and represses, "the injustices we quietly practice against people we prefer to keep invisible, groups against whom violence and exclusion are systematically performed, the forgotten, exploited, and dehumanized." Do you agree? Why or why not"?
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