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Apocalyptic
Horror
Zombie movie
Road Movie
Drama
A love story
Family Drama
Zombie
What is a zombie movie? 3 Things
What are some similarities and differences between these characters and the zombies of NOTLD?
Why does this reviewer suggest that The Road is a Zombie Film? Pick out 3 points
A number of reviewers compared The Road to zombie movies, usually disparagingly, as in a "zombie movie with pretensions" or a "glorified zombie movie." It's an accurate comparison, although for me it has more to do with Chabon's recognition of the book's roots in the stark violence of Grand Guignol horror than in a cheap genre shot at a would-be art movie. Zombie movies are the starkest and bleakest of horror, and films such as Romero's original Night of the Living Dead or Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers are as unremittingly negative as commercial filmmaking has ever come. In this, they do resemble the '70s apocalyptic science fiction to which The Road superficially belongs, but, like The Road, they are far more despairing and far more existential than films such as Soylent Green, Beyond the Planet of the Apes, or The Omega Man. What The Road especially shares with the old-school zombie films is its focus on the space of the house as simultaneously a space of shelter and domesticity and the source of the greatest terror and evil. When the victims in the cellar turn on Man and Boy and pursue them up the cellar stairs, Hillcoat shoots them in rapid horror-film bursts; then we glimpse through the window the four captors striding menacingly through the fields toward the house in a visual echo of Night of the Living Dead and countless other rural zombie films. Hillcoat has recourse to a similar shot in the final horror set-piece, where father and son's discovery of a killing field outside a country shack cuts to a wide shot of a whole line of cannibal hunters slowly and silently closing in on a distressingly "normal" (read: running and screaming) young mother and child. Famously, Romero's series of films became more and more explicitly a commentary on the alienation of contemporary consumer culture, just as Siegel's film had pointedly taken on the redbaiting witch-hunting of the '50s. Like The Road, these films also had serious subtexts at work.
What The Road especially shares with the old-school zombie films is its focus on the space of the house as simultaneously a space of shelter and domesticity and the source of the greatest terror and evil.
What does the cellar represent in NOTLD? What does the cellar represent in The
Title: Masculinity
Lesson Objectives To explore masculinity in both of the films
To symbolically castrate. To deprive of masculinity, strength or vigor A society lead by men Having qualities traditionally ascribed to men, as strength and boldness.
Can you apply any of these words to characters within the films?
Representations of Masculinity
Get yourselves into small mixed gender groups. Draw a stereotypical masculine man and annotate
Here are a few questions for you to consider What job do they do? What are the important relationships in their life? What is their body like? What clothes do they wear? What colours are they? What is their personality like? What do they enjoy doing? What are their beliefs?
Complete the following sentence.
Masculinity is
Thinks about.
Looks like.
Works as a.
Masculinity is
Wears
Masculine
Effeminate
Feminine
Apply these key words to the characters Masculine Patriarchal Patriarchy Emasculated
NOTLD
Harry Cooper
Barbra
Johnny
Zombie
Helen Cooper
Ben
Judy
Tom
Karen Cooper
The Road
The Boy
The Man
The Woman
60s Masculinity
00s Masculinity
Apply these key words to the characters Masculine Patriarchal Patriarchy Emasculated
Emotion is feminine so men have to show no emotion To show fear is a sign of weakness A quiet man of few words but mighty deeds The saviour therefore morally right
Whitehead and Barrett
How well do the central protagonists in in The Road and NOTLD fit this stereotype?
In Tough Guise: Violence, Media and the Crisis in Masculinity, Jackson Katz and Jeremy Earp Argue:
How far do The Road and NOTLD portray violence as an expression of masculinity?
Homework
Questions: How far do the male characters in NOTLD and The Road adhere to the stereotypes of male protagonists in Hollywood films as outlined by Whitehead and Barrett?
Emotion is feminine so men have to show no emotion To show fear is a sign of weakness A quiet man of few words but mighty deeds The male is the saviour therefore morally right
Whitehead and Barrett
Structure
Intro- What is masculinity? How has masculinity changes since the 1960s? Who came up with these points?
Paragraph 1- Emotion is feminine so men have to show no emotion Could you apply this to Characters in the Road NOTLD? Why/ Why not?
Paragraph 2- To show fear is a sign of weakness on Could you apply this to Characters in the Road NOTLD? Why/ Why not? Paragraph 3- A quiet man of few words but mighty deeds Could you apply this to Characters in the Road NOTLD? Why/ Why not? Paragraph 4- The male is the saviour therefore morally right Could you apply this to Characters in the Road NOTLD? Why/ Why not? Conclusion- do these descriptors adhere to the male protagonists of the films or not?