Gomez Linda Gomez Dr Lynda Haas October 28, 2013 Genre Essay Zombie Birth In Amanda Hocking's Hollowland

it is mentioned, "This is the way the world ends; not

with a bang or a whimper, but with zombies breaking down the back door"(1). Genre is the style in which genre conventions are used. Every film, novel, and book is associated with a genre or even with multiple. In Noel Carroll's, The Nature of Horror he explains, "In works of horror, the humans regard the monsters that they encounter as abnormal, as disturbances of the natural order"(52). The horror genre engages the audience throughout the film, providing suspense, and makes them experience emotions the characters on screen are, with them being emotions of horror, disgust, terror, or paranoia. A subgenre of horror, comes the zombie genre. The zombie genre is a relatively fresh new genre, whose origin began in 1968, after the release of George A. Romero's film, Night of the Living Dead. It gives a twist to the typical horror film. According to Kyle Bishop's, Zombie Renaissance, "Dead Man Still Walking", "These genre protocols include not only the zombies and the imminent threat of violent deaths, but also a post apocalyptic backdrop, the collapse of societal infrastructures, the indulgence of survivalist fantasies, and the fear of other surviving humans"(20). The zombie contains many conventions found in horror, but branches out to express individuality. The audience can expect to see most of what Kyle Bishop has mentioned in everything zombie related. Together these definitions are demonstrated in Zack Synder's Dawn of the Dead. In Snyder's 2004 remake of George Romero's classic zombie thriller Dawn of the Dead, Ana and a group of survivors shelter themselves from the apocalypse

Gomez in a shopping mall, with hopes of escaping to an island that is zombie-free. Following the group

of survivors, we can see how humans are capable of being just as monstrous as the zombies they are trying to defeat. Dawn of the Dead includes zombie and horror film conventions throughout the film, the focus will be on the initial response to the zombie apocalypse. The film also provides an unconventional twist: a pregnant woman, recently turned zombie, give birth to a zombie baby girl. A classic zombie convention is the character's initial response to the Apocalypse. In the first opening minutes of the film, Ana is working at the hospital, and there is a patient in ICU for a bite, which is very peculiar, but bypassing it. She then, heads outside to see the paramedics leaving for a call, and on the car ride back home she unknowingly changes the radio on a news report on the outbreak. When Ana heads outside there is the use of post synchronizing dubbing of adding non-diegetic (not from the film) suspenseful eerie music, to set the mood for the audience that something is odd and not right regarding the situation. Then as the ambulances produce direct sound into the film with their sirens, this almost for tells something huge is about to occur. Ana is still unaware of anything, changes the car radio on a special news report, missing it. This convention is seen in most zombie films, when characters fail to believe or to pay attention to signs that could had saved them. Ana missed all the indications in the beginning, she may had survived, but her husband could had also, if she had caught on earlier. Dawn of the Dead brings into light an unconventional twist in the zombie genre: a pregnant Luda giving birth to a hideous zombie creature. Luda, one of the survivors in the mall, was pregnant upon the zombie take over, she however turns into a zombie during labor, and to Andre's surprise he is now the father of a zombie baby girl. During the scene, the mise-en-scene includes the baby store as the setting, it is in very low lighting, which can be contradictory for

Gomez the baby store gives us feeling it is going to be a normal baby, but the underexposed lighting makes the audience question what will happen, adding suspense. After, the baby is born; the camera zooms to an extreme close up of the zombie baby's face. In this shot, the audience is

shown the eyes, and we see all the characteristic of the appearance of a zombie, but in miniature form. The diegetic sound of the zombies baby's squeal, gives uncertainty to the audience knowing this baby is not safe, and can cause damage like the rest of it's adult zombie counterparts. As the baby zombie creature is about to get shot by Ana, there is a shallow focus shot, where the zombie baby is in the background blurred, and the focus in the gun and Ana's hand. The baby is shot in the head, following the convention of how zombies can be killed, only by being shot in the head. This twist is a new starting point in the zombie genre, leading new zombie filmmakers to follow in its convention of how zombies can be made zombies. The zombie genre has exploded in recent years, and become overwhelmingly popular in our culture today. The scale of popularity for zombie movies increased dramatically after the terrorist attacks on 9/11. In Kyle Bishop's, Zombie Renaissance he proposes," Zombie movies represent inescapable realities of unnatural death while presenting a grim view of the modern apocalypse through scenes of deserted streets, piles of corpses, and gangs of vigilantes--images that have become increasingly common"(Bishop 17). His reasoning explains why terrorism has increased fascination in zombie films. Zombie films show our cultural anxieties and the paranoia of our consciousness, like how we are not safe like most of us through we were in America. Following the release of Dawn of the Dead, zombie films came pouring out since. Dawn of the Dead fits closely with the zombie and horror genre. This film brought about many other remakes of old zombie films. George A. Romero made the setting of the original film in a shopping mall to illustrate his view on consumerism and capitalism. He attempted to

Gomez illustrate the parallel in saying mankind is like zombies, when it comes to consumerism. In the film through the conventions of zombie and horror, the genre definitions can be discovered and are greatly applied to make the Dawn of the Dead a compelling remake of Romero's original.

Gomez Works Cited

Bishop, Kyle. Dead Man Still Walking: Explaining the Zombie Renaissance. Heldref Publications, 2009. Carroll, Noel. The Nature Of Horror. The American Society of Aesthetics. Hocking, Amanda. Hollowland. Createspaces, 2010.