Cultural Analysis of Night Of The Living Dead

Samuel Dane Ciancutti

POPC 2500: Introduction to Popular Film

December 2nd, 2019

The film that I have chosen to dissect throughout the course of this final project was the “Night

of the Living Dead”, where I would wish to look at the cultural analysis of the film, and

specifically the racial undertones that the film portrays. This George A. Romero classic is

considered to be one of the biggest milestones in horror movie history due to the changes and

eventual cliches made to the horror movie monster of the zombie. This includes things like

walking slowly and ominously, while simultaneously working together in the overwhelming

hordes to overpower those that have not been infected by the zombie virus. The biggest threat of

the zombie that Romero began to exploit was the pure number of them that there were at a time,

although survival would be possible without the mass numbers of these monsters, his films

showed that in the game of survival it was simply a numbers game. This could not be equally

said for the characters found in this film, as the main character that was cast in this movie was an

African American man set in a small town of predominantly white people. Having this particular

race of man being the main character, let alone being such a strong and stoic male lead, had to be

something that completely shook up the conception of a strong male lead for the general public

in the late 60’s.

The first of the questions asked by Gocsik, Monahan or Barsam is, “Given what you know about

the place or time portrayed in the movie, are there groups of people not shown or barely

acknowledged in the movie who were nonetheless significant and visible there and then? Why do
you think they aren’t portrayed in this movie?”. With regards to the film, I would mention that

the main character of the film was the only African American character in the film, as the

American community was going through a fairly rough time during these late 60’s. The year of

1968 specifically went through a pretty rough patch of losses in cultural and political figures,

especially in the realm of race relations. The loss of Martin Luther King Jr. earlier in the year had

a large impact on the relations between races as the changes that King made during his life are

hard to refuse. Only six months after the death of such an influential civil rights activist was

announced, a film that portrayed an Africna American male as such a strong and leading male

character had to do a lot more good than bad for the general public. Upon further research, I

found out that the casting of Ben (the main character of the film), was done purely from the

perspective that he was the best actor for the job (2). Although another question that needs to be

asked throughout the course of the film is that if the director, George A. Romero, never had any

intentions of making the film have any racial tensions or implications (2), then why was the only

African American character in the lead role? I guess the answer to that question would be that

the original script for the film was originally written for a white male lead, in the form of Rudy

Ricci (who would end up playing a zombie in the film) who would just be another white man in

a small white town. When the lead actor, Duane Jones, took the role from the originally intended

Rudy Ricci, Romero did not feel the need to change anything in the script due to the fact that it
was a switch of a man for another man without feeling the need to make a racial point just

because the character of Ben was now African-American. As previously mentioned, the

character of Ben is the only African-American in this film, so the misrepresentation of that race

is pretty self-evident, although the setting of the film could make it understandable why it is this

way.

The second question asked by Gocsik et al. was, “Does the movie use visual cues - in lighting,

camera angles, editing decisions, costume, makeup, or actors’ gestures - to establish that a

character or group of characters is clearly an “other” - a strange, foreign, or menacing type of

person who falls outside of the “normal” majority? If so, what are the cues and how do they

work?”. As mentioned previously, the sole African-American character in this film is seen as a

very stoic and intense lead character. The camera angles used on this character were shot from

predominantly underneath the character, looking up to Ben, almost as a way to set him apart

from the other survivors in the film. If there were more appearances by African-American

characters, then they could be categorized by this idea of the other, although the other itself is

our main character. I guess that the zombies in the film could also be considered the other,

although they were all white characters. One part in particular that could be mentioned as to

setting apart the “other” characters would be the ending of the film, in which our main character

is shot and killed by zombie hunters who thought that Ben was a threat. It almost portrayed this
idea that since there was an African-American man in a predominantly white town, then he must

be the root of the problem. Killing off our main character in such an ironic way after having been

through so much throughout the course of the film, could be considered a simple message to

deliver to audiences watching, that even though you might be the hero, the minority will always

be considered a threat (1).

The third question to be considered by Gocsik, Monahan and Barsam is, “Is the movie seemingly

content to reinforce traditional stereotypes of minority characters? Or does it seem to be working

against them? How so?”. Now, this question as simple as it is, is contains an actually pretty

loaded answer due to the fact that this film actually works to fight against stereotypes as well as

breaking them at the same time. As previously mentioned, the role of Ben was originally written

for a caucasion actor, and when the role was eventually filled by an African-American man, the

writing for the film was not changed at all. The same premise and actions of the character were

not changed between the two actors, despite some of these actions being a little more taboo for

the time period than other films challenged at the time. There are several instances in which the

actions of Ben done in the film may have been a little too risky to have an African-American

man perform rather than a caucasion one. One of these scenes is when the woman in the house

was becoming too hysterical during the initial horde of zombies coming towards the house, out

of desperation to keep her settled and not to put the other members of the house in danger, Ben
slaps her. Another instance comes not much later as the horde of zombies begins to break into

the house and Ben demands the survivors to get into the cellar downstairs. The man of the house

challenges his judgement until he eventually listens to the man, who is African-American, who

has kept them safe thus far. Having these stern and stoic actions of an African-American man

helps to work out of the stereotypes typically found in films with an African-American character.

Romero talks about the conflicts of having these two particular scenes included in the film, as

well as the concern for how audiences would react when they say these scenes (3). Although

these are all positives for the film, the negatives towards the stereotype would include the

reasons previously mentioned. The character that kept our other survivors safe throughout the

duration of the film, was wrongly accused as a threat by the gun-toting, white hunters that

thought simply because there was an African-American man in their town that he must be the

problem. The one and only African-American man featured in this film, the hero of the film, shot

dead through an act of either fear or racism, only to be known by the writers of the film that

claim to not have had any racial motivations throughout the course of the film. I wish that I could

continue to keep writing, but that would simply be too much to read.
 Sources

1. Graham, Ren. “What 'Night of the Living Dead' Taught Me about Race - The Boston

Globe.” BostonGlobe.com. The Boston Globe, July 21, 2017.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2017/07/21/what-night-living-dead-taught-about-r

ace/hSDDXITitEwcdkHclOX9MO/story.html​.

2. Staff, TheWrap. “How Casting a Black Actor Changed 'Night of the Living Dead'.”

TheWrap, September 1, 2010.

https://www.thewrap.com/night-living-dead-casting-cult-classic-20545/​.

3. White, Armond. “Night of the Living Dead: Return of the Politically Repressed.”

National Review. National Review, February 2, 2018.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/02/night-living-dead-more-politically-insightful-g

et-out/​.

4. “Blaxploitation Horror Films: Backlash & Concerns.” Graveyard Shift Sisters, April 26,

2017.

https://www.graveyardshiftsisters.com/2014/07/blaxplotation-horror-films-backlash.html​.