Oh my god HELLO and welcome to Screen Time with Sarah Ruthless!

This
podcast started as a humble little idea where I wanted to challenge myself to
watch a bunch of classic horror movies I’d previously been too scared or too
pretentious to sit through. I knew there had to be a reason why this genre has
endured for so long and continues to have such a niche, cult following - with the
kind of followers that I usually think have pretty good taste. But I was NOT
expecting to develop the kind of relationship to horror that I have now. I think to
say that I “fell in love” with the genre is not entirely accurate, but I have immense
respect for it now. I think of horror like a colleague, like someone I’d always
thought was either secretly stupid or secretly really mean, but they’re actually
one of my best friends and favorite people now. Can you tell I’ve spent too long in
quarantine? I have.

Which segues beautifully into the Screen Time Subject of this week, a lm that’s
been on my list since the very beginning of this epic endeavor: George A.
Romero’s 1968 black and white classic, The Night of the Living Dead. I had a
feeling that I would just know when it was the right time to watch it, that the movie
would almost tell me: Hey, Sarah, it’s time. And what can I say, for reasons WE
CAN ONLY SPECULATE, there was something about the last week that just
really made me feel like watching an apocalyptic movie, with a strong, intelligent,
beautiful Black male lead, and a bunch of idiot white people acting like fools.

Just a friendly reminder: I am a white person. I’m not as big an idiot as a certain
group of idiot white people, but unfortunately, white privilege is not exempt to
idiots, and whether you’re a racist or not, if you’re white, you got white privilege. I
consider myself an actively learning anti-racist ally. I have come a long way, but I
still have a long way to go. There will never be a moment where I have “arrived”

Page 1 of 33



fi

 at being the perfect anti-racist ally. I will always be learning. I think the biggest
embarrassment on my part is that it really took me until the last 2 or 3 years to
realize that racism - speci cally towards Black people - was not an issue that just
happened during slavery, or during the 60s, or during the last 5 years. It’s been
happening - since the 15th goddamn century - and it never left, and it’s been my
white privilege that I’ve never been (and never will be) on the receiving end of
experiencing it.

But hey, before we get real into it, some trigger warnings for this lm and this
episode include: Racism! Zombies! Cannibalism! Voo Doo! Colonization!
Philosophy! Religious trauma! Trump! And Rapture Anxiety.

So we have a LOT to get into today, and in the interest of not keeping y’all here
for hours on end, I am going to try something a little different this week and
instead of giving you an extremely thorough play-by-play of the entire plot, I’m
going to just assume you’ve watched the movie. If you HATE this idea and want
me to put the longer plot recaps back in, please let me know! Shoot me an email
at screentimewithsarahruthless@gmail.com - that is, as always, Sarah spelled
correctly, with an H. And instead, here’s the IMDB plot description:

“A ragtag group of Pennsylvanians barricade themselves in an old farmhouse to

remain safe from a bloodthirsty, esh-eating breed of monsters who are ravaging
the East Coast of the United States.”1 I think it also bears mentioning that -
spoiler alert! - the movie ends with the ONE survivor, a Black man, managing to
barely stay alive through the night, and just as the government troops nally

1 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063350/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3

Page 2 of 33



fi
fl

fi

fi
 show up to “rescue” them, they think he’s one of the zombies, and shoot and kill
him.

OH BOY do we have a lot to talk about! So yeah, let’s start with, like, what the
fuck is going on in the world right now. I was really not anticipating that this movie
would be as devastatingly relevant as it was. I’m recording this about a week
after the Trump insurrectionists literally stormed the Capitol building, and it’s
just… It’s a lot. 2020 was a lot, and it would appear that there is no sign of
anything slowing down. It really just feels like it’s getting worse. And I for one
keep uctuating between feeling overwhelming dread, like the kind that makes
you not wanna get out of bed, and then also just nd myself randomly bursting
out laughing, not like funny “ha-ha” laughing, but like the kind of laughing of a
person who just found out that there’s a giant meteor heading for the Earth and
we’re all gonna die in like 2 hours. When I hear that something terrible has
happened to another person, I really rarely have the panicked laugh response,
that’s not usually my go-to move, but when it’s something terrible that’s
happening to me, or like, something abstract that feels monumentally bigger than
me or anybody else (like the idea of a meteor crashing into the Earth), even
though it does very much affect other people, I sometimes can’t help laughing as
a reaction, because it just feels so absurd. It feels like… well, like a movie. And
the last week, like I know so many of us have, I’ve been glued to the news, to
every news website, and more or less “doom scrolling” 24/7. That’s probably my
favorite new phrase to come out of the Covid era: “doom scrolling.” It’s really
appropriate. And again, as I’m sure many can relate, there’s been this constant
tension in me between wanting to just put my phone down, disconnect the WiFi,
and like, sell all my shit and move to a cabin in the middle of nowhere in the
misty mountains of rural Ireland; but at the same time, I feel more than ever the

Page 3 of 33


fl

fi
 urgency of staying informed, and staying connected, even though it’s quite
literally coming at the cost of my mental health and general sanity.

But I don’t want to miss anything, and I have been viscerally experiencing this
like, doom- avored version of FOMO - in case you’ve been living under a rock
and don’t know what that is, FOMO is the “fear of missing out.” I have
affectionately joked in the past that I have JOMO - which is the “joy of missing
out.” But of course these phrases are in reference to things like social gatherings
and parties and generally just, like, being around people, which is decidedly not
my vibe. But now I have what feels like FOMO but about the world ending, like
this deep-seated fear that if I’m not constantly glued to the TV or to any screen
that can give me minute-by-minute updates on how America as a country is quite
literally tearing itself apart, I’m afraid that the second I close my eyes or turn
away, something even worse is gonna happen.

I’m gonna jump back and forth a little bit here, because I don’t want to stray too
far from the reason we’re all here, which is, of course, Night of the Living Dead.
But you know, it’s really ALL very connected. You know what time it is… *it’s time
for some info-dumping, yeah.

So yeah, let’s talk about this movie for a minute. I loved it. It’s not perfect; it’s
de nitely from an era where the slow burn was valued - pun intended - but it’s not
boring, by any stretch of the imagination. If anything I was actually surprised at
how not gross it was? Which sadly says more about how desensitized we are to
violence now than anything else… Because the movie was considered pretty
brutal when it came out in 1968. And since it was released just a couple years
before the MPAA came up with their rating system, that meant that it had NO

Page 4 of 33
fi


fl
*

 RATING, so like, little kids were watching this movie in theaters and having panic
attacks. (Which would be hilarious if it wasn’t so sad.) But like yeah, I can
imagine watching this movie as a kid and it scaring the shit out of me, especially
at a time when movies weren’t this violent, and our bar for being desensitized
was just so much lower. And now we watch fucking Geico commercials with more
violence than Night of the Living Dead, and just our general tolerance and
perception of what is and isn’t upsetting has really, radically changed in the last
few decades, in more ways than one.

But to speak to Romero’s legendary skill for a moment, this movie is visually
quite stunning. He had almost no budget, the zombies were literally eating ham
covered in chocolate, he made one zombie’s eyeballs out of a ping pong ball; but
nevertheless, he managed to use the black and white to his utmost advantage.
There are all these aggressive angles and incredible plays between light and
dark that add to this growing tension and dread while still managing to make
something that was remarkably beautiful to look at, guts and all. And don’t forget,
this was technically the movie that INVENTED the zombie-apocalypse genre.
There had been zombie movies in the past, but this was the rst one that
imagined it as an epidemic… and the never even say the word zombie!

So speaking of the era in which this came out, it has perhaps never been more
critical that we discuss what was happening in history when this movie was
released. It came out on October 1, 1968. What was happening in the 60s? Just
like, Don Draper and Mary Tyler Moore, and like, The Beatles, right? That was it?
Well, it was if you were white! For the rest of America, they were balls deep in the
Civil Rights Movement. Let’s provide a little context:

Page 5 of 33



fi

 After the American Civil War and the subsequent abolition of slavery in the
1860s, the Reconstruction Amendments to the US Constitution granted
emancipation and constitutional rights of citizenship to all Black Americans, most
of whom had recently been enslaved. For a short period of time, Black American
men voted and held political of ce, but they were increasingly deprived of civil
rights, often under the so-called Jim Crow laws.2 (Jim Crow laws were state and
local laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States.3) In
1954 the “separate but equal” policy was passed, which was a legal doctrine in
the US constitutional law which argued that segregation was not technically a
violation of rights. But over the next decade, due to the incredible resilience from
Black Americans and their allies (but really mostly Black Americans), a couple of
super crucial court cases were won in their favor, most notably: Brown vs. The
Board of Education in 1954 (which ended segregation in schools), Heart of
Atlanta vs. The United States in 1964 (which prohibited discrimination in public),
and Loving vs. Virginia in 1967 (in which the Court ruled that laws banning
interracial marriage violated the Constitution).

I’m just gonna say those dates again, because I really want it to sink in:
segregation in schools was legal until 1954. Racial discrimination in public was
legal until 1964. Interracial marriage was illegal until 1967. If I sound emotional,
it’s because I fucking am. Mostly because despite the remarkable, heroic
accomplishments of those Black Americans who peacefully protested and
refused to fucking give up, I look around the country and it just feels like so very
little has changed. It really was not that long ago, but out of respect for the Black

2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_rights_movement
3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws

Page 6 of 33


fi

 Americans who sacri ced so much in the last 70 odd years, it is important to
make the distinction that it actually used to be so much worse.

So let’s talk about the Ben of it all: In an interview with Hollywood Reporter in
2016, Romero said: “We didn’t cast Duane because he was Black. We cast him
because he was the best actor. He actually changed some of the dialogue 
because when John [Russo] and I wrote the script, we wrote the [role] as an
uneducated truck driver and Duane didn't want anything to do with that. He
wanted the character to be "respectable" ... Those were the only things he
changed. There's nothing in the lm that points to race. You have to interpret that
into it. [Actor and producer] Russ Streiner and I were driving the lm to New York
to show it to distributors, and that night on the car radio we heard that Martin
Luther King had been assassinated. All of a sudden, even in our minds it became
a racial lm.”4

How about that Duane Jones though? He really is the fucking reason we’re here.
Jones was an extremely educated young man. After studying in New York to
become an actor, he got his Masters in Communications from NYU and studied
at the Sorbonne in Paris, then taught literature at Long Island University. “He
created English language training programs for the Peace Corps and helped
design Harlem Preparatory School, where he headed the English department.”5
He was in a handful of other lms, but was really only ever recognized for his role
as Ben, and focused the second half of his career on teaching. He was the
executive director of the Black Theater Alliance, and taught acting styles at the

4https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/george-a-romero-says-brad-pitt-killed-zombie-
genre-942559
5 Fraser, C. Gerald

Page 7 of 33

fi

fi
fi
fi

fi
 American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. He died in 1988 of a heart
attack, at the far too young age of 51.

Night of the Living Dead was the rst horror movie to have a Black lead, and this
is one of those spectacular instances where the story became so much bigger
than just the story. What started out as a grass roots, low-budget, indie horror
ick about cannibal ghouls, suddenly turned into an extremely relevant
commentary on what was going on in the world. Romero has said as much
himself, but he’s really not to credit here. Like, he really wasn’t trying to make any
sort of scathing political criticism, he was legitimately just trying to make a
monster movie, and through no fault or praise of his own, it turned into something
so much larger.

But you know who did know that would happen? Fucking Duane Jones. He knew.
The minute he was cast, he knew that this was going to be a movie about race.
For example, his character was also originally written a lot angrier, but when he
was cast he was like, you gotta tone it down, and you gotta take out the scene
where I hit Barba. The world is not ready to see a Black man hit a white woman
on the big screen - even though if you’ve seen it, and you’re not a fucking idiot,
um, I think we can all agree that although I generally do not condone violence, if
there was a ever a moment for a human to hit another human, that was one of
them. But more on that in a minute. Ultimately, Romero was like nah man, no
one’s gonna freak out about it, it’s gonna be edgy and cool. And Duane was like,
no, it’s fucking not, though. And uh, Duane was right.

Years later, Romero “lamented that he had not taken Jones' concerns more into
consideration, and thought that he was probably correct. He expressed that he

Page 8 of 33
fl



fi

 wished he could speak with the late Jones again, asking him how he felt about
the lm's legendary status, and he believed Jones would just say "Who knew?"
and laugh.”6 HEAVY SIGH. I mean, I’d like to believe that’s true, but, it’s also
really not anyone’s fucking place to say except for Jones, is it?

It is curious to me how kind of willfully naive Romero was about the racial
landscape of his time. He was born and raised in the Bronx, and although he
comes from a Lithuanian and Cuban racial background, it bears mentioning that
he very much passes as a white man - and I feel this needs to be said because
color-ism is as much an issue as racism, and it doesn’t get addressed enough. I
won’t put words in his mouth, but I can imagine that Romero possibly felt a little
exempt from the conversation about race because he isn’t technically “white,”
which is to say that he isn’t of Anglo-Saxon descent. But while I’m certain that he
was on the receiving end of experiencing racism in his life, it was simply never to
the extent that a Black man living in America did - it just couldn’t have been.
Which makes it particularly fascinating to me (and so many others) that Romero
kind of accidentally stumbled upon creating this massively signi cant racial
commentary, all while actively inventing the rules of a pretty brand new horror
genre

Since I am obviously not a Black man, I believe strongly that it would be

appropriate to listen to their words and not just mine. This is an excerpt from an
article titled “The Lingering Horror of Night of the Living Dead” by Richard Newby

“Structurally, our introduction to Ben breaks format. We began our story with
Barbara and Johnny and it would stand to reason that Barbara would become the

6 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063350/trivia?ref_=tt_ql_2

Page 9 of 33
fi

.

fi
:

 lm's lead. After all, we know why she's here, we have a sense of her backstory
and familial connections. She is a known entity. But Ben comes from nowhere.
We know, by way of the monologue he delivers, how he ended up at the house,
but not more than that. His story is a secondary narrative, a response to comfort
the white woman in a catatonic state. But that changes once Ben takes charge
and slaps Barbara, literally, out of her hysteria. A black man slapping a white
woman feels shocking even now, but it 1968 it was unheard of. But Romero
quickly establishes that Ben is a heroic gure, smart, capable and basically
responsible for writing the guide on zombie survival

Every aspect that horror had taught audiences about black men — that they are
unimportant at best, and rapists of white women at worst — is tossed aside as it
becomes clear that Night of the Living Dead is Ben's story rather than Barbara's.
Even the shift from a graveyard to a modest house dispels the Gothic quality of
the horror movie and replaces it with a residential horror. But that doesn't deter
the lm's capability to stir our deepest, or rather darkest, fears.

In an interview with the New York Times, Jordan Peele discussed Night of the
Living Dead's in uence on Get Out, saying, "all social norms break down
when this event happens and a black man is caged up in a house with a
white woman who is terri ed. But you're not sure how much she's terri ed
at the monsters on the outside or this man on the inside who is now the
hero." But Ben's heroism doesn't come easily or without pushback.

Barbara quickly falls to the background once the other occupants of the house,
the Cooper family and teenage couple Tom and Judy, are introduced. Within the
shelter house, a microcosm of American social relations is formed. The

Page 10 of 33
fi
fi


fl
fi
fi
.

fi
 antagonism between Henry Cooper and Ben is immediate, as is their struggle for
leadership. Henry acts as though his age and race predicate his leadership skills,
despite the fact that he has been hiding out while Ben boarded up the windows
and doors, securing their safety. It's dif cult not to look at this through the lens of
American slavery in which blacks were forced to build up this country on their
backs while white people took the credit and the leadership role.

It also seems worth mentioning that the Coopers are the only characters with a
last name, which cements both their history and status — their legacy of
whiteness. While Henry Cooper's wife, Helen, doesn't agree with her husband,
she remains largely passive, concerned solely with the fate of her infected
daughter rather than the fate of strangers. Helen's position speaks to the
complacency and lack of ally-ship seen from so many white women who would
ght for their own rights but ignore the cries of blacks. Tom and Judy attempt to
build the bridges of communication between Henry and Ben, and ultimately
agree that Ben is a more sensible leader. These teenagers are the hope of the
future, the change of the '60s that would see them move, if only slightly in some
cases, away from the feet of their white ancestors and into the arms of revolution.

Even when Henry Cooper acquiesces and gives Ben leadership begrudgingly,
his pride still prevents him from fully trusting the black man's survival skills. It's
the cellar that he insists is the safest place and believes that the sanctuary's
resources should follow him down there. This cellar, the Coopers' dwelling place,
can be seen as the subbasement of America and its worst impulses. "The cellar
is a death trap," Ben says rightfully, while foreshadowing his own tragic fate.
"We've got a right. We've got a right," Henry yells before Ben retorts "Is this your
house?" in what has to be considered the proto-mic drop. Ben follows this up by

Page 11 of 33
fi


fi
 saying "Get the hell down in the cellar. You can be the boss down there. I'm the
boss up here." These are America's division lines — the North and South, and
even when they reconcile brie y, the tension between the two parties proves to
be their undoing and leads to the collapse of this chamber piece set society

Although Romero may not have been aware of the racial impact of Duane Jones'
casting, the actor himself was very much aware of it. In an interview conducted
by Tim Ferrante in 1987 and featured on the Criterion release, Jones relays a
story about a ride home from the set one night with [one of the background
actors,] Betty Ellen Haughey

“We were driving through downtown Pittsburgh of all places and heading
back to Duquesne when all of a sudden we became very aware of the
fact that there were some teenagers in a car following us. And at rst we
thought it was some of the young folks who were around the lming. And
I looked back and I said, "Betty, those are strangers." And then I looked
back, one of them started brandishing a tire iron at me. And the paradox
and the irony of that I had been walking around brandishing a tire iron at
ghouls all day long, and there was somebody brandishing a tire iron at
me from a car but in absolute seriousness. And that moment ... the total
surrealism of the racial nightmare of America being worse than whatever
that was we were doing as a metaphor in that lm lives with me to this
moment.”7

7https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/why-night-living-dead-is-more-relevant-
ever-1145708

Page 12 of 33


:

fl
fi
fi
fi
.

 So let’s talk about fucking Barba for a second. I haven’t screamed at a screen
this much since, oh, I don’t know, January 6th. But seriously, I just could not
handle how absolutely goddamn useless she was. What makes it even worse is
that allegedly, she wasn’t always written that way. One of the original script ideas
called for Barbara to be a very strong, charismatic character. Instead,
Romero and the producers loved Judith O'Dea's portrayal as a terri ed young girl
much better, and edited the script to accommodate the part.8

HOW DARE YOU. I would like to now invoke the holy words of the Patron Saint
of White Ladies, the incredible Reese Witherspoon, because she hit the hammer
on the fucking head in her speech at Glamour’s 2015 Women of the Year Award,
and honestly this speech lives rent free in my head:

“I dread reading scripts that have no women involved in their creation because
inevitably I get to that part where the girl turns to the guy, and she says, "What do
we do now?!" Do you know any woman in any crisis situation who has absolutely
no idea what to do? I mean, don't they tell people in crisis, even children, "If
you're in trouble, talk to a woman." It's ridiculous that a woman wouldn't know
what to do.”9

The character of Barbra disappointed me to my core, and it’s even more

upsetting to speculate that her weakness may have been inspired by the
actress’s own audition. Judith O’Dea, what the hell? And whether she meant it to
or not, I don’t think Jordan Peele’s observation came out of nowhere. Maybe I’m
just extra sensitive right now, but it’s really fucking hard to watch her interact with

8 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063350/trivia?ref_=tt_ql_2
9 https://www.glamour.com/story/reese-witherspoon-women-of-the-year-speech

Page 13 of 33



fi
 Duane Jones and not read a pretty strong level of racism into her actions. She
acts TERRIFIED of him, and it’s not just the terror of what happened, or the terror
of being in an unfamiliar place with a strange man - a man, by the way, who is
bending over goddamn backwards to be gentle, kind, compassionate, patient,
and even when he very understandably loses that patience, we quickly
apologizes - I mean for fuck’s sake, there’s a moment where he realizes she’s
barefoot, and he goes and nds shoes in one of the closets of the house that are
her size, and then puts them on her feet for her. He is trying SO HARD to make
her feel okay, and she keeps looking at him like he’s the goddamn Boogey Man.
It’s just a bummer.

So I was clearly really troubled by this, but it occurred to me that I was really only
getting one side of the story, and I was really curious if Judith O’Dea had
anything to say about her perspective. As it turns out, she kinda does! In a 2013
interview with Atlanta Magazine, she said:

“We didn’t really have a working script in hand, maybe a few pages of dialogue
on occasion, but it really was an evolution. Every single day, something new
would happen and Barbra would become more of a reality in my mind. I took
Barbra one scene at a time.

…So I’m just gonna pause right there and say, AH, THAT MAKES SENSE. No
wonder her character was so fucking useless and silent - it’s because they were
writing her lines while they were lming! For anyone who’s ever been remotely
involved in a clusterfuck of an indie production, this actually kind of cracks me up,
just because I can totally picture her getting handed a script like 5 minutes before
lming and panicking, and the scripty saying, “You know what, don’t even worry

Page 14 of 33
fi



fi
”

fi

 about it, if you can’t remember your lines just make something up. Or better yet,
don’t say anything at all.” In that respect, I have a little more understanding for
what the fuck happened with her. And to be clear, I don’t want to be ableist - I am
really aware of the fact that humans have a “ ght, ight, or freeze” survival
instinct, and sometimes, against our better judgment, we slip into the “freeze”
category. I know that’s a real thing, and I mean no disrespect to anyone who’s
ever been legitimately catatonic in a traumatic situation. …I just wish they’d
written it a little better. Either have her paralysis mean something, and serve the
story, or have her snap the fuck out of it and redeem herself by rising to the
occasion and being the badass that we all know women can be! Anyway, back to
the interview


The interviewer then asked: “Were any of you thinking about how this would play
in the context of the civil rights movement and did you and Duane ever have a
conversation about the impact of what you were lming?

To which O’Dea said: “It simply wasn’t on my radar. I was a 23-year-old actress
who was thrilled to be in her rst feature lm. The fact that Duane was black
never even entered my mind. I was brought up to be “colorless.” The role wasn’t
written to be black or white. It was written for a male actor who could carry the
picture. And for us, that man was Duane. …But I wasn’t as cognizant of what was
going on at 23. Now I recognize the importance.

The interviewer concluded by asking: “Before his death, Duane Jones discussed
his hesitancy about shooting the farmhouse scene with you which called for Ben
to slap a hysterical Barbra after she strikes him. He went to George Romero and

Page 15 of 33


…

fi
fi
fi
”

fi
fl
”

 said, “You’re asking me to slap a white woman. Do you know what’s going to
happen to me on the street when this thing comes out?” Do you recall that?

O’Dea’s response was: “Yes. There were actually several more smacks in the
script but Duane went to George and said, “I cannot do that. You’ll have to
change it. This is what I’m willing to do.” Clearly, it was something that was on
Duane’s radar, even if it wasn’t with the rest of the cast. Consequently, we
changed that scene. I socked him once and he socked me once and that was it.
In the script, it made perfect sense to me. Ben had to stop Barbra somehow and
why not slap her? I never once stopped to consider that Duane could fall into
danger because of it.”10

I am so deeply humbled, because O’Dea’s experience is the de nition of

ignorant, white feminism, and I look back at my own life in pretty recent years
and am so fucking embarrassed to acknowledge that I’ve heard that same voice
come out of my own mouth: “I never once stopped to consider.” Like, that’s it,
right there, that’s white feminism, and that’s how a lot of well-intended white folks
sound when they’re jus starting to really learn about racism as a systemic issue. I
think so much of the popular self-help branding that’s relevant right now always
talks about looking inward, doing the work on yourself - and while that’s totally
important too, it’s just step one! There’s a second step: fucking look around. Who
is missing in the room. Who is missing in the conversation. Who are these
decisions being made about, and are the people they’re being made about here?
Do they have a voice? Are they being heard? White feminism just gets to step
one and then gives up, and “never once stops to consider.”

10https://www.atlantamagazine.com/news-culture-articles/qa-with-night-of-the-living-deads-
judith-odea/

Page 16 of 33



fi
”

 If you’re a little confused or triggered by this terminology, or think you might be

culpable in the widespread complacency of white feminism, I’d like to quote
someone much more quali ed than me on the subject, former Jezebel editor and
author Boa Deck, who writes: “The goal of white feminism is not to alter the
systems that oppress women — patriarchy, capitalism, imperialism — but to
succeed within them. …[And] this ideology is fundamentally exclusionary.”11 I
think the best advice I can give - and it is admittedly hypocritical for me, a baby
ally, who still has so much to learn, to be giving advice - is just to listen, and
believe. Listen to Black voices. And believe them. Whenever you can, as much
as you can. Take it upon yourself to self-educate. Black people are not
responsible for teaching you about racism. You can Google that shit. And while
you’re at it, read books by Black authors, listen to podcasts by Black hosts,
support Black business. Listen - just listen - just FUCKING LISTEN - and believe
them. If you, like me, are also white: it is our responsibility as the people with the
most privilege in this country to fucking listen, believe, and support, whenever
and wherever we can.

Two personal examples from my life come to mind here. My kind of “aha!”
moment regarding my own ignorance to racism didn’t happen until I moved to
Chicago. I grew up in California and Hawaii, where there were often just as many
POC as there white people in the room, but there was admittedly never a lot of
Black folks. Then I went to school on the west coast of Canada, where there was
legitimately like maybe 3 Black kids in my entire college, which was
predominately Dutch and Asian. So although I was used to being in somewhat

11https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/koa-beck-dismantling-persistence-white-feminism-
n1253555

Page 17 of 33



fi
 racially diverse spaces, I didn’t really experience being around a lot of Black folks
until I moved to northern Indiana - yikes! I worked and drank in the dive bar
scene, and I’ll tell you straight up that where I was, at the time, was extremely
segregated. There were pretty much Black bars and white bars, and they rarely
crossed over. I didn’t have a ton of friends, but the bar ies I often found myself
drinking next to were ignorant at best, and often blatantly racist at worst. And
although I never participated in active racism, I certainly didn’t do much to stop it
when I heard racist jokes or when people at the bar top yelled obscenities at the
TV I the background playing “Cops” or showing the BLM protests in Ferguson. I
so badly wish I could go back in time with the knowledge and understanding I
have now and do or say something different, but at the time, I had no idea what
to say. It made me uncomfortable, and I was dealing with a lot of my own trauma
and issues that I really didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to wrap my mind
around anyone else’s.

THEN I MOVED TO CHICAGO, and started working in a taproom that had a very
diverse staff. And I remember the exact moment, when a couple of staff were
gonna go out for drinks and invited me along, and one of the Black servers said
something along the lines of, “Nah, I don’t want to be in that neighborhood after
10pm, too many cops hang out by the train and harass people.” And that’s when
it fucking hit me: he sounded like a woman, in the sense that there was a deeply
ingrained, instinctual fear there. He sounded like so many women I have known
in my life who have said things like, “After what happened to my friend, I don’t
want to go to that bar anymore,” or avoided social situations where they might
nd themselves alone in an unfamiliar parking garage after dark, or how many
times I’ve had girlfriends send me the name, number, and address of their Tindr
date just in case, you know, they went fucking missing or were murdered. And

Page 18 of 33
fi



fl
 here was this Black man in the fucking year 2014 or whatever, and I heard that
same fear in his voice. Generational fear. Generation trauma. I am ashamed to
say that it took me until I was like 24 fucking years old for it to sink in, but at least
it did eventually. Because that was really the moment when I realized oh my god,
Black people feel like that all the fucking time.

The other moment that comes to mind happened really recently, and is another
really uncomfortable example of how I am still learning about my own privilege
and ignorance. There was a fairly public dispute between some podcasters that I
really love and admire, and there was a situation where one of the internet-
famous guests who often came on their show was more or less outed as having
participated in some really racist rhetoric, and had been part of an online
community that was notorious for subtle exclusion of POC. These podcasters
made a very civil announcement on their social media platforms that after doing
due diligence and trying to start a dialogue with this guest, this person essentially
refused to acknowledge how their behavior had been toxic, so the podcasters cut
ties with them. In particular, the reason for the decision came about because the
podcasters had hired a new producer, a Black woman, was one of the many
people who had personally experienced racist behavior from this frequent guest.
I was super shocked by all of this, and immediately went to the comments
section to try and gure out what the heck had happened, and I asked: Oh my
god, what did the guest do? Like what happened? And I wasn’t the only one
asking that - nor was I the only one who received the massive amounts of replies
along the lines of: Why does it matter? What is wrong with you? Why can’t you
just believe our producer and leave it at that?

Page 19 of 33


fi

 While there’s a part of me that tends to believe “cancel culture” is generally more
problematic than productive, the real issue here is that 1) I didn’t do my own
research. I could’ve easily Googled the situation or watched the Producer’s
Instagram stories and heard rsthand about what went down, and 2) I didn’t
believe her. It’s not that I thought she was lying, but I was asking for proof - and
that’s not appropriate. Because we should fucking believe Black people when
they tell us that something fucking racist is happening. Like yes, employ critical
thinking, do your research, whatever, but ultimately - when a Black person says
something racist happened to them, BELIEVE THEM. And I didn’t realize until
that experience - which was literally like 6 months ago - that that was something I
was guilty of. And again, my kind of “aha!” moment was when I realized: Holy
shit, you know what this reminds me of? When all those women were coming
forward in the #MeToo movement and all those nasty fucking reporters and
douchebag comedians on Twitter were like “WELL WHERE’S THE PROOF?
WHAT EXACTLY HAPPENED? HOW BAD WAS IT? BECAUSE YOU KNOW,
THERE’S DEGREES OF HARASSMENT, IT’S NOT ALL THAT BAD.” And you
know as a community we kind of collectively were like “I beg your fucking
pardon? How about you just fucking believe women? And also let’s not make
women have to fucking relive their trauma just to show you receipts.”

I will never, ever know what it’s like to be Black, but I what I do have is an
imagination and fucking compassion. Because I live in a woman’s body, I have
the smallest fraction of a window into the experience of not being believed, of
constantly being questioned, of having to prove myself over and over again, and
of living with a quiet but ever-present, constant fear for my life. And that is just an
ECHO of what Black people in America experience every fucking second. And

Page 20 of 33


fi

 that is ten-fold if you’re Black and queer, Black and trans, Black and disabled, or
any combination thereof.

And I don’t mean to keep picking on Judith O’Dea, but I want to address
something else she said, because I know that at least for me, a Millennial white
person, I can relate to growing up hearing and experiencing this philosophy a lot:
“I was raised not to see color.” Like, at least when I lived in California and went to
a more progressive public school, we had Black History Month, we quote-on-
quote “learned about racism,” but like, we just learned about MLK and watched
that movie about Ruby Bridges, and I feel like that was pretty much it. It’s a very
upper-middle-class, white privilege sentiment to preach the philosophy of “not
seeing color.” Once again, I’d like to give an opportunity to focus on the words of
an actual Black person on the subject; and the following is an excerpt from the
Every Girl article "What I Hear When Someone Says “I Don’t See Color” by Kiara
Goodwin: (and I truly apologize that I’m not yet in a position to invite Kiara
Goodwin or any of the other incredible contributers I’ve quoted in this episode
onto my podcast, someday I would freaking LOVE to, so for now, I will just be
giving you an opportunity to - unfortunately in my voice - hear their words.

“In my experience, [the] phrase [“I don’t see color”] is most often proclaimed by a
well-intentioned person. I’ve heard it spoken in an effort to reassure friends,
colleagues, or acquaintances that all people are equal. The expression can also
be used as a tactic for avoiding feelings of discomfort stirred up by the topic of
race. Reciting it is as if to say, “let’s not make race an issue by not
acknowledging it as one.” But this is part of the issue. Regardless of the heart
behind the comment, what I and many other people of color hear carries more
weight than just four simple words

Page 21 of 33


.

 [I hear that] YOU DON'T SEE ME

“I don’t see color” can feel like “I’m choosing to ignore this part of you
because it makes me more comfortable.” It sounds like “I don’t see you,”
and it feels like a casual dismissal.

[I hear that] YOU DON'T HEAR ME

“I don’t see color” has also been used as the nuke button in discussions
about inequality or injustice. However, the process of eliminating one
person’s unease simultaneously silences the voices of black and brown
people in the conversation.Refusing to have a dialogue about race will not
resolve the issues we face — it will only perpetuate them.

[I hear that] YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND ME

“I don’t see color.” When I hear those words I can’t help but feel that the
speaker has no desire to understand where I’m coming from and what my
experience is like. We don’t all start off with the same opportunities. …This
means that we certainly don’t all end up at the same nish line. To say “I
don’t see color” is to say “I won’t acknowledge that I may have doors
opened to me that will not be opened to you.” It indicates a lack of empathy
and an ignorance to the historical context that will continue to stand in
someone’s way, despite their hard work and individual effort. Making space
for another viewpoint does not negate yours. Quite the opposite — it
provides more context and framework for your own experience. Being quick

Page 22 of 33


:

fi
 

 to invalidate someone else’s reality just because it’s different than yours
means missing an opportunity to learn and grow

…People of color see color a lot of the time. Not because we’re actively
looking for it, but because the spaces in which we navigate often require us
to consider what other people may make of our mere presence. …Thanks
to stereotypes and expectations placed on people of color, each of these
simple, everyday encounters require an awareness of race.

…So before saying you don’t see color, please consider if you mean that
you don’t see these attributes of and challenges facing the individual in
front of you. If that’s not the case, I’d encourage you to nd another phrase
— one that respectfully acknowledges the perspectives and differences
that come with being a person of color, as well as the inherent beauty they
provide.”12

So, TL;DR: LISTEN TO BLACK PEOPLE. BELIEVE BLACK PEOPLE. THANK

YOU FOR COMING TO MY TED TALK.

[HEAVY SIGH] I need a drink. …Now I wanted to end by talking about some fun
zombie folklore history, because this is the only zombie movie on my list, but rst
I feel like I have to explain why that is: I don’t really like zombie movies. I’ve
never really been into the whole zombie thing, and it actually took me watching
and thinking about this movie to gure out exactly why. I’ve said numerous times

12 Goodwin, Kiara.

Page 23 of 33


fi
.

fi

fi
 that I grew up not watching horror movies, that wasn’t a thing in our house, and
even though I was the rebellious goth child, I always found scary movies to be
really stressful, and I had more stress as a teenager than I knew what to do with.
If there was anything in the macabre genre that I was drawn to, it was vampires -
never fucking Twilight though, thank god, but you know, nerdy, pretentious shit:
Edgar Allen Poe, Edward Gorey, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, etc. There was no room
in my emotional repertoire for zombies, and even when The Walking Dead came
out when I was in college and everyone was obsessed with it, I only made it like
one season, and that was really just because my shitty boyfriend liked it. I
thought it was fucking boring, rst of all, the storylines were super redundant,
with a few exceptions I really didn’t care for most of the actors, and even though
the aesthetics were undeniably pretty cool, I just found the whole thing SUPER
FUCKING STRESSFUL! And I nally gured out why, and weirdly this all ties
back in with how fucking triggered I’ve been over the last week with everything
happening politically right now:

I have something called Religious Trauma, which is exactly what it sounds like: I
am still recovering from and unlearning the toxic, manipulative, and all-
encompassing doctrines I was led to believe as a child were true. I fully plan to
write a whole book on it someday (in the meantime, if you’re at all curious on the
subject, RUN don’t walk to read “You Are Your Own” by Jamie Lee Finch), but
what I want to talk about speci cally right now is a special little nugget under this
trauma umbrella called Rapture Anxiety!

For those of you who don’t know, many Christians believe that someday Jesus
Christ will return to Earth, and take all the “true believers” with him - an event
they call “the rapture.” No one really knows for sure what it’s supposed to look

Page 24 of 33


fi
fi

fi
fi

 like, but many have theorized that essentially, every believer in the world will just
kind of disappear, and get zapped up to Heaven. And when that happens, Earth
will pretty much descend into chaos, because of all the sinners left behind.
(Which, as an adult, I’m like I don’t know, sounds like a party…) But don’t worry,
they’ll get a second chance, because there will (allegedly) be a THIRD coming of
Christ…? I think? You know, I’m actually a little fuzzy on the details, but the point
is, I was raised to believe that there would be a literal event in which ALL of the
believers on earth would fucking DISAPPEAR, and it could happen at ANY
MOMENT. And if you were left behind, you had a very short period of time to get
your fucking shit together while the world was ending and ideally, you’d gure out
how to become a True Believer just in time to get zapped up in the next and nal
Rapture.

I know this sounds fucking ridiculous, largely because it was made into a
hilariously awful lm series called Left Behind starring Kirk Cameron, and as if
that wasn’t bad enough, they REMADE IT like three years ago with NICOLAS
CAGE?! But I don’t know how to fully express to you how deeply and intensely
this was taught to me as a fact. This wasn’t like Santa Claus, this was something
we were taught and we believed. I fucking believed it. I don’t think I really
stopped believing it until I was like 17 or 18. Some of my earliest memories as a
child are of being taught about the Rapture. When I was like 7 years old, my
father gave all the girls in our family silver necklaces with our initials in them to
mimic the sign of the cross that would be marked on our foreheads when the
Rapture happened, and I think it was the next Easter that my mother - whom I
love and who I absolutely believe was doing what she thought was right for her
kids - gave me a book on CD of “Left Behind For Kids,” which was about all the
KIDS who got left behind after the rapture. I came home from school one day

Page 25 of 33



fi
fi
fi
 when I was 7 years old and there was no one home - I was the unplanned 4th
child, my older siblings had a lot of shit going on, my parents were doing their
best but they occasionally forgot I existed and someone fucked up their schedule
and forgot to be home when I walked in from the bus stop. I am, like, low key
shaking as I explain to you that for those 20-30 minutes that I was home alone, I
LITERALLY BELIEVED THE RAPTURE HAD HAPPENED AND THAT I HAD
BEEN LEFT BEHIND. I was seven years old. My brain was squishy. I had an
over-active imagination. I didn’t know what the fuck was real or not. Everything
felt ridiculous. And at that point, I thought that was why my mom had given me
“Left Behind For Kids” because she knew that I was going to get left behind and
she wanted me to be prepared… Which if ever told that to my mother, she would
be devastated. And I really can’t stress enough, like, this is hilarious, this is
objectively very good comedy, but at the time, it very much made an impression
not only on my mind, but my body

ALL THIS TO SAY: What was my point? I don’t like fucking zombie movies, and I
nally gured out that I think it’s because of my Rapture Anxiety. When we moved
to Hawaii and really got absorbed into the much more charismatic, supernatural
branch of Evangelicalism, I started sleeping in jeans and sneakers. Every night.
Starting at, like, age 13. I shitteth you not. Because I was convinced that the
Rapture would happen in the middle of the night, and I wanted to be ready to run.
Run away from what? I don’t fucking know. I just knew that the rapture was going
to happen, and I wasn’t going to be included - I knew deep down that there was
something “different” about me - which as an adult I can speculate was just
Autism and queerness - but I knew that I had to be prepared. Jeans and
sneakers. And I slept like that, most nights, well into COLLEGE. Like it was very
rare that I slept in pajamas. Thankfully I discovered alcohol in college too, and

Page 26 of 33
fi

fi

.

 that really helped with falling asleep, but to this day, I am physically REPELLED
by the sensation of comfortable, soft pajamas. They freak me the fuck out.
Clearly, I need some therapy, I am aware, and I am working on that. In the
meantime, I have this podcast - so yeah, watching the Capitol be stormed - which
was so absurdly apocalyptic that it not only reignited my Rapture Anxiety, but
also brought up all sorts of active-shooter drill memories and 9/11 ashbacks - all
of that came up for me again, and then I had the bright idea to watch NIGHT OF
THE LIVING GODDAMN DEAD. And I remembered why I DO NOT CARE FOR
ZOMBIE MOVIES or movies in general about the end of the world. I wasted
enough years in my youth stressing over it, thank you very much

The point is, the point is - I’m still glad I watched it. Because that’s what I came
here for, right? I wanted to know if horror had something bigger to tell me, if the
genre was a secret, magical weapon in the wide world of storytelling. And over
the last 14 odd weeks, I’ve learned SO MUCH, and one of my favorite things has
been discovering how horror is our new folklore, and folklore has always been
the way that we as people deal with what’s going on in the world. And like so
many myths, folktales, and legends, this one has proven to be timeless.

OKAY so since this is the only zombie movie on my list - and I really don’t think I
can sit through another one - I do want to talk just a little bit about where the heck
zombies came from, because it’s super interesting.

Well it was my absolute displeasure and complete lack of surprise to learn that -
WE FUCKING STOLE THAT SHIT FROM BLACK PEOPLE! AHHHH! YOU
THOUGHT I WAS DONE TALKING ABOUT RACISM, BUT NOPE! WE ARE
SUCH A GODDAMN BUMMER. So the term comes from Haitian folklore, in

Page 27 of 33



fl

 which a zombie is a dead body reanimated through various methods, most

commonly magic. And another thing that really set apart Night of the Living Dead
was that the previous zombie movies - namely White Zombie in 1932 and I
Walked with a Zombie in 1943 - all centered on zombies being a result of Black
magic, like literal magic from Black people. (And the whole magic realism trope
for POC in lm is a whole other conversation we will absolutely have later, but to
the point, for now…) in Romero’s version, it’s never really explained how it
happened. Like, they kind of posit that it might be from outer space or something,
but the point is, it wasn’t a result of voodoo.

What’s super interesting to me is how the shift in what we perceived the zombie
to be was totally based on the development of American philosophy. There are
two real periods of zombie mythology, and they mirror the shift from faith in God
to faith in science. At st, the zombie was a spirit in itself, it was its own entity,
and it could occupy or possess vulnerable victims. “But in the 19th century when
African religious beliefs collided with Western in uence, the zombie mythology
began to re ect that, and that’s when we start seeing the zombie as a creature
completely lacking in spirit.

“The empirical, pro-science worldview that became popular towards the end of
the 19th century resulted in an increased objecti cation of the self. The medieval
school of thought was that the body and soul were one, but then Rationalism
came along and made it possible for the self to examine the self. It became
philosophically possible to make claims such as “I am not behaving like myself
today,” something that could only happen if the self was divided.

Page 28 of 33


fi
fl
fi
”

fl
fi
”

 So let’s apply this line of logic to zombies: “…In lacking consciousness, the
zombie is incapable of examining self. It is emptied of being, a receptacle of
nothingness. This is the philosophical foundation of the zombie as it was when
introduced to Western culture in the early 20th century, which entered America as
a result of increased political contact with Haiti,”13 Africa, and other parts of the
world

This new version of the zombie (that we essentially appropriated from other
cultures) was a drone, a mindless, soulless worker returned from the dead, which
was especially terrifying to Americans, because culturally we have always valued
identity and the self above all else. The Old World Zombie, the one who was a
product of voodoo or Black Magic had it’s own threats (plot twist - ones that were
deeply rooted in racism and colonialism) …But the New World Zombie, the
mindless drone who Romero taught to be cannibals, was a different sort of
monster altogether, and one that writers have been using as a euphemism for a
complacent, thoughtless, exhausted society for decades now. Maybe what
scares us so much about the New World Zombie isn’t that they want to eat our
brains, but that we might become them - become the enemy - and not even
realize it.

Believe it or not, I’m actually about to tie all this shit together… As I’ve spent the
last week reading the news until my eyeballs bleed, a particular phrase really
stood out to me: “Identity politics.” To quote a recent article on the subject:

“Conservatives and moderates are often dismissive of “identity politics,” by which

they mean liberal efforts to motivate voter turnout by raising issues of particular

13 Lauro, Sarah J. & Christie, Deborah

Page 29 of 33
.

 concern to women, people of color, and other marginalized groups in American

politics. But it is important to remember that the original identity politics play was
for whites. Long before women or people of color won the right to vote, South
Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun, a white supremacist, urged whites to rally
around their racial identity. “With us the two great divisions of society are not the
rich and poor, but white and black,” he declared in an 1848 speech.

Calhoun was far from the last American conservative to encourage white
working-class people to vote their race rather than their class. But no successful
modern candidate has done so as blatantly as Donald Trump did in 2016. …
Ashley Jardina [writes in her book, White Identity Politics,] that white voters can
be motivated by favoritism toward their own group rather than hostility to others.
Her central nding, based on polling, is that while 9 percent of whites are
unabashed racists, between 30 and 40 percent of whites feel a strong
attachment to their whiteness [and, perhaps surprisingly, are more likely to be
women than men.] The distinction between in-group love and out-group hate is
helpful. …The problem is that, in America, an agenda based on white solidarity
will in practice be hardly distinguishable from one driven by racial hatred, even if
the motivation is less malicious. “Protecting the status of white people,” Jardina
writes, ultimately means “preserving a system of inequality.” More broadly, in a
democratic society, we do not want people to care only about their own kind; we
hope that elderly people will care about the effects of global warming on the next
generation, straight people will care about gay rights, and white people will care
about racial justice

What explains high levels of group identity and consciousness? “Threat to one’s
group,” Jardina argues, “activates one’s group identity.” That is why, in a society

Page 30 of 33


fi
.

 where African Americans have had so much to fear, Black racial identity is high.
Between 69 and 85 percent of Black people have high levels of racial identity, a
much higher proportion than in any other racial group. By contrast, whites have
been the economically dominant group throughout American history… As a
result, they did not have to think about race in the way others did.”14

…So to once again quote Judith O’Dea: “I never once stopped to consider.” If
your identity is preventing you from stopping and considering what is happening
in our country to people that don’t look like you, you need to seriously rethink
your identity. Philosophically, one could argue that a soul is the de ning
characteristic of what it means to be human. Your soul, in a sense, is the truest
essence of your identity. The terrorist attack we witnessed on January 6, 2021,
may as well have been the beginning of the zombie apocalypse, and I’m not
being facetious. If it contradicts your identity to believe facts when they are
presented to you - even if they make you uncomfortable; if there is not room in
your soul to admit when you have been ignorant; if you are fundamentally
incapable of acknowledging or empathizing with the people in your country who
exist every day with substantially, veri ably less privilege than you - then I argue
that you do not have a soul at all. And according to the resilience of folklore,
without one of those, what separates you from the living dead.

*That was fucking exhausting…* If you made it this far, thank you for listening. I
clearly needed to get some of this off my chest. For those of you who are also
hurting and numb and confused and so, so tired - from the bottom of my heart, I
love you. I can’t tell you that it’s all going to be okay, because I honestly don’t
know if it is. The only promise I can make is that folklore will look back on the

14 https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/july-august-2019/the-rise-of-white-identity-politics/

Page 31 of 33


fi

fi
 good and the brave with kindness. Villains exploit the vulnerable, but folklore
does not forget - and neither will I.

That is all folks, and I’ll see you next time.

Page 32 of 33



 Works Cited / Sources

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Living_Dead#Plo

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063350/trivia?ref_=tt_ql_

Fraser, C. Gerald (July 28, 1988). "Duane L. Jones, 51, Actor and Director of
Stage Works, Dies". The New York Times. Retrieved January 24, 2012.

Powell, Henry. “One Generation Consuming the Next: The Racial Critique of
Consumerism in George Romero ’s Zombie Films.” Colby College, 2009.

Couch, Aaron. “George A. Romero on Brad Pitt Killing the Zombie Genre, Why
He Avoids Studio Films.” Hollywood Reporter. Oct. 31, 2016. 

Link: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/george-a-romero-says-brad-
pitt-killed-zombie-genre-94255

Newby, Richard. “The Lingering Horror of 'Night of the Living Dead.’” Hollywood
Reporter. Sept. 28, 2018.
Link: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/why-night-living-dead-is-
more-relevant-ever-114570

Eldredge, Richard L. “Q&A with Night of the Living Dead’s Judith O’Dea.” Atlanta
Magazine. Oct. 31, 2013.
Link: https://www.atlantamagazine.com/news-culture-articles/qa-with-night-of-the-
living-deads-judith-odea

Solis, Marie. “Koa Beck on dismantling the persistence of white feminism.” NBC
News. Jan. 9, 2021.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/koa-beck-dismantling-persistence-white-
feminism-n125355

Lauro, Sarah J. & Christie, Deborah “Better Off Dead: The Evolution of the
Zombie as Post-human.” 2011

Goodwin, Kiara. "What I Hear When Someone Says “I Don’t See Color."
TheEveryGirl.com. March 2019.
Link: https://theeverygirl.com/contributor/kiara-goodwin/

Page 33 of 33


5