The Night Of The Living Dead

The article “Dead man still walking: Explaining the zombie renaissance” by Kyle Bishop is about the revitalization of the zombie genre. The article talks about the inception in the late 1960’s, the category of zombie films has had its roller coaster ride of ups and downs, starting with its decline in the early 1980’s with the release of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video. Furthermore, during 1990’s, due to the shift in the cultural consciousness that came with the Clinton Administration and the countries isolation from global tragedies, the popularity of these films continued to decline. Cultural consciousness refers to the understanding and awareness a shift in feelings, sensations, thoughts, of not only our own culture, but adjoining cultures.

Larkin’s thesis is reliant on assumptions requiring further examination for the whole to hold credit. Research into contemporary definitions death will examine the validity of the assumption the zombie is a dead thing, something Larkin’s text is heavily reliant on.

Zombies, as we know them today, have mortified movie viewers for the last forty six years. Modern zombies first appeared in George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead in 1968. These zombies were the slow moving, staggering ghouls that one has seen in countless films, but in 1985, Return of the Living Dead featured a new kind of zombie, the first fast moving and talking ghoul. Both Night of the Living dead 1968 and Return of the Living Dead 1985 feature the zombie as its villain, but Return of the living dead’s fast moving, talking zombies are a more modern take on the movie monster.

In the modern movie genre, horror movies accounts for very great proportion of the number of followers. Relevantly, the zombie film genre has been developed into a dominant part of mainstream horror, replacing the previous monster such as vampires and werewolves. In Max Brooks’s essay “The Movies That Rose From the Grave”, he offers his opinion that throughout the process of zombie film transformation, it increasingly captivates viewers while gradually generates the modern horror. Brooks’s essay should be an appropriate inclusion of a college textbook which explains the phenomenon of the “undead explosion” in various kinds of media, proving to the audiences with enthusiasm, interest, credibility and specific examples that zombie culture is resurrecting a formerly obsolete genre.

First off, zombies have a unique history. The first part of this exclusive history is that zombies have a few originating points with places ranging from ancient past times to well known movies. According to an archaeological study

The horror genre has been captivating and enthralling the masses for centuries, but more recently in the twentieth century these morbid tales have moved from the old media of oral stories and literature to the new medium of horror pictures. Horror pictures still are not the end of the evolution of the horror genre, as this medium itself has experienced evolutions to satisfy an increasingly desensitized audience. To exemplify this evolution of horror pictures we will be taking a look at an occult classic from 1968 Night of the living dead and a new thriller The Walking Dead. Both horror pictures portray a zombie apocalypse and there are similarities and differences in the main characters, the zombies, and the worlds of the two pictures.

The name of the article is Our Zombies, Ourselves written by James Parker. In this article Parker discusses the historical backdrop of zombies and talks about where it is that they started from. Parker additionally raises exceptionally fascinating point on the notoriety of zombies and a short timeline on zombies. He also talks of different sorts of popular cultures which incorporate zombies and are utilized, for example, the movies Night of the Living Dead, White Zombie, the books The Zen of Zombies, Zombie Haiku, and the television series The Walking Dead.. By utilizing these references Parker helps demonstrate to us how zombies appear to ceaselessly draw our interest. The article additionally educates the reader about how zombies came

First off, I love Mathias Clasen’s paper, about people becoming reanimated corpses or zombies. I would not know what I would do if my Mom become an undead monster, or worse, what if my father, who passed away six years ago, came back from the grave. Could I bring myself to kill them, (well kill my dad again because he already dead) or tie them up, lock them in my basement and just go to see them, like the movie, Shaun of the Dead. The dynamic questions come into that what are monsters within and without. Clasen talks about zombies being “dull creatures” and having one life goal, “to eat fresh and brains” (3) compared to vampires or werewolves, who retain their intelligence. Compared this cultures and looking from the outside on taboo monsters that are alive monsters (aliens, killer sharks, or killer humans), the undead breaks the code of

When analyzing this piece of writing it is clear that the purpose is not to entertain or persuade. The purpose, instead, is to inform and give a new perspective on zombie movies in a simple way that an audience of all ages can understand. In Andrew Cooper and Brandy Blake’s, “George Romero Zombie Films: A Plague of Meaning,” the authors walk the reader through how as time changed zombie movies changed with it. The authors further explain how zombies in many movies represent the time and culture. The writers inform the reader through their use of information from past zombie movies and analysis of the events of the times they were made.

Ever since the first zombie movie was created in 1932, there has been a constant rise of zombie appearances in popular media. Like with all monsters, the majority of zombie media aimed to represent a certain aspect throughout the society in question. Whereas vampires represented romanticism and Dracula represented how a certain social group was viewed during a certain time period, zombies in Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” aimed to create a situation whereby a group of people had to survive a night together, despite their racial tensions between one another. Being the founder of all subsequent zombie films, “Night of the Living Dead” provided a guideline for zombie behavior. As time passed, more and more versions of the zombie came out, whereby zombies stopped being a plot device and turned into the focus of the film itself. The Walking Dead, currently standing as the fourth most popular TV series, took a turn from this progression and decided to imitate Romero’s take on zombies. By including zombies which simply aimed to sustain themselves by consuming the flesh of the “live,” the creators of The Walking Dead caused the remaining survivors to gather together and rely on primitive human instinct to survive. Even though the zombies in this series run rampant, they play a very minimalistic metaphoric role. Instead, by presenting the zombies as a plot device, the characters in this series were able to demonstrate their true prejudiced view on society, ultimately revealing

Rodney Clapp, writer, editor for Wipf and Stock Publishers and expert in topics such as theology and culture, in the article, “Attack of the Zombies”, argues that many things in life are beginning to resemble zombies. Clapp assumes that the audience also views zombies as lifeless creatures that go around spreading their disease. The author’s purpose is to persuade the audience to believe that many things they see today are starting to resemble zombies. The author writes in a challenging tone for people who question the similarity of zombies to every day life. Clapp supports his argument by comparing and contrasting, and exemplification.

The film, “Night of the Living Dead”, is a horror movie taking place in the late 1960’s and set in a small town in Pennsylvania. The beginning scene opens with siblings, Barbara and Johnny arriving at a cemetery after three long hours of driving. Barbara and Johnny went to the graveyard to visit their late father's grave and as they were leaving Johnny decided to tease Barbara saying “They’re coming for you Barbara… look, there comes one of them now”. While they were walking to their car Barbara figured she would apologize to the man for what her brother had said but as she was about to speak the “man” grabbed her. When Johnny saw, he quickly ran to them and pulled the zombie away from his sister but he was then attacked by the living dead. During the struggle, Johnny fell and died from hitting his head on a gravestone. The zombie then went after Barbara in a long pursuit that only ended when she came up to an abandoned house. While in the house, Barbara saw more of the zombie people heading toward the house and found a dead body. Startled by the horrifying sight, Barbara ran outside in a hurry and almost ran into a man that was walking into the house. This man, Ben, had run out of gas and was forced to stop at the house to seek shelter. Ben quickly grabbed Barbara and got them both into the house to safety. After getting rid of the three zombies that were after them, Ben boarded up the windows and doors as soon as possible. Barbara decided to tell Ben what had happened to her before they met. Ben decided to turn on the radio and get the news of what was going on around them. In hope of finding something useful, Ben looked in a closet and found a gun and ammunition. As Ben was looking in the closet, two men, Harry Cooper and Tom, emerged from the basement, while Helen, Harry's wife, and Judy, Tom's girlfriend, remained to watch over Helen’s Injured daughter. After fighting about where the safest place to be was, they all came to the conclusion that Harry would go back down to the cellar while Tom and Judy stayed upstairs. A little while after, Harry and his wife Helen went back upstairs and the group got the TV going to get an update on what was happening. After they watched the telecast, the group cooperated

On October 1, 1968, George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead was released in movie theaters. Although this film was released toward the end of the 1960s, the decade’s civil unrest translates into Romero’s film. Earlier that year, Martin Luther King, Jr., the iconic Civil Rights Movement leader, was assassinated, yet racial tension still ran high in the South, with small, local civil struggles occurring in many places. Far away, America’s youth was fighting the seemingly never-ending Vietnam War. Adam Lowenstein’s introduction to Shocking Representation discusses “The Allegorical Moment”, or “a shocking collision of film, spectator, and history where registers of bodily space and historical time are disrupted, confronted, and intertwined” (2). The representation on screen of this “historical trauma” complicates the distinction between time and space, causing viewers to experience similar sensations mimicking the original pain inflicted by the event. George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead presents the tragedy of the black soldier narrative during both the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War, drawing from this “allegorical moment”, and subsequently acquiring a larger black audience.

After watching her brother die in front of her Barbra runs to a nearby farmhouse to hide from the killer. After she explores the house and finds a dead body on the second floor she runs outside where she meets an african american man named Ben. They board up the down stairs of the house and Ben goes to check the upstairs. Then two men Harry and Tom come out of the basement. After Ben rushes back down stairs because of the commotion he heard Ben and Barbra find out there has been five people in the basement the whole time. The reanimated bodies surround the house, the other survivors begin to panic. They decide to try and escape by taking a truck fill up its gas tank with fuel and then drive to a refuge center. When the plan was attempted the gas caught on fire and the truck blow up with Tom and his wife inside. They all retreat back into the house and reboard it back up. The living dead surround the house and start breaking in. Ben drops his gun trying to hold up the barricades and Harry takes it and tries to take control. Ben fights the gun away from him and shoots him and he falls into the basement. Harrys wife followed him and was killed by her daughter who had become a living dead. The zombies broke through and took barbra. Ben the last one still alive retreats to the basement. After a while he starts to hear gun shots so he ventures upstairs. He is shot by a rescue team when they mistake

When picturing a zombie the image of a undead person looking for its next human meal comes to mind. While this is the foundation of what the contemporary belief of a zombie is, the actual origin has a far deeper and darker history than what is portrayed today. In the 17th century, Haiti; at the time known as Saint-Domingue, was colonized by France. Slaves were brought in from Africa to work on the sugar plantations. These slaves were subject to such brutal and horrible conditions that many of them died after a few years of service at a rate two to three times higher than any other type of plantation (Berlin 21). A belief rose among the slaves that if they died, they would return to la guinée (Africa) and be free - but there was a catch. If they committed suicide; as many did, they would not be allowed to return to la guinée and instead would spend eternity at the plantation as an undead slave (Mariani).