{"id":9672,"date":"2017-07-30T04:26:11","date_gmt":"2017-07-30T04:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=9672"},"modified":"2017-07-31T04:36:17","modified_gmt":"2017-07-31T04:36:17","slug":"george-romeros-zombies-will-make-americans-reflect-on-racial-violence-long-after-his-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/george-romeros-zombies-will-make-americans-reflect-on-racial-violence-long-after-his-death\/","title":{"rendered":"George Romero’s zombies will make Americans reflect on racial violence long after his death"},"content":{"rendered":"

Erin C. Cassese<\/a>, West Virginia University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s your zombie apocalypse survival plan?\u201d <\/p>\n

The question invites the liveliest discussions of the semester. I teach a course on social movements in fiction and film at West Virginia University, where I also conduct research on race<\/a> and gender<\/a> politics in the United States. <\/p>\n

George Romero\u2019s first film, \u201cNight of the Living Dead,\u201d is on the syllabus. The film was groundbreaking in its use of horror as political critique. Half a century later, Romero\u2019s films are still in conversation with racial politics in the United States, and Romero\u2019s recent death calls for reflection on his legacy as a filmmaker. <\/p>\n

Disquieted times<\/h2>\n
\n \"\"<\/a>
\n Newark, N.J. Rioting erupted in the predominantly black area of Newark\u2019s central ward in July 1967.<\/span>
\n AP Photo<\/span><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, an English professor and monster theorist<\/a> at George Washington University, notes<\/a> that \u201cLike all monsters, zombies are metaphors for that which disquiets their generative times.\u201d<\/p>\n

Romero shot \u201cNight of the Living Dead\u201d in 1967, when Americans\u2019 attention was focused on powerful televised images of race riots in cities like Newark and Detroit, and on the Vietnam War, the likes of which were new to broadcast news<\/a>. Romero reimagined scores of bleeding faces, twisted in rage or vacant from trauma, as the zombie hoard. He filtered public anger and anxieties through the hoard, reflecting what many viewed as liberals\u2019 rage and disappointment over a lack of real social change and others saw as conservatives\u2019 fear over disruptions in race relations and traditional family structures. This is the utility of the zombie as a political metaphor \u2013 it\u2019s flexible; there is room enough for all our fears.<\/p>\n

In \u201cNight of the Living Dead,\u201d an unlikely cross-section of people are cornered in a farmhouse by a zombie hoard. They struggle with each other and against the zombies to survive the night. At the end of the film, black protagonist Ben Huss is the sole survivor. He emerges from the basement at daybreak, only to be mistaken for a zombie and shot by an all-white militia. The militiamen congratulate each other and remark that Huss is \u201canother one for the fire.\u201d They never realize their terrible error. Perhaps they are inclined to see Huss as a threat to begin with, because he is black.<\/p>\n

At the start of Romero\u2019s next film, \u201cDawn of the Dead,\u201d in which another unlikely bunch faces off against zombies in a shopping mall, police surround a public housing building. One officer remarks on the unfairness of putting blacks and Hispanics in these \u201cbig-ass fancy hotels\u201d and proceeds to shoot residents indiscriminately, not distinguishing between the living and the undead. <\/p>\n

The officers are shooting to restore the \u201cnatural order\u201d in which the dead stay dead. But their actions also restore the prevailing social order and the institutions that create and reinforce racial inequality.<\/p>\n

Zombie revival<\/h2>\n

In my class, I connect these scenes of dehumanization to contemporary racial politics, using them as a springboard for conversations about racially motivated police violence and the Black Lives Matter movement. These discussions focus on the zombie as a dehumanized creature.<\/p>\n

In returning from the dead, zombies lose their human essence \u2013 their agency, critical reasoning capacities, empathy and language. As Cohen writes,<\/a> \u201cZombies are a collective, a swarm. They do not own individualizing stories. They do not have personalities. They eat. They kill. They shamble. They suffer and they cause suffering. They are dirty, stinking, and poorly dressed. They are indifferent to their own decay.\u201d Zombies retain a human form, but lose their individuality and are dehumanized in their reanimation.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n Film director George A. Romero in Mexico City in 2011.<\/span>
\n AP Photo\/Marco Ugarte<\/span><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Minority victims of police shootings are often portrayed in the media as dangerous, animalistic and even monstrous \u2013 meaning they too are stripped of their basic humanity<\/a>. Social psychologists<\/a> argue that perceptions of humanity are a critical part of social cognition \u2013 the way we process or think about other people and social settings. When we see people or groups as less than human, predictable consequences arise. Romero\u2019s films tune us in to our own potential for dehumanization.<\/p>\n

Zombie psychology<\/h2>\n

Dehumanization<\/a> relaxes our moral restrictions on doing harm to others and ultimately facilitates violence<\/a> against them. When people see members of a group as an undifferentiated \u201choard,\u201d they\u2019re susceptible to the same error as the militiamen in \u201cNight of the Living Dead.\u201d When they couple dehumanization with hatred, resentment or fear, they become like the resentful police officer in \u201cDawn of the Dead.\u201d Dehumanization of black Americans underpins the violence perpetrated against them in Romero\u2019s films and in America today.<\/p>\n

Dehumanization isn\u2019t confined to police violence. New research<\/a> shows that dehumanization of Muslims and Hispanics underlies support for restrictive immigration policies and a border wall. It also undercuts support for aid to refugees. <\/p>\n

In my own research, I show that political candidates are often dehumanized in political discourse<\/a> and campaign imagery<\/a>. This work suggests that monsters plague our elections and governance processes more broadly.<\/p>\n

\"TheRomero will be best remembered for giving the zombie a place in mainstream American culture, but he also gave us a warning about human psychology and critical insights into racial politics in the U.S. For this reason, his work will continue to have a revered place on my syllabus.<\/p>\n

Erin C. Cassese<\/a>, Associate Professor of Political Science, West Virginia University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Erin C. Cassese, West Virginia University \u201cWhat\u2019s your zombie apocalypse survival plan?\u201d The question invites the liveliest discussions of the semester. I teach a course on social movements in fiction and film at West Virginia University, where I also conduct research on race and gender politics in the United States. George Romero\u2019s first film, \u201cNight […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":9673,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[2863,2857,2859,2225,2862,2858,498,2861,2860,779,2856],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9672"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9672"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9674,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9672\/revisions\/9674"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}