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Fighting Two Wars:

George A. Romeros /Night of the Living Dead/ as a Critique of 1960s

American Society

by Rafael Alves Azevedo

<http://sequart.org/author/rafael-alves-azevedo/> | in Articles
<http://sequart.org/magazine/articles/> | Wed, 15 April 2015
<http://sequart.org/magazine/date/2015/04/>

<http://images.sequart.org/images/Night-of-the-Living-Dead.jpg>

A. Introduction

/Night of the Living Dead/ is considered to be one of the most important

horror films in the history of American cinema and is widely recognized
as the first modern horror movie (Badley, /Body Fantastic/ 13). It was
directed by American film-maker George A. Romero, co-written by Romero
and John A. Russo, and stars Duane Jones as Ben Huss, Judith ODea as
Barbra, Karl Hardman as Harry Cooper, and Marilyn Eastman as Helen
Cooper. It was the first film in the so-called /Living Dead/ film
series, an important movement in film history. Despite initial criticism
because of its explicitly gory content, it became a commercial success
due to its cult following and earned critical praise.

Some film scholars[1] argue that this film can be read as a subversive
critique of 1960s American society with most of them interpreting the
film as dealing with racism, the Vietnam War, a patriarchal society, and
distrust of authorities. This article will explore an interpretation of
the films main protagonist, Ben Huss, played by African-American actor
Duane Jones, as fighting two wars, i.e. the war at homeracismand the
war abroadVietnam. An elaborate interpretation will help the reader
understand the films social commentary better, which in turn deals with
some key aspects of 1960s American society in an authentic way, since
the film was released in 1968.

*B. From Double-V to Muhammad Ali: The concept of two fronts*

The concept of two wars or two fronts for African-Americans during

an armed conflict involving the Unites States of America goes back to
the Double V campaign of the 1940s promoted by black newspapers and
black leaders, which called for a victory at home over discrimination
as well as victory over the axis (Finkle, Conservative Aims of
Militant Rhetoric 692). In the 1960s, the war abroad took place in
Vietnam, where the American forces fought against the communist North
Vietnamese troops and the South Vietnamese guerrilla group Viet-Cong in
order to contain the spread of communism. However, this war gradually
grew unpopular with the American public and by the second half of the
decade the opposition to American involvement in Vietnam had become
fierce, ranging from peaceful protests to radical movements. The
so-called war at home over discrimination experienced a similar
polarization in the 1960s with the Civil Rights Movement on one side of
the spectrum and the Black Power movement on the other. Furthermore, the
decade can be characterised as one of achievements, such as the Civil
Rights Acts, as well as setbacks, such as the assassinations of Malcolm
X and Martin Luther King, Jr., for the African-American community.
Because of the growing discrepancy between the duties of the
African-American population, such as serving in the armed forces in
Vietnam, where the percentage of black soldiers surpassed the percentage
of African-Americans in the U.S.A. (cf. Higashi, Night of the Living
Dead 178), and their rights and status within American society, where
despite ground-breaking legislation racism continued to be a huge
problem, increasingly more African-Americans were unwilling to fight for
a country that did not respect their rights, and therefore resisted the
draft, such as boxing heavyweight champion of the world, Muhammad Ali,
who commented on his refusal to fight a second war by stating that no
Viet Cong ever called me nigger.

<http://images.sequart.org/images/night_of_the_living_dead_3.jpg>

C. Dont you know whats goin on out there?: /Night of the Living
Dead/as a comment on 1960s American society

As already mentioned, many film scholars think of /Night of the Living

Dead/ as a subversive critique of 1960s American society that deals with
various aspects. Regardless of whether George A. Romero was aware of it
or not, the film certainly reflects some aspects through means of
film-making as well as storytelling. /Night of the Living Dead/ broke
some of the rules of the horror film genre, e.g. by not having the good
guys win at the end. There is no cure for the infected, the zombie
apocalypse cannot be stopped, and Duane Jones is even killed. This can
be seen as a reflection of the shattering of 1950s optimism that had
been going on since John F. Kennedys assassination in 1963. Romeros
pessimism shows a society on the verge of collapse (Deming, Night of
the Living Dead) with the monsters becoming even more powerful and with
authorities that cannot be trusted and that are too inept to deal with a
threat to humanity. One of the films most iconic shots shows
11-year-old living dead Karen Cooper eating her fathers corpse,
literally killing off the patriarchal society of the time. Furthermore,
even its contemporary audience perceived it to have an urgent coded
message on the state of America (Hervey, /Night of the Living Dead/ 9).
Publicity for /Night of the Living Dead/ was based on the assumption
that /Night/ found its core audience among those who were sceptical of
the American mainstream, politically and culturally (Hervey 18). When
asked about his films reflection of these turbulent times, Romero
simply stated that it was 1968, man Everybody had a message. The
anger and attitude and all thats there is just because it was the
Sixties (qtd. in Jones, /Rough Guide/ 118).

I. Dying together isnt going to solve anything: /Night of the

Living Dead/as a comment on Vietnam

Most of the film scholars who discuss /Night of the Living Dead/
interpret the films symbolism as dealing with Vietnam. Unlike many
other contemporary horror films, /Night of the Living Dead/ was shot in
black-and-white and is notable for its gory, unsettling realism which
resembles the Vietnam footage that aired every evening on TV. Along with
the films grainy aesthetic, natural lighting, hand-held shooting, and
its use of natural locations, these unusual techniques gave [Romero's]
gorefest the look and feel of a doc (Stein, The Dead Zones).
According to Romero, the films monochromatic cinematography was
explicitly used to give /Night of the Living Dead/ an authentic feeling,
since In those days the news was in black-and-white It was much more
realistic back then (qtd. in Hervey, /Night of the Living Dead/ 19).
Even the language used in the film is similar to the one associated with
Vietnam; e.g. when a posse is out to kill zombies near the end of the
film, a television broadcast within /Night of the Living Dead/ refers to
their mission as Search and destroy, which was a notorious Vietnam War
military strategy. Another example are the films body counts such as
We killed nineteen of them in this area which are reminiscent of the
ones reported during the Vietnam War (cf. Higashi, Night of the Living
Dead 182f); and when the film cuts to the mob, accompanied by a
newscaster played by Pittsburgh-based television newscaster Bill
Caudill, we hear the noise of helicopters and walkie-talkies, which the
films 1968 audience certainly linked to the military in general and
Vietnam in particular.

The fact that this horror film plays in Pennsylvania and not somewhere
in Europe where most of Hollywoods horror films up to that point had
taken place[2] acknowledges the 1960s reality of having Middle America
at war (Stein, The Dead Zones) in a time of partly violent student
protests against American involvement in Vietnam and massive race riots
in many cities. Furthermore, this setting clearly demonstrates a 1960s
American society on the verge of collapse. As Ben Hervey puts it,
Little wonder that young viewers responded to a brutally violent
horror film set here and now, which pitted Americans against Americans
 that its moral ambiguity felt true to them, its refusal to idolise
heroes or demonise monsters (/Night of the Living Dead/ 23f). Even the
weapons Ben and the others use to fight the zombies resemble 1960s
anti-war protests; equipped with home made Molotov cocktails, they look
like militant radicals ready to overthrow the system with guerilla
tactics.

According to Douglas Winter, zombies symbolize the state of

conformity (Introduction 6) and due to the films resemblance to
Vietnam footage, it is reasonable to assume that these conformist
zombies are meant to represent soldiers. In their most negative
depictions, soldiers are generally presented as mindless killing
machines, lacking any individuality, moral values, an ability to
question orders and any capacity to feel empathy or love. The 1960s
protest movement clearly opposed this blind patriotism and therefore,
Ben can be seen as not fighting /in/ Vietnam, but as fighting the
Vietnam War itself, because, as Helen puts it, dying together isnt
going to solve anything. He fights the conformist zombies and tries not
to be infected, i.e. drafted, which would mean his joining the other
zombies, i.e. the armed forces. This anti-establishment, leftist reading
is fuelled by Romeros own world-view. He stated that he and his friends
were part of that liberal ganghippies who didnt want to grow up
(qtd. in Hervey, /Night of the Living Dead/ 27). Since Ben survives the
zombie attack, it seems as if he successfully resists his war abroad.

However, we must acknowledge that he is killed at the end of the film.

It is a senseless death without heroism (cf. Dillard, Night of the
Living Dead 27). Ben does not sacrifice himself for a greater cause; he
is just shot by a mob of rifle-carrying WASPs. If we assume Ben to be
/in/ Vietnam, then this mob can be considered to represent American
involvement, since their mission is even referred to as Search and
destroy by a television broadcast. If we prefer to read the film as
dealing with the opposition to the war itself, then the mob invokes
images of the National Guard firing at peaceful demonstrators at Kent
State, the Democratic Convention in 1968, and the violent quashing of
the Columbia University protests. Either way, Bens being shot in the
head and burned resembles two of the most well-known war photographs;
the Viet-Cong who is shot in the head by a South-Vietnamese police chief
and the Buddhist monk who set himself on fire to protest the Southern
regime.

<http://images.sequart.org/images/Night-of-the-Living-Dead-7.png>

II. You can be the boss down there, Im boss up here!: /Night of
the Living Dead/as a comment on racism

The fact that /Night of the Living Dead/ was one of the first films to
feature an African-American hero when the rest of the cast is composed
of whites leads many film critics to analyse it as a comment on racism
and race relations within U.S. society in the 1960s. Duane Jones
survives a fierce zombie attack only to be killed by a redneck posse
(Stein, The Dead Zones) at the end of the movie. According to Mark
Deming, this cruel depiction of a heros death had added resonance with
the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X fresh in the
minds of most Americans (Night of the Living Dead) and the
influential French film magazine /Cahiers du cinma/ even wanted the
audience to see le vrai sujet du film qui nest videmment pas les
morts-vivants, mais bien le racisme (Daney, Nigth of living dead
[sic] 65).

However, according to George A. Romero, there was no racial implication

in casting Joneshe simply gave the best audition (Jones, /Rough Guide/
118). Nonetheless, Romero has always said that he shot the posse scenes
and the ending with politics consciously in mind (Hervey, /Night of the
Living Dead/ 26). Due to the fact that Romero and Russo had not finished
the script when they started principal photography and that the crew,
especially Romero and Duane Jones who soon understood his roles racial
implications, talked a lot about the films themes while shooting, it is
reasonable to assume that although there may not have been an
intentional racial statement with Jones casting, it emerged with their
grasping of the films racial reading and was most clearly presented in
the films ending (cf. Hervey 12; 26), which was even Jones own idea
(cf. 46). Jones explicitly stated that it never occurred to me that I
was hired /because/ I was black. But it did occur to me that because I
was black it would give a different historic element to the film (qtd.
in Hervey 43) and that he and Romero took some scenes racial overtones
into consideration.

Nevertheless, there is not a single racial epithet in the film, not a

single remark about Bens blackness. This refusal to make a point out
of the black guy[3] can be seen as a statement in itself. However, it
must have occurred to Romero that viewers would read something into
Jones being black. Not only because of the all-white mob that kills Ben
at the end, proving to be crueller than the zombies, but also because of
the Ben-Harry relationship in the farmhouse, which R.H.W. Dillard
considers to give the center of the film its tension (Night of the
Living Dead 20). While /Night of the Living Dead/ has been praised for
its ambiguous interpretation of zombies, which distinguishes this film
from pre-/Night/ horror films with evil monsters that threaten the
good status-quo, some critics[4] point out that there is one
dislikeable character; it is the white middle-class patriarch Harry
Cooper. Although race is never mentioned, Harry acts according to our
expectations towards a film dealing with racism by being a WASP who
gives orders and becomes enraged when the Negro disobeys. Ben and
Harry soon start an argument over where to hide. Harry thinks the cellar
is the best place to retreat, whereas Ben sees it as a death-trap. This
argument develops into a demonstration of power and a contest for
leadership within the farmhouse. Tom, a character that accompanied Harry
at the beginning but then refused to go down with him to the cellar,
tries to settle their differences. Wed all be a lot better off if all
three of us were working together he says, but they will not listen.
Tom can be seen as the embodiment of cooperation, whereas Harry is
unable to cope with not being an authority, i.e. the end of his
perceived white supremacy, and Ben acts as if he was a black power
activist, even welcoming the newly established division within the
farmhouse with the words You can be the boss down there, Im boss up
here!.

In a later scene, Ben, Tom, and Toms girlfriend Judy leave the
farmhouse to refuel their truck, while Harry hurls Molotov cocktails at
the zombies. Tom and Judy die due to an accident that causes the truck
to explode and therefore, Ben has to return to the farmhouse on his own.
His escape from an all-white zombie mob, waving a torch, cannot help but
invoke images of Ku Klux Klan lynchings of African-Americans. The horror
clich of a lynch-mob-chasing-the-monster scene, most notably featured
in James Whales /Frankenstein/, is inverted; the zombies are the mob
and Ben is the monster, his Otherness being his race[5]. Ironically, Ben
survives this lynching mob only to be killed by another one at the end
of the filmthis time consisting of normal living people, all-white
with police dogs, resembling the ones used against the Civil Rights
Movement in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, and carrying guns. The film
then ends with stills of the dead Ben and his body being burned, which
look like archive photographs taken in the 1920s from public lynchings.

Back in the farmhouse after his escape from the zombie mob, the tension
between Ben and Harry intensifies. Although they have a common enemy,
they are unable to cooperate. More and more, the viewer has the notion
that this film is not about people turning against monsters, but about
people turning against people (cf. Dillard, Night of the Living Dead
21f). In another struggle, Harry grabs a rifle and points it at Ben
instead of pointing it at the ghouls that are reaching out for them. Ben
manages to get his rifle back and shoots Harry. However, this scene does
not convey an impression of self-defence. This is not just an accident,
born out of a moment of struggle; it is an expression of hate. There is
no need to point the rifle at Ben; Harry could have retreated to the
cellar anyway. Just like there is no need to shoot Harry. When Ben
shoots him, Harry is lying on the floor, beaten and defenceless. Several
seconds elapse with Ben standing over him, staring at Harry almost
grinning before he pulls the trigger. Their power struggle is over. Ben
not only successfully disobeyed Harrys orders and convinced the others
to follow him despite his race; he ultimately let his rage, his hate
overcome his reason, winning his war at home by killing the embodiment
of his suppression.

*D**. Conclusion*

George A. Romeros films are known for their social commentary. In the
films sequels, such as /Dawn of the Dead/, their respective themes are
developed more explicitly, whereas in /Night of the Living Dead/, it is
done in a subtle way, coded and sometimes probably even by chance.
However, even those aspects of the film are now part of almost every
reading of Night of the Living Dead as a social critique, because they
either reflect certain contemporary attitudes or they triggered
authentic responses from the films 1968 audience with respect to
American society.

By interpreting Ben Huss as fighting a war on two fronts, /Night of the

Living Dead/ becomes first and foremost relevant to African-Americans
and the history of the Civil Rights Movement. Despite the fact that the
concept dates back to World War II, it was in the sixties that it became
a controversial topic when many African-Americans questioned their duty
to fight for a country that in their eyes did not respect them, backed
by a New Left that was eager to denounce racism, patriotism and militarism.

Although Ben seems to win his wars, surviving the zombie attack and
killing Harry, he is shot at the end of the film by a posse that with
its symbolism connects both aspects, Vietnam and racism. In a time of
hope for a better future, this scenes nihilism might seem surprising.
However, it foreshadows the response the silent majority gave to the
counter-culture by electing Richard Nixon a few months later, as well as
the fact that it was not the New Left that was about to take over
control of society, but an ideological renaissance of the political
right, personified by Ronald Reagan. It was Romero himself who
acknowledged this origin of the films mood by stating that I think we
really were pissed off that the sixties didnt work, that the world
didnt change (qtd. in Hervey, /Night of the Living Dead/ 118).

*Works Cited
*

Badley, Linda. /Film, Horror, and the Body Fantastic/. Westport:

Greenwood Press, 1995.

Daney, Serge. Nigth of living dead, in: Cahiers du cinema, No. 219, p.
65, 1970.

Deming, Mark. Night of the Living Dead (1968), in: Allmovie. URL:

http://www.allmovie.com/movie/night-of-the-living-dead-v35311/review.

(Visited on Aug. 1, 2012)

Dillard, R.H.W. Night of the Living Dead: Its not like just a wind
thats passing through, in: Waller, Gregory A. (Ed.). /American
Horrors: Essays on the modern American Horror Film/. Chicago. 1987.

Finkle, Lee. The Conservative Aims of Militant Rhetoric: Black Protest

during World War II, in: The Journal of American History, Vol. 60, No.
3, pp. 692-713, 1973.

Hervey, Ben. /Night of the Living Dead/. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

Higashi, Sumiko. Night of the Living Dead: A Horror Film about the
Horrors of the Vietnam Era, in: Dittmar, Linda and Gene Michaud (Ed.).
From Hanoi to Hollywood: The Vietnam war in American Film. London. 2000.

Jones, Alan. /The Rough Guide to Horror Movies/. London: Rough Guides, 2005.

Stein, Elliot. The Dead Zones, in: The Village Voice; 2003. URL:
http://www.villagevoice.com/2003-01-07/film/the-dead-zones/ (Visited on
Aug. 1, 2012)

Winter, Douglas E. Introduction, in: Winter, Douglas E. (Ed.). /Prime

Evil/. New York. 1988.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Such as /Sight and Sounds/ Elliot Stein, /Cahiers du Cinma/s
Serge Daney, and film historians Ben Hervey and Sumiko Higashi.

[2] For a detailed analysis on /Night of the Living Dead/s textual and
structural elements in comparison to expressionistic horror films such
as /Frankenstein/ and /The Wolf Man/, cf. Dillard, Night of the Living
Dead 17.

[3] According to Romero, this was a request from his distributors, which
he refused. Qtd. in Hervey, Night of the Living Dead 42f.

[4] Ben Hervey mentions reviews taken from /Sight and Sound/ and French
film magazine /Positif/, cf. /Night of the Living Dead/ 61f.

[5] For a definition of the concept of the Other, cf. Higashi, Night
of the Living Dead 176f.
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