Night of the Living Dead: Social Commentary in Horror Cinema

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Night of the Living Dead (1968) was hardly the first zombie film—in fact, it was the fortieth, for those of you who like useless trivia facts—but it is possibly the most memorable of the older zombie classics. It’s not hard to see why it has persisted for the last fifty-three years, enduring beyond the renown of such modern zombie sensations, such as The Walking Dead (2010 – Present) and Train to Busan/Busanhaeng (2016). What most modern films and television shows of the horror genre seem to gloss over is their captive audience. Therein lies the opportunity for commentary on the civil rights issues that are still incredibly relevant in the present day.

One notable exception to missed opportunities for commentary being Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017)—but we can get to that one later. For now, we’ll just focus on the message of Night of the Living Dead. As Tom Gunning explained in his essay, “confrontation rules the cinema of attractions in both the form of its films and their mode of exhibition. The directness of this act of display allows an emphasis on the thrill itself—the immediate reaction of the viewer,” (“An Aesthetic of Astonishment”, 122)—this thrill that we get from controversial messages and images on display within films is one of the main reasons we watch horror. Excitement is king.

They’re coming to get you, Barbara!

Johnny in Night of the Living Dead (1968)
A line of undead ‘zombies’ walk through a field in the night

What is Night of the Living Dead about?

At face value, this movie is just a story about survivors of a zombie apocalypse stumbling upon one another, clashing personalities, and finally a begrudging combining of forces to fend off the zombie hoard that surrounds the farmhouse that they each found and decided to hunker down in for safety. One by one, these survivors each ends up dying, until we see the last man standing—Ben, emerged cautiously from his secure space in the cellar of the farmhouse to find that police and other volunteers were roaming around, killing the zombies, and reclaiming their land for the safety of the living.

Unfortunately for Ben, these rescuers are less focused on finding survivors and more focused on mindlessly putting down anything they find that moves. While that might simply be interpreted as bad luck for our main character, Romero’s decision for this ending was actually fairly controversial considering the time in which it had been created. Now you might be asking yourself, where does the conversation of civil rights factor into this? Well, buckle up, buttercup—we’re just getting started.

Night of the Living Dead (1968) Movie Poster
Night of the Living Dead (1968) Movie Poster

Controversial Social Commentary

“Curiositas draws the viewer towards unbeautiful sights, such as a mangled corpse, and ‘because of this disease of curiosity monsters and anything out of the ordinary are put on show in our theatres,’” (Gunning, 124). Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) gives us these “unbeautiful sights” in spades. Consider the special effects that were available to directors at that time—the glimpses of a woman with her face eaten off at the top of the stairs and zombies ripping flesh off of bones after an unfortunate accidental explosion of the getaway vehicle were the literal encapsulation of this concept. The intangible concepts within this film are the reflections of society and how little progress has been made since 1968.

Ben giving Barbara slippers in Night of the Living Dead
Ben giving Barbara slippers

Freud pinpoints the appeal of the horror story. He begins by discussing the etymological root of the word “uncanny” in German, a word long associated with the horror genre, demonstrating how both the word and its opposite are very close in definition and usage… ‘it may be true that the uncanny [unheimlich] is something which is secretly familiar [heimlich-heimlisch], which has undergone repression and returned from it, and that everything is uncanny fulfills this condition.’ … Freud … hit upon the key to understanding the core of the horror genre. Horror is dissimilar from much of [the] science fiction genre in which the threatening ‘monster’ (often created because of the interference of science or technology)—whether it be alien, atomic mutant, or cyborg—is portrayed as the Other which must be destroyed or controlled by science, often in conjunction with the military/industrial complex, in order to save humanity. Horror tends rather to concentrate on another type of ‘Other,’ an ‘Other’ which is very familiar and because of that much more frightening, an ‘Other’ which is rooted in our psyche, in our fears and obsessions.

James Ursini, pg. 4 of the Introduction in The Horror Film Reader

The Civil Rights Movement

From 1954 to 1968 the Civil Rights Movement empowered Black Americans and their like-minded allies. They battled against systemic racism (or institutionalized racial discrimination), disenfranchisement, and racial segregation within the United States. The brave efforts of civil rights activists and innumerable protesters brought meaningful change to the US, through changes in legislation; these changes ended segregation, voter suppression for Black Americans, as well as discriminatory employment and housing practices.

The Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

There were tragic consequences for two of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. With the assassination of Malcolm X on February 21, 1965, and the subsequent assassination of Civil Rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968. Each of these losses to the movements provoked an emotionally-charged response; looting and riots put even more pressure on President Johnson to push through civil rights laws that still sat undecided.

The Fair Housing Act of 1968

The Fair Housing Act became law on April 11, 1968. It came just days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.; too little too late, but it prevented housing discrimination based on race, sex, national origin, and religion. It was also the last piece of legislation that was made into law during the civil rights era.

Casting a Black Actor in a Non-Ethnic Role

The way the lead character Ben was written originally with Rudy Ricci. Surprisingly, however, when 31-year-old African American actor Duane Jones auditioned for the part, the decision to cast him was unanimous. Even Rudy Ricci was on board with the change in plans, stating that, “Hey, this [was] the guy that should be Ben.”

Duane Jones—the Anti-Ben

Romero recalled that Jones had been the best option when it came to casting the part of Ben, and remarked that, “if there was a film with a black actor in it, it usually had a racial theme.” He even saw fit to mention that he resisted writing new dialogue for the part just because they had cast a black lead. It was assumed that Jones was the first black actor to be cast in a non-ethnic-specific starring role, but that barrier was broken by Sidney Poitier in 1965.

Interestingly enough, the role of Ben was supposed to be a gruff, crude, yet resourceful trucker. His essence was that of an uneducated or lower class person. On the other hand, Jones happened to be very well-educated, with fluency in several languages, obtained a B.A. at the University of Pittsburgh, and an M.A. at NYU. Jones was the one who flipped the script, improvising through the dialogue to portray his interpretation of Ben as a well-spoken, educated, and capable character. Therefore, as originally written, white Ben was a stereotype whereas Jones turned the character into the antithesis of a stereotypical black ben.

So why was Night of the Living Dead so controversial?

Even though Ben is the protagonist, he was never meant to be the hero—in fact, Ben was supposed to represent just an everyday Joe, who “simply reacted to an irrational situation with strong survival instincts and a competence that, though far from infallible, surpassed that of his five adult companions trapped in that zombie-besieged farmhouse,” (Kane). What we would expect in terms of racially heated arguments, we only witness the palpable tension that displays what goes unsaid. What also may not occur to modern viewers as being controversial, is the portrayal of a black man and a white woman being locked up alone in a house together. Segregation may have begun over a decade prior, but racism doesn’t die overnight just because laws are changed.

The “Final Guy”

The tragic ending of Night of the Living Dead was a commentary on real injustices that were happening at the time, as well as a foreshadowing of an issue that has doggedly limped into the systemic racism of the twenty-first century. The world was facing its end of days. The threat of the undead rising from their graves and feeding off of the living was enough to pull everyone together to stay alive—but racism was still alive and well. Unlike most of his African-American male successors of horror, Ben does not fall victim to the black character stereotype by being the first character to die. Ben makes it to the end—the so-called “final” guy—he was able to save himself when the house was overrun by the living dead. Then, after all of his hardship, he ends up dying at the hands of the gun-toting police officers.

Ben was wielding a gun, he was clearly not a revenant, and the sharpshooter who put one between Ben’s eyes could very obviously see this—his death affected not a soul in that situation, his life in plain language was unworthy of continuing in the eyes of the men who were supposed to serve and protect the living, who instead of seeing a human being, perceived a threat. The ending that Romero’s film allowed to linger in the minds of the audience was controversial because it made people think. It made them look at the social and political issues that were washing over the United States all around them; Romero delivered in that two minutes ending, a message that was unforgettable. It has thusly endured through the culture of horror and has continued to inspire modern horror cinema.

Final Thoughts

If classical Hollywood style is posited as the norm, then filmmaking practices that deviate from it risk becoming seen as “primitive” (such as early cinema) or “excessive” (such as genres where spectacle often seems to trump narrative, including musicals and horror films).

Adam Lowenstein, “Living Dead: Fearful Attractions of Film”

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Interested in watching the full film now that you’ve read this article? Well, you’re in luck—this film is now in the public domain and can be watched online for free.

Work Cited

Gunning, Tom. “An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)Credulous Spectator.” Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film, by Linda Williams, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, 1995, pp. 114–133.

Lowenstein, Adam. “Living Dead: Fearful Attractions of Film.” Representations, vol. 110, no. 1, 2010, pp. 105–128. JSTOR. Accessed 19 Jan. 2021.

Kane, Joe. “How Casting a Black Actor Changed ‘Night of the Living Dead’.” TheWrap, 1 Sept. 2010.

Harper, Stephen. “Bright Lights Film Journal: Night of the Living Dead.” Bright Lights Film Journal | Night of the Living Dead.

Ursini, James, and Curtis Harrington. “Introduction/Ghoulies and Ghosties.” The Horror Film Reader, by Alain Silver, Limelight Ed., 2006, pp. 3–19.

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The Mystery of Pandora’s Box

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Horror Mystery and Lore
Opened Up a Pandora's Box

What is Pandora’s Box?

Well, it’s something of an origin story–much like the origin story of Christianity, with Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge. It is said in Christianity that all of the evil that arose in the world of humans only came about after Eve ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. In the older, ancient Grecian mythologies, there was Pandora’s Box which was an attempt to explain the beginning of how the world came to be as it is today. This attempt at an explanation comes from the naturally curious nature of all people who want to know why things happen the way they do and before any scientific explanation, these myths and legends were their way of coping with what they could never hope to understand.

Pandora’s Box, Adam and Eve, as well as countless myths from cultures spanning the world from the beginning of the historical record, attempt to explain why things are the way they are. There is just something so incredibly fascinating about the curiosity of one girl dooming the entire human race to the evils and terrors of the current world. That is to say that early man decided that someone was to blame for the human experience of disease, hate, and war–and that it was inherently woman’s burden to bear for the igniting the ire of the gods, for her blatant disobedience.

The Story of Pandora’s Box

Epimetheus Opening Pandora's Box
Artwork by Giulio Bonasone

The story of Pandora and the box with which she doomed the rest of humanity, comes from Ancient Greek mythology, needless to say, there have been multiple adaptations of the original story. The story focuses mostly upon Pandora, whose name means “all-giving,” and according to the story, she was the first woman on Earth. Before the humans were put on Earth, there were only the immortals, in the form of the Gods and the Titans.

Two of these Titans, Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus had fought on the Gods’ side in the war between the Titans and the Gods. Most renditions of the story say that this was due to the prophetic powers of Prometheus, which gave him the ability to foresee the downfall of the Titans. In some of the variations, these two brothers were the cousins of Zeus, who was the King of the Greek Gods.

When Zeus invested himself in creating inhabitants of the mortal realms he called upon the other immortals for their assistance. Prometheus and Hephaestus were requested to create man out of clay and water, where Epimetheus was enlisted to create the animals and gift them their individual abilities of courage, swiftness, stealth, and more. Unfortunately, Epimetheus gifted out all of the abilities before the creation of man and there were no abilities left to give to them.

In response to this lack of gifts to bestow upon his creation, Prometheus decided to give man the ability to stand upright like the immortals and much to the chagrin of Zeus, Prometheus also gave man the gift of fire. This angered Zeus greatly, as he had purposefully denied man the gift of fire, and in order to give man fire, Prometheus had to steal it from Zeus. Some believe that Prometheus stole it from Zeus through means of one of his lightning bolts, others believe it was fire from the forge of Hephaestus.

As a punishment, Zeus chained Prometheus to a giant rock far off in the Caucasus Mountains where no one would be able to find him.
Zeus tortured Prometheus daily, by sending an eagle to feast upon his liver, which would grow back in time for the next day–that is until Heracles found Prometheus, killed the eagle and freed Prometheus from his imprisonment.

Prometheus wasn’t the only one to suffer Zeus’ wrath though, instead, he aimed to punish both brothers for the missteps of Prometheus. Hephaestus was asked by Zeus to create Pandora, the first woman, out of clay and water, and modeled her after the goddess Aphrodite.
intending her to be a punishment for Epimetheus and mankind, so each god and goddess gave Pandora gift–beauty, wisdom, charm, music, curiosity, persuasion, kindness, generosity, peace, and health, some of which could be used for good and some which could be used for evil.

Zeus sent Pandora to Earth to be Epimetheus’ wife and despite Prometheus’ warning of Zeus’ two-faced nature, to not accept any gifts from the gods, Epimetheus had fallen in love with Pandora from the moment he laid eyes upon her and wanted to marry her immediately. As a wedding present, Zeus gave Pandora a box and attached to the box was a note stating that it was never to be opened, but included a key regardless.

Pandora's Box
Artwork by Carlo Perugini

Due to one of her many gifts from the gods and goddesses, Pandora ached to see what kind of treasures were hidden inside–eventually, her overwhelming curiosity got the better of her; when Epimetheus was out of sight, she grabbed the key and unlocked the box. Upon its opening, a plague of buzzing moths escaped from within; Pandora had thusly released horrible things. This plague of moths bestowed mankind with greed, envy, hatred, pain, disease, hunger, poverty, war, and death. All of the miseries of life had been released upon the world before Pandora was able to slam the lid of the box closed. Her guilt overtook her, and she curled up crying for what she had done, when Epimetheus came to see what was wrong she told him what she had done.

A small voice emerged from within the box, but neither of them could understand what was being said–knowing that she had already done as much damage as she could, Pandora again opened the box to show Epimetheus the box was now empty. Except, there was one moth left which flew out upon her opening the box a second time. This last moth was the embodiment of hope, and it was the only thing that allowed humans to stay positive enough to survive the wickedness that Pandora had unleashed upon the world.

The term “Pandora’s Box” now epitomizes anything that is virtually unknown, but is best left alone, for the fear of what might come from being too curious.

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