When Cohen, Asma or Ingebretsen discuss monsters, they have a tendency to unify them under a category: a monster is a monster, their differences a matter of cultural expression. But in what ways do the different sub-categories of monstrosity--vampires, zombies, aliens, giant-ism, lycanthropy, etc.--bear their own, seemingly implicit, characters? Do certain monsters express certain cultural angst better? Or can you switch them out? Harper asks, of Night of the Living Dead, "Why zombies, as opposed to vampires or dragons or giant beetles?" Is he right that this decision is as important as the mere fact of representing fear?
Though monsters as a collective unit certainly share the ability to incite fear in their victim/prey, the fear they elicit is quite different. Whereas a confrontation with an alien or a vampire might leave the victim with mixed feelings of curiosity, awe and fear, an encounter with a zombie does not stir up any positive feelings. Indeed, it seems that the zombie has no redeeming qualities. Vampires are not only immortal, but are often portrayed as refined and elegant; aliens often possess otherworldly abilities and skills; werewolves are swift and powerful. The zombie however, seems to possess a very limited (if any) mental capacity, feeble strength, and awkward appearance and movement. As the newscaster in Night of the Living Dead remarks, "eyewitnesses say they are ordinary-looking people. Some say they appear to be in a kind of trance. Others describe them as being misshapen monsters." What is the significance of having a monster that has no desirable or at least potentially desirable qualities?
ReplyDeleteDifferent monsters can invoke different fears in an individual because they represent different things. Vampires are monsters who induce fear in people through their air of mystery. When someone meets a vampire they are usually curious because the vampire seems very alluring and sensual. However, once a closer relationship is made the vampire slowly becomes creepy and frightening. The Zombies in Night of the Living Dead are monsters with a very stiff walk who keep their arms held out in front of them and moan. They do not talk and they are not alluring or sensual. These zombies immediately invoke feelings of terror. Night of the Living Dead would have been a completely different movie if the zombies were replaced with vampires. The characters in the movie would have probably invited the vampires into their home and had them stay for dinner. Only after people slowly began to disappear would fear set in. Also, vampires tend to be picky eaters so it is highly unlikely that everyone would have died. The same arguments can be made if you replace zombies with any of the other monsters listed. Romero chose zombies for a reason. He wanted his characters to feel pure terror of the unknown. This effect could only be established by the use of zombies.
ReplyDeleteBrittne R.
It is certainly difficult not to agree with several of the other posts, that monsters as a whole are generally created to entice fear, some are just better at it than others. Zombies are unrefined, impartial scavengers who often travel in masses and are always in a relentless search for food. They have no desire beyond that of human flesh, so they kill indiscriminately any and every person they encounter, and although they may be terrifying, that is about it. They have no personality, they cannot even talk. Vampires on the other hand, because of their intelligence and an acquired ability to assimilate can be infinitely more horrifying. Vampires are mysterious; unlike the “what you see is what you get” one-dimensionality of zombies, they have multiple layers and they may differ greatly from subject to subject. Not all are evil, and the ones that are may be deceiving, which provides the unsettling feeling that they may be walking among us. They are more refined, they can communicate, and they discriminate in whom they kill, most often choosing innocent women as their victims. Zombies, and the thoughtless moving masses that they constitute, may offer insight into larger problems of a nation, such as the social and political problems critiqued throughout Night of the Living Dead (Romero 1968). Harper has suggested in his Night of the Living Dead: Reappraising a classic, that the zombies offer allot to contemplate in regards to race in America, the Vietnam War, and gender. They are metaphors for the social and political problems prevalent in a country. Harper reiterates this notion to some effect in his Zombies, Malls, and the Consumerism Debate: George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, when he suggests “zombies are synonymous with oppression and slavery” (4th Paragraph). Zombies are not often viewed as individuals, they represent masses or groups of people, and therefore, they are the essential monster for Romero’s critique. Sean S.
ReplyDeleteWondering why George Romero chose zombies rather than any other monsters to deliver his message, Harper makes a very valid point. Although it is the leitmotif of or readings that monsters are the metaphors for cultural fears, anxieties and hidden desires, the whole does not equal the sum of its parts. In other words, to effectively depict a cultural issue, the right metaphor is needed, which calls for a particular monster. Going back to The Night of the Living Dead, it is only logical that the director resorted to inertia driven, amorphous mass of creatures in quest for satisfying a very primitive need - feeding. Zombies are perfect for invoking the undifferentiated masses drafted for Vietnam or racial minorities that appear as a homogenous mass of the Other to Caucasian institutions and households. Juxtaposed with zombies, vampires are more sophisticated, intelligent, and active villains that if needed, can easily assimilate, although temporarily. As such, vampires are great for staking a specific, exclusive social group like Jewish people (Nosferatu), or aristocrats (The Vampyre Tale). Despite their differences, both zombies and vampires are anthropomorphic, and this quality suggests that they are among us; they are some or many of us. Conversely, monsters of non-realistic size or appearance allude to issues that do not directly relate but rather correlate to a particular society. For instance, Godzilla stands for the American-created nuclear havoc in Japan after the War. Godzilla is an exotic creature, just like Westerners are to the traditional Oriental culture. Exotic monsters can be brought into our focus not only though magnification to gigantic sizes but also through drastic reduction. Take viruses and germs. Invisible with the naked eye, they precisely for this reason arise as even more scary than their giant colleagues. Representing the outside threat, often incurable by modern medicine and impossible for humans to affect, they stand for issues foreign yet massive in their scope (In the War of the Worlds, the earthly bacteria that destroy the Martians could as easily plaque humanity had they not had the immunity for the germs). It seems like monster industry has taken on the capitalistic edge - specialization and diversification.
ReplyDeleteI don’t think its possible to switch the monsters (say substitute vampires for zombies) without altering the subtle implied message. "Every monster is ... a double narrative, two living stories: one that describes how the monster came to be and another, its testimony, detailing what cultural use the monster serves" (Cohen, page 13). As explained by Stephen Harper in his essay 'Night of the Living Dead: Reappraising an Undead Classic', origin of zombies lies in the voodoo tradition in Haiti. A sorcerer puts a spell on someone such that that person loses his / her free will and can then be used as a slave. Its this linkage to slavery, which, as per Harper, allowed George Romero to use zombies as a metaphor for oppression of people of color (remember, Night of the Living Dead was made at the time of the civil rights movement in America).
ReplyDeleteAll monsters invoke fear in their prey / audience but each also serves its own separate purpose. For instance, aliens are frequently represented as a technologically advance species from a different world who perhaps come to Earth in search of something that we do not value but is missing in their society (for instance aliens from a warring society in search for empathy and love). Hence, Aliens can serve as a metaphor for aloofness, radical thought or a decline in family values).
Vampires on the other hand, live for ever, feed on blood and are considered to be scheming, intelligent, rich, cultured, sexually active creatures and hence serve as an ideal metaphor for say internet predators like in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A zombie cannot be used in this situation since our brains associate them with creatures lacking intelligence / reasoning and ones with no interest in any human desires.
A monster is a monster regardless of type in that the monster is something we don't want to be or to let into our society. But I disagree that their difference is merely one of cultural expression. Different monsters have different traits and that makes them metaphors for different features that people don't want to be present in society.
ReplyDeleteVampires represent the worst parts of the aristocracy. People who live under a special set of extra lenient rules that allow them to take what they want from others without working for it and escape from the consequences, even the consequence of death.
Zombies represent a fear of the common man. People who act uniformly. Show no individualism. Embrace any form of nourishment. They don't care about real food, they just want to eat other people, bugs, whatever is available.
Aliens are the bourgeoisie. They clearly worked for what they have, and what they have is nicer than what vampires or zombies have (don't tell the vampires this). But the way they work to get what they want is incomprehensible to anyone else, we can't work hard they way we know how and make flying saucers. They want our resources because they think (rightly) that they can make cooler stuff with them than we can. We're upset about this because then we have nothing to do, and there's nothing we can do. We'll die out unless we are lucky AND sacrifice dignity to become the alien pets. We fight to preserve our inefficient place in the world.
The main purpose of George Romero’s satirical film, Dawn of the Dead was to expose the “zombification” of consumerism in America. His choice of monster was quite appropriate as he needed to show how consumers are controlled like puppets in terms of material acquisition. Zombies are categorized as mindless creatures whose only goal is to find food to fill their stomach. They lack the ability to think or reason and are quite similar to certain consumers who roam the stores in shopping malls with a piece of plastic (credit card) in their hand looking for more material to fill their empty lives. The piece of plastic gives them power and without thinking, they purchase what they do not really need or more than what they do need. Consumers are lured or rather propelled into these stores through attractive offers, such as: buy one, get one free or 70% off. Are these offers really bargains or simply the manipulation of the naivety of certain consumers? And what better place for Romero to demonstrate this than in the exact place where multitudes of shoppers go and roam like in a daze in search of more material possessions to stimulate their dull lives. Romero could have used puppets dangling from strings to enact the attitude of consumers, but to be more dramatic and to enhance the reaction of the population he opted to use fear to allow people to see how they really are through the eyes of the zombies.
ReplyDeleteOn several occasions in the movie, the zombies were referred to as being “us”; “they look like us,” they say and that is very scary. Are people being roped in to purchasing what they do not need because they are doped by the media through commercials that make attractive and irresistible offers or present products as life savers or must “have’s”? As the media play such a humungous role in the influence of the consumers, it was drawn into the film but not explicitly shown as a brain washer but as background noise just rambling without actually informing.
Romero could not have used a different category of monster, for example, the vampires for this role for they have a mind of their own and can think. Vampires are shrewd, savvy, manipulating creatures that cannot be controlled like puppets. They often appear to be smarter than human beings and can fit into the crowd at any time. Zombies, on the other hand, are dumb in both the figurative and real sense of the word and are outsiders that can never blend in because they are cannibals whose only intent is to find human flesh. Although vampires need human blood to survive, they go about it in a more sophisticated way.
Both of these monsters are deadly to human beings but give me the vampire at any time.
The central characteristic of zombies is the fact that they are indistinguishable from one another. Other monsters tend to be either completely unique or at least individualized. In the first case, there are monsters like Godzilla and King Kong, who are both absolutely one of a kind. Even in the instance of other monsters, where multiple beings exist, they are still easily distinguishable. For example, with vampires, it is obvious that Count Orlok, Lord Ruthven, and Angel are not at all the same. This is not limited to characters from different time periods or authors; even those that exist within the same work show individuality. Frank Grady discusses in “Vampire Culture” the vampires Akasha and Maharet. He describes them as absolute opposites; the former being rash and militant while the latter is maternal and wise. Even though they are both the same type of monster, they are completely different and have separate personalities and agendas. What makes zombies so interesting is the fact that they do not exhibit this individualism. They are an indistinguishable mass that often acts as one unit, as if they are guided by the same thoughts and goals. This is what makes them the perfect monster for Romero’s critique. He is not just, as so many other authors have done, using a monster to represent our fears, but to “tell us something about who we are – and warn us about what we might turn into” (Night of the Living Dead: Reappraising an Undead Classic). His criticism of American society is that we fall into a mob mentality and fail to think. Whether the audience interprets Night of the Living Dead a comment on race relations, patriotism, or the war, the point is still the same: we must be careful of turning into thoughtless followers. In this respect, there is no other monster that could exemplify this message better than zombies.
ReplyDeleteMainstream monsters have long stretching back-stories by now. No doubt each monstrous form has it’s tell tail characteristics and weaknesses. Almost bound to what has become socially acceptable and expected of them. A seeming check list categorizes them as if one was to encounter a vampire (or anything else for that matter) on the street then will be identifiable by ‘blank’. Zombies are the mindless mob, as vampires own the night. I contend that these groups are not condemned to individual fates. The lines already tend to blur in movies like 30 Days of Night. Many of the long held beliefs are still upheld in this movie, but the monster harks to other categories. The vampires are portrayed in more of a mindless murdering mob. They seem to have more in common with their zombie brethren. They rampage from house to house killing everything in sight. The real key is summarized simply by the earlier readings; monsters are creations of our own imagination. We can make anything fix into the intended matrix. Whether zombie, alien, or flesh seeking teddy bear the story could have gone on in Night of the Living Dead. Any monster form could have nurtured the human-monster connection. It was just made simpler by the human himself or herself being overtaken by an uncontrollable force. Slow moving sickly rabid dogs could have played the role. Anything could be creeping from shadows and mindlessly patrolling the hallways for fresh meat. Most of all, to limit ourselves to a singular purpose per monster would be a great disservice to the monster community. The scariest is the unknown; the unexpected changes to come will prove to be the most fruitful. Eventual if not already the classics have lost much of their gusto to the new hybrid creatures of the future.
ReplyDeleteIn all, I think that zombies are best fitted for this film because of the fact that they are all human, yet are all dead. They have human characteristics, which allow the viewers to feel more connected with them. The characteristics of zombies have a great impact in this film; the way zombies still have the ability to feel and respond, show the lack of brain function, yet still having a soul. Ultimately, I think that zombies are best for this film because of the time period with Martin Luther King, Jr. and Kennedy, it allows us to feel as though people are the monsters, poisoned by something/someone. Because the zombies have human characteristics, it is much easier to connect to these monsters, showing these monsters are representing people, such as society during this time period.
ReplyDelete