Blog Post #4:
I am a total movie nerd and could not help but watch the entire thing, it would be disrespectful to such an iconic movie to just watch parts of the film. I am very glad that I was able to read Cohen’s “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)” before enjoying this movie, especially because of his first thesis, “The Monster’s Body is a Cultural Body.” Right off of the bat, when they were looking to enter the mall, Francine asked Stephen, “‘What are they doing? Why did they come here?,’” to which Stephen replies, “‘Some kind of instinct. Memory of what they used to do. This was an important place in their lives.’” Romero was a genius beyond his time, he was able to capture the needs of the audience so well. At the time of this movie, material possessions were the most important part about people, they didn’t care about anything except what they could buy with money. The monsters could not have represented the culture better, all they cared about was eating, and being in the mall – where money ruled. One might even argue that Francine, Peter, Roger, and Stephen are representations of the monstrous culture that is our world, too. Even when money meant nothing in their world, there was nothing that money could buy, Peter and Stephen were grabbing stacks of cash and Peter exclaimed, “You never know,” in reference to the bundle of cash in his hand. Not to mention, everybody their was grabbing stuff that didn’t matter, they were trying on clothes for nothing. It didn’t matter how they looked as long as they survived. But, that’s the culture of America, it could literally be the end of the world, and people would still care about worldly possessions, as perfectly portrayed by this movie. One more thing that I just found to be really cool, was when Peter was talking with Francine and Stephen about the zombies, he said that his grandfather used to say, “When there is no more room in hell, the dead will walk here.” What a line, that is a perfectly creepy line for the movie, especially given that they basically are the dead, they desire everything that the dead desire, not moments before saying that, when Francine was asking why the zombies were still trying to get inside, Stephen said, “They’re us, that’s all.” Romero did such a good job of portraying the zombies to be the culture as well as the humans to be the zombies, besides the flesh eating part about the zombies, there was no difference between the so called “survivors” and the zombies, neither of them wanted different things. They were one and the same.
