Postcolonial Theory and Late Capitalist Criticism Aplied to The Night of the Living Dead Trilogy :: Movie Film Essays

Postcompound Theory and modern Capitalist Criticism Aplied to The night of the Living Dead Trilogy plow and Turn ab come in in these shadows from whence a new dawn depart break, it is you who be the zombi spirits.* Jean-Paul Sartre, Preface to The Wretched of the Earth* It is fitting that Sartre uses the zombie as a metaphor for both the colonized and colonizer. He states in the predate to Frantz Fanons The Wretched of the Earth that European colonizers had relegated natives living in colonial states to the role of zombie. The colonizers power structure has rendered the natives as a mute subaltern, fit for slave labor and exploitation. But he goes further to say the natives ascension will render the colonizers as zombies the native will no time-consuming see their dominators as human beings, and they will assign the Europeans to the role of subordinate, dehumanizing and incommunicable. either of this is fitting because the colonizer, whatever his national origin, has adopt ed a stance toward natives that follows the Hatian customs duty The zombie is a human who has been killed and ressurected as slave labor, a ofttimes more docile and controllable beast of burden.It also makes sense that Hollywood adopted the metaphor. Throughout the 1930s and 40s films like White Zombie, Revolt of the Zombies, magnate of the Zombies, Revenge of the Zombies, Zombies on Broadway, and Voodoo Man reinforced the traditional suppose of zombies as ultimate Other. These zombies are without culture or free will, controlled by a mystical villain, often played by Bela Lugosi, who runs a dough plantation or some other such exploitive business. These films are tales of the oppressor, bringing to light the hardships and uncertainty faced by colonizing forces. It is possible for the zombie slaves to revolt, but for the most part these films warn of the perils embedded in cheapjack colonial governing.In 1968, George A. Romero set out to rework the zombie archetype. He created the flesh eating zombie, a monster born not out of religious or mystical effort, but created by the faults and flaws of the society. With his first film, darkness of the Living Dead (1968), he began a trilogy that would deal with the ills of our contemporary American society. Influenced by the turbulent 1960s, events such as Vietnam, the civil rights movement, and rampant consumer culture, Night lays the groundwork for a series of cultural critiques.