Night Of The Living Dead Analysis

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The film, Night of the Living Dead (George Romero 1968 USA), raises the question of the location of our fear of the grotesque. It is not in the imminent danger to ourselves and our own bodies, rather it extends beyond that, into our intrinsic composition as linguistic beings. The grotesque, (as represented in the film, but also in culture as a whole), represented by zombies, taps into a fear of alienation. In which not only our own inner alienation becomes literal and tangible but, we are doubly faced with hordes of those who are like-but-unlike-us (to which we eventually become).
Fragmentation:
In his 1949 essay, The Mirror Stage, Lacan discusses the seminal process of recognition of one’s self as “I”, before entrance into language and symbolic …show more content…
It functions on two levels of signification, it is not only that other peoples fragmentation is literally uncovered and made center, but also that we can no longer rely on them to “mirror” ourselves back to us. Night of the Living Dead offers two modes of classic reaction, fight or flight. Both, ultimately fail. The real (our lack), in this sense, is out-runnable. The solution to this strife is destroying the zombie. Bringing to the forefront that we are ultimately alienated. Night of the Living Dead is ultimately fatalistic. Nobody gets out alive. It’s just over, that’s all and our hero is unceremoniously burned with the rest of them. What do we do with such alienation? Both Punk, and the zombie genre answer similarly. Turn it against yourself and the others you stand against. What scares us about zombies is similar to what scares us about Punk. It’s a violent epidemic, or has the potential to be a violent epidemic, in which mainstream culture is faced with something “other” unlike itself. We’re faced with beings who look like us, but cannot reflect any part of ourselves in. Punk looks at mainstream culture and cannot place itself within it; culture does the same to Punk and due to this they both seek to destroy one
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