This is the ending credits of Dawn of the
Dead (1979), it shows the zombies walking aimlessly throughout the mall.
This shows a high expressionist angle
looking down on the zombies covering the ground floor. I think that George A. Romero has done this to make them seem harmless as if
they were ordinary people strolling round a shopping mall. He has done this to
emphasise his beliefs on consumerism, he has achieved this by the zombies in
the mall connote to the power of
consumerism even when everyone is a zombie, the zombies still had a small part
of their brain that made them venture to this spot, probably due to the
repeated and often visits. By this he is saying to the audience that people are so obsessed with shopping malls that the
greed in their minds make it an addictive place to be, even when they are dead.
Peter addresses this directly when he responds to Stephen's question about why
the zombies keep coming: “Memory? Instinct? This was an important place in
their lives.”
This scene a brilliant example of Andrew Sarris’s Auteur theory due to
the fact that George A. Romero in this film puts his life and soul into it. His
beliefs effect almost every component in this film, he addresses issues that
are linked very heavily to the Cultural
Dominant Ideologies (CDI) at the time a long with a strong link to context. In this example, he is using editing to create this sub-narrative of consumerism, with the
shot telling its own story. Romero often links to context throughout many of his films for instance Land of the
Dead (2005) where he often links to consumerism and racism, which again
where big problems at the time. Night of the Living Dead (1968) had the
first ever black protagonist,
addressing the very racist context
at the time.
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