Zombie Movies and Symbolism

I read Jasie Stokes’s essay on Shaun of the Dead and post-modernism. It was really interesting. I watched Shaun of the dead a few years ago at a friend’s house, and I thought it was pretty funny, but really nothing too amazing. Part of it was probably the group I was with. They were talking or making out the whole time, and they really weren’t that into the movie. Had I read her essay before watching the movie I think I would have really enjoyed it on a much deeper level. At the least I certainly would have had a greater appreciation for it. The problem for me was that it didn’t have a lot of laugh-out-loud totally hilarious moments. The humor was intelligent and funny, but I guess just not on a riotous level. I had not really noticed that the movie refrained from “grotesque slapstick” humor, but that is impressive, as slapstick is way too trite and easy. When I watched it, I hadn’t realized that you could argue the zombies were used as symbols for the loss of identity today. I thought that the film was trying to make some point, but I wasn’t really able to pay close enough attention to figure out exactly what. That is one of the things I like about zombies movies; they generally have a specific point or message they are trying to convey. Night of the Living Dead was one of the first major movies to star a black actor as the main protagonist. The images of hoards of undead white people attacking him bear a striking symbolic similarity to racism of the time. Romero’s next zombie movie, Dawn of the Dead, was a commentary on the great rise of consumerism. People resurrected as zombies flocked to the malls because they spent so much of their life there as mindless “zombies,” buying and buying and buying. Shaun of the Dead addresses how people in everyday life today have become zombies in their rigid routines. They wake up, drive to work, take a lunch break, drive back to work, drive home, have dinner, then watch TV and go to sleep. Rinse and repeat daily. They are just as mindless and predictable as the hoards of zombies in movies.