Racism and Dawn of the Dead

The day August 28th, 1963, tremendous amount of Americans were gathered in Washington. Black and white, young and old, they demanded the equal treatment for black Americans. The nation’s most famous civil rights leader, the Reverend Martin Luther King, was speaking: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” This day marks the historical moment of the massive protest against the racial segregation.

African Americans have been treated unequally through the American history. Before 1970s, black people were separated from white people in any public areas; they had less right than whites. Same situation black people were facing in American film industry; black people have less opportunity to be on screen and they are nearly segregated from acting as the main character. For instance, audiences can barely find one black face in the 1930s film, Bride of Frankenstein.

Or in the later 1975 movie Mandingo, black people were described as untamed monsters owned by masters that they “deserved” everything they got. But, a controversial American director, George Romero, does not let those prejudices root in his mind. He heirs black actors to be protagonist to fight these racial stereotypes. In an interview with the New York Times, George Romero describes his zombie films as “snapshots of North America at a particular moment.” Romero’s second zombie film, Dawn of the dead, is a good piece which appeals to racism.

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In Henry Powell’s essay “One Generation Consuming the Next: The Racial Critique of Consumerism in George Romero’s Zombie Films”, he indicates: “In general, the film (Dawn of the Dead) serves as case studies in the ways the thinking or acting of the previous decade has negatively affected our society in terms of marginalizing people and perpetuating inequality among the non-rich and non-whit…