Social-Sexual Images in Night of the Living Dead

Night comes heavy upon the remote farm country of Pennsylvania. A single house sits in the landscape; light comes through boarded up windows in broken slits. Outside is a mass of cannibalisticundead, wandering silently save for the occasional moan or hiss that passesover putrefied lips. They swarmaround the nexus of a farmhouse, drawn to it like a river pulled downhill. Inside hide several frightened people betrayed by the cacophony of theirstruggles among each other. In George A. Romero's horror classic Night of the Living Dead a ramshackle collection of survivors struggle to make it through the night and it becomes clear the social dynamics of the group present as much a danger as the mob of living dead. 

The characters inside the house could easily be identified as a tribal group, cometogether for the most basic of human concerns: mutual survival. Inside the derelict farmhouse, onewould think enlightened self-interest would be the order of the day. However, Jonathan Crane accuratelycatalogues the situation saying, “Endless bickering, futile escape plans,cowardly insults, selfish priorities, and vapid dialogue (should love bementioned) dominate the claustrophobic interior action. The virility with which the temporarysurvivors go at one another is further distinguished by the relative lack ofmalevolence with which the zombies try to capture and consume their venalprey.”^[i]

Themost obvious and heated contest of wills takes place between Ben, the soleBlack protagonist, and Harry Cooper. Their conflict extends to every possible subject their constrictingenvironment will allow. AsZoologist Desmond Morris explains, “Animals fight for one of two reasons:either to establish their dominance in a social hierarchy, or to establishtheir territorial rights over a particular piece of ground.”^[ii] Ben and Harry take turns fighting overboth reasons. When Harry firstcomes out of the basement with Tommy, another survivor, he clearly asserts hisopinion of its strengths as the best place in the house to hide. Ben, who has already dispatched severalghouls and boarded up most of the weak spots, will have none of it. He considers the basement a “deathtrap” as they would have no way out should the swarm of undead break into thehouse.

Harry,the all-American white-collar worker with a wife and daughter hiding in thebasement, adamantly refuses to put himself or his family in danger by bringingthem upstairs. As he moves to takefood and water into the cellar, Ben stops him. Tired of dealing with the abrasively egocentric Cooper, Bendraws a line in the sand by declaring all the food and water belong upstairssince he’s fought this long to keep it there. Harry’s protests are cut short when Ben orders him back intothe basement saying, “You can be the boss down there. I’m boss up here.” Frustrated and casting insults, Cooper slinks back into the basement tosulk.

Harry’sstay in the cellar is short lived. He attempts to console his ego by acting as though he is in control ofthe situation. Harry brags, “We’llsee who’s right. We’ll see whenthey come begging me to let them in down here.” He is already constructing a power fantasy to lick hiswounds like a jilted lover who imagines the significant other crawlingback. Harry’s delusions ofgrandeur are smashed again almost immediately. Telling his wife about the radio upstairs, Helen demands toknow why he locked them in “this dungeon.” After Tommy yells they found a television upstairs, shetakes matters into her own hands by telling Tommy they’ll unbolt the door and comeup. Harry is denied the autonomyof leadership he desires, only this time his wife robs him of his megalomania.

Oncehe returns upstairs, Harry immediate comes back into conflict with Ben. Wandering around the house, he commentsabout Ben’s shoddy workmanship and the uselessness of the windows but does notdo anything constructive to help. Unwilling to tolerate Harry’s caustic personality or rough treatment ofthe mentally fragile Barbara, Ben wheels on Cooper shouting, “If you stay uphere, you take orders from me!” Having already lost the territorial dispute, Harry is now relegated to asubordinate position in the microcosmic hierarchy of the farmhouse.

Themeans of maintaining power within this hierarchy are tied to the gun. In several major ways, the gun is asymbol of masculine power. First,it is a phallic symbol. On thissubject, Morris says, “almost any long, stiff, erect object can take on aphallic role [. . . .] They include everything from candles, bananas, neckties,broom-handles, eels, walking-sticks, snakes, carrots, arrows, water-hoses, andfireworks, to obelisks, trees, whales, lamp-posts, skyscrapers, flag-poles,cannons, factory chimneys, space rockets, light houses, and towers.”^[iii] This list could go on forever, but the gun is not boundto the masculine identity simply because of its shape. So long as one has the gun, destroyingthe unliving cannibals outside becomes an easier task.

However,since there is only one gun, only one of the trapped inhabitants can activelyannihilate their attackers without the danger of hand-to-hand combat. On this same token, the gun is usedonly by male characters and only the male who is, essentially, in charge. Thus, the capacity to eliminate thethreat outside (i.e. kill the ghouls with minimum risk) is tied toleadership. Ben and Harryunderstand this concept at least on an instinctual level. When Ben goes to check the fuse box,Harry tells his wife, “I have to get that gun [. . . .] Two people are deadalready on account of that guy,” as though he knows he is powerless to effectchange without the gun as a defensive tool and status symbol. Unable to control circumstances outsidethe house, Harry demands to have control inside. To this end, he must possess the gun. When the farmhouse comes under assaultfrom an uncountable mass of the living dead, Ben drops the gun to hold up thecrumbling barrier, and Cooper leaps at the chance to obtain the gun andinterior control. The irony hereis just as Harry claims leadership of the interior of the farmhouse, thecannibal mob forces their way in and panic becomes the order of the day. As with all Harry does, his success isfleeting. Almost immediatelydisarmed and shot by Ben for his selfish action, all Cooper has left to do isstumble into the basement where he dies.

Theother major phallic symbol is the trowel in the basement. Helen goes down into the basement nearthe close of the movie, to check on her daughter who was previously bitten byan undead assailant and has been bleeding to death. After such an extended period without medical supervision,the Coopers’ daughter, Karen, died and became one of the living dead, an obviousfact in that she is chewing on her father’s corpse. By in large, the ghouls remained unsexualized since theyhave no drive but to consume. However, when Karen attacks, she does not do so tooth and nail in thetypical undead fashion. Morrisexplains another characteristic of phallic images is their relation to thesexual act itself. He states, “Theoriginal, straitforward pattern of copulation is, for the male [. . .] afundamentally assertive and aggressive act of penetration.”^[iv] Karen takes hold of the trowel in bothhands, stands over her prostrate mother, and stabs her repeatedly in the chestwith vicious overhand thrusts. Theuse of a phallic piercing tool for the murder casts the assault in light ofmasculine aggression. Not only isthe audience confronted with horror of matricide but also the perversion alittle girl acting in a decidedly aggressive male fashion. The hostility of Karen’s attack is alsoamplified by the previously unsexual status of the living dead.

Onthe other end of the hierarchy are the women. Barry Keith Grant writes, “zombie films are so powerfulbecause Romero’s undead demand the suspension of normal (bourgeois) values,particularly those of patriarchy.”^[v] In the instance of each major femalecharacter, she is endangered by her gender-specific role. Romero’s creation of such a patternsuggests dissatisfaction with traditional modes of female expression. This evaluation is supported by theimage of the farmhouse itself, for it is a symbol of the stifling nature of thedomestic sphere to which women are tied.

Asthe movie opens, Barbara is cast as a lead character and set againsttraditional symbols from horror movie. With Johnny, her brother, Barbara has come out to the country to place awreath on her father’s grave. Sheis immediately conceptualized as the dutiful daughter and sister as she puts upwith Johnny’s teasing and crass disrespect. This is the moment when Johnny delivers the now classicline, “They’re coming to get you, Barbara” as he teases his good-naturedsister. Crane explains, theaudience expects this dichotomy and is not surprised when Johnny, adisrespectful, materialistic, probable atheist, is killed by the first ghoul ofthe movie. Barbara, the sweet andinnocent girl next door, barely escapes and should, if horror movie traditionholds, survive long enough to be save by a strong, intelligent, white,well-intentioned young man.^[vi] Suspicions set in when the characterwho comes to Barbara’s aid is unexpectedly a Black man, Ben. About one third of the way through themovie, the audience realizes they’ve been tricked. Romero is not going to play the traditional game, and hestarts by leading all the women who are defined by their gender roles to theirgraves.

Barbaradoes fit into her stereotyped role in a major way: near-total uselessness. She explains to Ben, in a nearlyincoherent narrative, how she came to the house. The audience does feel the horror of her situation when shetells Ben of her attack. Herdescription of how the ghoul “grabbed me” and “ripped at me and ripped at myclothes” carries all the subtext of a sexual assault. After experiencing this type of trauma, no one is shockedwhen Barbara falls into a catatonic state for nearly the remainder of thefilm. Ironically, Gregory Wallerclaims her helplessness “would seem to support certain sexist assumptions aboutfemale passivity, irrationality, and emotional vulnerability.”^[vii] While such an interpretation may betrue, it does not dismiss her ultimate fate. As Barbara comes out of her state of mental detachment toaid Helen, she is confronted with the reanimated cadaver of her brotherJohnny. Barely putting up a fight,her brother’s corpse pulls her from the house to be devoured by the hissinghoard of undead. Her loyalty as adaughter pushes her into the cemetery and conflict with the ghouls in the firstplace, and her gender defined role leaves her unequipped to resist an attackfrom her brother even if he is an unthinking cannibal.

Anotherfemale trapped in the farmhouse, Judy, is a second stereotyped image. She is, first and foremost, Tommy’sgirlfriend. Outside thisdefinition, there is little if any way to characterize her. Judy is understood almost entirely byher relation to a man. She is thetype of empty woman Casey Hayden and Mary King complained were the product ofthe sexual caste system.^[viii] Without the means to expressherself, a woman is forced into predetermined roles subservient to men. This stock character couple is typicalof previous horror films, and they nearly always made it through in theend. However, Crane points outthat, under Romero’s new rules, “If a couple exchange tender sentiments,usually in the most cliched fashion, they will expire in the near future.”^[ix] Judy signs her own death warrant whenshe leaves the house to help Tommy and Ben unlock the gas pump. A woman leaving her domestic sphere, inthis case the farmhouse, will only lead to disaster.

Just as Judy’s life istied to her unassertive and non-confrontational boyfriend, so too is her demisestitched to his in the macabre tapestry of death. She leaves the relative security of the house and jumps inthe truck with her boyfriend. Tommy, in a damning attack on his already low-key masculinity, spillsgasoline from the pump all over the truck and on the torch Ben was used to keepthe pyrophobic ghouls at bay. Hissymbolic premature ejaculation is the end of him and his girlfriend. Panicking, Tommy tries to escape fromthe potential explosion at the pump. He drives the truck a short distance before trying to exit the vehiclewith Judy, but it’s too late. Thetruck explodes incinerating both Tommy and Judy. However, their fate is made all the more tragic as Ben, bystaying calm, manages to put out the fire at the pump. However, there is nolonger a truck to use for escape. Should anyone entertain the questionably comforting notion of Tommy andJudy being together in death, the audience is given several scenes were theliving dead rip apart Judy and Tommy’s scorched remains and devour them.

The last ofthe significant females is Helen Cooper. In a strange twist, Helen is not defined by her relationship to herhusband. In fact, she dislikes himnearly as much as everyone else in the farmhouse. When arguing with Harry in the basement, she says, “We maynot enjoy living together, but dying together isn’t going to solve anything.” Because she breaks the traditional roleas a wife, she is not destroyed by her relationship to Harry. Unfortunately, it is Helen’s role as amother that kills her. Helen saysher daughter, Karen, is “all I have.” She manages to escape all the otherdangers, and the audience would certainly expect a mother and her daughter tosurvive. However, as statedbefore, Romero is not interested in following the traditional rules. When Helen comes downstairs tofind her daughter eating Harry’s flesh, there can be no doubt Karen has becomeone of the living dead. Unable orunwilling to fight her own daughter, Helen only mutters “poor baby” beforetripping. Lying on her back, Helenis brutally murdered by her daughter.

Theultimate assertion of all this unexpected violence is danger is linked tounderstood forms of gender expression. The masculine drive for competition between Ben and Harry is so greatthey will fight even when to do so risks their lives and the lives of thosearound them. Likewise, theclaustrophobia of the farmhouse is a physical manifestation of the suffocatingrestraints associated with female gender roles all of which areself-destructive. As Tony Williamsasserts, movies like Night of the Living Dead “questioned the verynature of the nuclear family and implicitly (though never coherently) arguedfor a new form of society.”^[x] That the farmhouse inhabitants aredestroyed more by one another than the monstrous threat of flesh eating corpsesis certainly an attack on social values at large, and Romero’s subversion ofprevious methods and images of horror film mythology is a statement that thosetraditional methods and images are no longer adequate for making commentswithin the medium.

[i].Crane, Jonathan, Terror and Everyday Life(London: Sage Publications, 1994), p 13.

[ii].Morris, Desmond, The Naked Ape (New York:McGraw Hill, 1967), p 147.

[iii].Morris, Desmond, The Human Zoo (New York:McGraw Hill, 1969), p 107.

[iv].Ibid. p114.

[v].Grant, Barry Keith, “Taking Back the Night of theLiving Dead: George Romero, Feminism, and the Horror Film” in Dread ofDifference: Gender and the Horror Film ed. Barry Grant (Austin, Texas:University of Texas Press, 1996), p 210-11.

[vi].Crane, Jonathan, p 11-12.

[vii].Waller, Gregory, The Living and the Undead(Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1986), p 283

[viii].Hayden, Casey, Mary King, “‘A Kind of Memo’ to Womenin the Peace and Freedom Movements, 1965" in Mary Elizabeth King, FreedomSong (New York: William Morrow) appendix 3, p 571-574.

[ix].Crane, Jonathan, p 14.

[x].Williams, Tony, “Trying to Survive on the DarkerSide: 1980s Family Horror” in Dread of Difference: Gender and the HorrorFilm, p 164.