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(Pleatherface) Buy, Consume, Repeat: DAWN OF THE DEAD and the Horror of the Shopping Cart

By. Pleatherface

    Guess who’s back? A dated 90’s early, early 2000’s reference. Sorry for taking so long to get back to my series but as you all may know, life tends to get in the way of the fun stuff. Last I wrote, I had just watched Halloween 3 and was pleasantly surprised by it’s themes and the way it addressed a few concerns we still have to this day. My next target was DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978) by the brilliant George A. Romero. This film was meant as a sequel to his black and white classic, Night of the Living Dead, and further explored the dehumanizing effects of a zombie pandemic in urban settings. The movie follows a group of 4, 3 men and a woman, as they flee from Philadelphia. I knew, and wanted to watch it because of it, that most of the movie was set inside a mall. That idea intrigued me, as many zombie-apocalypse plans I’ve heard or thought of myself saw it as a good base in such an event (of course now malls are in decline and an ideal place might be something like an Azon fulfillment center).

    While I had some expectations about what the movie might make me think over, it proved to be another rather deep text that made me take stock on how much broader the zombie infestation/apocalypse is a metaphor. So, first a quick synopsis. 2 of our survivors, members of a newscast team, steal a TV station helicopter wanting to escape Philly. They are joined by 2 police men, one black and one white, who have decided to skip out on their jobs after a raid on Latino/Black community housing shows them both the danger of the creatures and the danger of their fellow officers and other non-infected. They meet up at a police gas station from where they make the decision to try to find a place on their way north to Canada. On the way, the find a mall where they can pick up supplies but end up seeing as a good place to ride out the situation. Things happen, one gets bitten and turns into a zombie, and they are attacked by a band of raiders. As a result of that attack, another group member dies. The last surviving male, the Black cop, tries to hold back the zombies to give the woman a chance to escape. While she waits for him, he seemingly has chosen to sacrifice himself and is about to shoot at his own head but has a change of heart. He fights his way to the roof where they take off. The film ends with him asking how much fuel they have left, to which her reply of not much elicits a smirk; the end music evokes a bittersweetness that is contrasted by a circus-fanfare that accompanies the end credits.

    This musical shift was something I noticed Romero seemed to enjoy playing with throughout the film. His use of music had such an effect in accentuating either the performers’ inner turmoil or the outer madness of the situation. While in Halloween I enjoyed the way in which the music set an atmosphere, the way it was used here had a stronger effect on me and my perception of the characters rather than the space. And that is one thing that jumped at me in comparing both movies. While both do a great job of using horror and engage in metaphors about the way we consume, they do so from different places.

    Skipping around, I always try to focus on both themes and thematic elements when watching with a critical eye. In this case, I was very interested in the consumer aspect (as I usually am) but also grew curious about something else as I watched. While not all have a 1:1 parallel, Romero takes the time to take a critical look at how each of the estates behave during a crisis such as this zombie crisis. For this I am looking at the estates as they connect to the idea of powers or groups in society such as nobles/politicians/military, clergy/church, commoners/regular folks, and the press/media. The first group is represented mainly by the police and military. They engage in brutal tactics to dispatch a group of Latino and Black citizens who refuse to surrender the bodies of their dead relatives. These scenes, which show cops taking pleasure in shooting other non-zombies, seems too close to us even today almost 50 years later. One cop has to be taken down by our two cop survivors as he indiscriminately shoots at anyone who comes across his sight. The racism displayed by some in these scenes offers a sharp contrast with the expectation of police as protectors. The clergy is represented by a one-legged priest who cannot offer anything but scant hope as he warns officers of the horrible situation to be found in a basement of the building. The common folk are represented by various violent groups including a group of white southerners who delight in zombie hunting, the afore mentioned Black and Latino, and the raiders who attack the mall at the end. The last group is seen in 2 of the survivors but also in recurring jumps to television segments where a couple of pundits engage in a “debate” over what is the best way to handle the situation (these asides are great for exposition and updating the audience on the world outside of the survivors’ bubble).

    I enjoyed this way of showing us viewers both how disconnected each group can be from the other, but also how each break in similar fashion. The press is shown to make a spectacle of their duty to keep the people informed, and it is not always clear if they may or may not actually be delighted to possible be the only source of information for others to consume. While the common folk are shown to be willing to engage in their base desires as social order breaks down. It is ironically the zombies who behave in much more deliberate and organized ways, falling back to the patterns of their former living lives. The raiders for instance show how un-infected humans actually behave much more like a locust plague than the zombies do; they go from place to place attacking other humans. Not content with just taking provisions or food, the revel in causing disaster and destroying that which they cannot take. And this is where the consumerism comes back, because while traditionally (or at least in more contemporary interpretations that are part of the pop zeitgeist) zombies are these raving omnivores, here the ones to behave like an all-consuming/blighting plague is the humans who are not infected. Consumerism is also displayed in the behavior of the 4 survivors, who we as viewers watch fall into a routine of exploring the different products offered by various stores throughout the mall. Yet their consumerism, while also not sustainable, stands in contrast to the raiders. They take to use, and mostly as needed; they do so in an attempt to replicate the normalcy of their previous lives showing how intricately connected consuming is to a “regular” life. Even in their interactions with the infected, they tend to be defensive and careful. They seek to create barriers to avoid overuse of resources (except when the white cop kind of looses it and gets a little too trigger happy, and even that is tangentially connected to not wanting to leave “his things” behind). Their whole escape is mediated by scarcity of resources, gas for the helicopter, the need to find a place where they can have both food and shelter, and space. While the film does not offer an alternative view of ethical consumerism, it does offer a strong critique of indiscriminate consumption but not via the vehicle one would have expected.

    As a viewer I was more than pleased with the movie, which was kind of long and dragged a bit in the middle (especially when we are shown glimpses of the survivors daily lives), but the frantic and optimistic ending make for a film that is much more rewatchable than Halloween 3. It is a great entry in the zombie genre from my limited knowledge, and in that vein a good gateway for newbies like me.

    Up next I’ll tackle a recommendation given to me by the almighty algorithm of free streaming services, Scream. So moving onto something more modern to challenge the palate. See you next time!

 

For more articles from Pleatherface check out his articl on Halloween III