“Dawn of the Dead” and The Hidden Meaning

Released: 1979

Director: George A. Romero

Writer: George A. Romero

Starring:  David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott H. Reiniger, Gaylen Ross

“This was an important place in their lives.”

I first saw Dawn of the Dead upon its theatrical release.  It was 1979 and I was 15 years old.  I’d see it another dozen times, in theaters, over the next few years.  Not only is it one of my most cherished F'dup Flix, it is one of my favorite films in any genre.

It is also the movie that taught me about theme.

If you read my post on Night of the Living Dead, you’ll realize that I saw Dawn before I ever saw the end of Night.  Such was the difficulty in re-watching a film, pre-home video.

Being underage, the path to seeing the unrated sequel was not a straight line either.

I first became aware of Dawn thanks to a newspaper ad.  In my memory, it was a full-page ad in the Sunday New York Times, with that big ol’ zombie head rising like the sun.

However, a little research at the library has proven that can’t be true.   Of course, it isn’t an NYT sort of film.  In fact, NYT film critic Janet Maslin walked out after 15 minutes, yet still filed a review!

Back in those days, I was enamored with the NYT.  It became my go-to read, once my older sister started bringing it home on Sundays, along with the New York Daily News (traditionally, we were a Daily News house).  More to the point, the NYT's Arts & Entertainment section was my go-to read.   All those in-depth articles about current films.  All those full-page ads for upcoming releases…

Maybe I saw the full-page ad in the Daily News.  Or perhaps, the small sidebar just appeared larger to me at the time because the tidings it conveyed were so monumental.

As the ad itself heralded: “First there was NIGHT of the LIVING DEAD.  Now George A. Romero’s DAWN OF THE DEAD.”

Imagine my surprise.  The film that scared the crap out of my mom had a sequel?  And it was going to play at a theater near me?!   Life was good!

 Now, I just had to convince someone to take me.

I’d seen a couple of R-rated films by then and I hadn’t puked or turned into a psychopath.  Obviously, I was one of those “mature audience” types that could handle adult themes and situations.

Immediately, I went to work on my mother and sister, the parent and guardian in my life, to convince them that they should see this film…and take me with them.

However, as I went back to that full-page ad (go with me on this, will ya?), I slowly became aware of something very strange.  Something that could be a fatal roadblock to all of my scheming.

Every other movie ad I’d ever seen had an MPAA rating at the bottom, but this one had only a box of plain text.  

"No explicit sex”…blah, blah, blah…“scenes of violence”…blah, blah, blah…”No one under 17 will be admitted.”

WHAT?! 

That was the same restriction as a XXX film!  And this didn’t have any sex in it!  How could they do this to me?  I’ll murderlize, ‘em, to quote Bugs Bunny.

With typical kid logic, I decided to fight the prohibition with the most powerful weapon in my arsenal.  I would pretend that I didn’t know.

Eventually, I convinced my mother to take a friend and me one Friday night.  My mother liked all sorts of movies – so it was entirely possible that she would like this – and she had no moral issue with horror films.  However, she had not been to a theater since Jaws, four years earlier.  So, this was a mighty big concession on her part.

Luckily, the force of my willed ignorance worked like a charm, once we got to the theater.

Local theater owners seemed confused how to handle an unrated film.  Although they strictly adhered to the guidelines for every other film, they treated this one as if it was Rated R: No one under 17 admitted without a parent.  As a result, my mom was able to buy us tickets, no questions asked.

The hard work done, I ditched mom.

Yep, my friend and I moved way down to the front of the theater and left my mom, in the back, to sit through this gore-fest all by herself.

As the bloodshed and body count ticked upward during the film, I felt a twinge of guilt.  But at the end of the day, she was a good sport, and it became one of her favorite things to throw back in my face whenever she wanted me to do something:  “Remember how I took you to that gross movie and you made me sit...  All.  By.  MY.  SELF?”

Whenever I think about Dawn, the first word that comes to mind is gleeful.  The movie is flat out fun!  It’s scary, exciting, funny, gory, intense.  It has zombies and soldiers and bikers.  It even takes place at a shopping mall, which was my favorite place at the time (maybe now, as well), aside from a movie theater.

Simply put, Romero nails it in this film.  His ambitions were huge and he achieves all that and a box of Sno-Caps.  Yes, the micro-budget shows in everything from the secondary performances to the quickie blue make-up on the background zombies.  But I didn’t – and don’t – care about any of that. 

As a horror film, as an action film, as an allegory, this film over-delivers.

Remember that none of the common wisdom of “zombie = consumer” existed as yet.  This is the film that launched that discussion.  So, my friend and I did not walk out of the theater discussing the finer points of the film-as-metaphor.

And yet, certain parts of the film made me realize that some unstated thing was going on here.

Yes, the screwdriver through the ear was awesome.  Also, I loved the gag of the blood pressure machine reading zero, after the zombies tear the biker away from the machine…and his arm.  But there were other shots and scenes that hinted at something deeper.

As I played the film over in my mind, I came to pin all of these lingering questions on a single shot.

It’s not one of the classic gore set pieces.  It’s not a payoff to a joke.  In fact, the shot likely means nothing to anyone else.  But Romero chose to show it in a big, juicy close-up and I could not figure out why.

In the years since, I’ve read interviews with Romero where he states that he’d rather get 100 good shots, instead of a single perfect one, when shooting a scene.  It gives him choices in the editing room.

In my heart, I am certain that this shot – and therefore all of the things that I learned about storytelling because of it – is in this film due to that conviction.  Thank you, George Romero!

The shot is toward the end of the film.  The bikers invade, the good guys defend, the zombies win.  The mall is theirs, once more.  As Francine and Peter argue about whether or not to leave, we see that Stephen has turned.

Yet, with all that going on, Romero cuts away to an interesting sequence. 

The zombies bump about merchandise in the mall.  Inside a department store, one zombie knocks some beauty supplies to the floor.  A second zombie steps on them.  In an insert that fills the frame, the once precious product squeezes out across the photo of the beautiful model on the display, wasted.

Hmmm.

All hell is breaking loose and Romero zeros in for a moment which has no bearing on the life & death struggle of our heroes?

The shot hit me on some subconscious level.  I knew right away that it was trying to tell me something, but I could not verbalize what.

I mentioned the shot to my friends.  No one who saw the film remembered it, and more to the point, no one understood why I cared.   Once again, I went back to the library and dove into all of the reviews that I could find of the film.

Here, I’m going to give credit to Roger Ebert, solely to show how wrong I was about his love of genre films in my post on Night.  Check out his glowing review of Dawn.

Notice the line in the first paragraph: a “satiric view of American consumer society.”  And there it is: us = consumer; zombie = consumer; ergo, us = zombie.

Was Ebert the first critic to call out this idea now considered zombie gospel?  Maybe.  It certainly wasn’t Janet Maslin (though she did make a dismissive reference to this theme in her review).

Was he the one who spelled out the theme FOR ME?  Honestly, I doubt it.  I can’t imagine how I would have gotten access to the Chicago Sun-Times, during an era when only national publications were indexed and catalogued.

Although I can’t remember which critic and which article made the light bulb go off for me (and for that I am deeply sorry), I feel comfortable crediting Ebert with a big assist in getting the conversation started.

Once I was given that simple tool – a satire of consumerism – I was like a zombie set loose in a mall, myself.  I began to bump into all kinds of thematic associations.  Each time I watched it, I stumbled away with something new.

The argument in the TV station about whether it was more important to post an accurate list of rescue stations or keep the graphics up so viewers will keep watching =  The news/entertainment divide.

 

Peter and Stephen burying Roger in the only bit of dirt available inside the mall: a planter = The folly of Vietnam.

Stephen and Francine’s chilly, post-proposal bedroom scene = The battle of the sexes, and the crumbling of the traditional male patriarchy.

The bikers’s rally cry to attack the mall after our heroes ignore them: “We don't like people who don't share. You just fucked up REAL bad!”  = The riots which rocked the inner cities, earlier in the decade.

In point of fact, this film is not only about consumerism.  It is about the sorry state of our great nation at the end of the 1970s.

And exploding heads, and marauding bikers, and infectious zombie bites.

A few years before Dawn, a film entitled Network came out.  It is a film filled with big ideas.  It won Oscars.  It was talked about by everyone.  It was rated R.

I did not beg my mother to take me to see Network.  I waited patiently until it popped up on broadcast television, years later.  It’s a great flick. I really respect it.  Somewhere around here I have the UK Blu-ray…still in the shrink-wrap.

And that might be the most enduring lesson that I’ve learned from Dawn.   Even a lowly genre film can tackle lofty themes.  The audience begging to see it might not be expecting any such thing, but maybe, just maybe, they’ll walk out with more than they expect.

Janet Maslin, not withstanding.

Footnotes:

1. The pictures on this page are screengrabs from the Anchor Bay Ultimate Edition DVD, now out of print, but still highly recommended.  The photos are heavily compressed and do not represent the actual PQ of this release.  You can buy used copies of this 3 disc set here.