Dawn of the Dead (1979) 1st Shot Analysis

This long shot represents the historical context of consumerism, as does the whole shopping mall theme as the zombies have been identified as approaching the mall through thought, wanting to be here. This is irony as zombies are known to being mindless, and through consumerism people buy what they may not need, being labelled as mindless and falling for the business/market. The clock which is placed through composition in the middle of the shot has two arms which go through each other, the arms also represent phallic symbols and the fact they go through each other represents the idea of murder, I analyse this as symbolising shopping malls have murdered society.

With Janet Staiger’s Audience Studies theory, we the modern viewers find this film to be less horrifying due to the censorship and how horrific films can be now days. Another part of Janet’s theory is how that the audiences context is a main highlight in how we respond, for example when this was filmed, consumerism was a massive part of society as well as the Vietnam War, which Tom Savini’s special FX body horror relates to.

This film also fits in with George A Romero’s auteur style, a theory developed by Andrew Sarris, that being his gruesome and satirical horror about a hypothetical zombie apocalypse. Also his other style where he focuses upon the theme of racism, and he loves to represent how stupid and pathetic racism is in the world. An example of this satire as well as his views on racism in George’s films is Day of the Dead (1985) as we grow feelings for the zombie Bub and he’s shooting towards the racist character until he meets a dead end and is pulled apart and we see body horror used in a victorious way. Another example of this style is Night of the living Dead (1968) while the final survivor, Ben is a black male hero and is killed off by Romero’s representation of Rednecks, continuing to show the racism theme in this institutional context against that of the theme of rednecks.

The zombies are also always looked down upon by the camera as it’s at a high angle, this is effective as it gives the zombies a less threatening look most of the time, making them seem a lot weaker despite the fact of what they’re capable of.