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Date Submitted: 05/26/2010 11:23 PM
CONSIDERING BLACKNESS IN GEORGE A. ROMERO’S NIGHT OF THE LIVING
DEAD: AN HISTORICAL EXPLORATION
A Thesis
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the
Louisiana State University and
Agricultural and Mechanical College
in the partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts
In
The Department of English
by
Jennifer Whitney Dotson
B.A., Middle Tennessee State University, 2004
August 2006
ii
Table of Contents
Abstract……………………………………………………………………...……iii
Chapter
1 Introduction………………………………………………..…………..1
2 An Overview of the Twentieth Century Zombie in the West….….....12
3 Night of the Living Dead…………………………………………….39
4 Conclusion…………………………………………………...………66
Bibliography………….………………………………………………………….69
Filmography………………………….……………….……………….…………72
Vita.……………………………………………………………………..………..76
iii
Abstract
When George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead was released in 1968, the
independent black and white zombie film stunned American moviegoers. Having
assaulted the audience with a new level of violence-laden gore, Night of the Living Dead
received much attention from both popular and critical audiences, with the former
rushing to theaters to see the film over and over and the latter almost universally panning
the film for its poor taste and gratuitous violence. Since its release, however, Night of the
Living Dead has become one of the most written about horror films in American history,
with critics praising the film for its ingenuity and reviving the zombie genre and also for
its treatment of American sociopolitical issues, including the most critically noted issue—
the Vietnam War. Although I agree with those critics who assert that controversy over
Vietnam War is raised in Night of the Living Dead (as well as are many other
sociopolitical issues which are well worth exploring), the Vietnam imagery of the film
has been almost exclusively analyzed at the expense of exploring what I believe is
another important aspect of...