The Land of the Dead - Essay Example

?The Land of the Dead        George A. Romero’s Land of The Dead (2005) is a horror movie which is about an attack on Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania by zombies. The history richly speaks of filmmakers rigorously pouring films about revolutions, contemporary social issues and political drama, often inspired by real life incidents. Each and every Hollywood movie is inflicted with some or the other political message, whether embed consciously or unconsciously by their makers who are not indifferent to some ideological implication. It is the time of multi-layered mainstream American cinema which keeps entertainment at its core. George Romero is one such writer-director who is a political filmmaker by heart but uses his gift for satire with horror movies.        This flick also tackles a political angle to it where it is shown that there is a feudal kind of Government in America. The people left alive, in the movie, have fled to the city which is protected from all four sides, with three sides having rivers and the third has an electric barricade and military might. The fourth in the series of the previous trilogy of zombie movies by Romero this had the most complex social and political backdrop. All these movies were made in style and had strong political overtones. The New York Sun wrote that it was, ‘the American movie of the year’. Romero has successfully entwined the zombie horror of the characters with political allegory.        The movie which shows a feudal-like Government in Pennsylvania, here Romero tries to allegorize with the fact that there is a supreme social hierarchy. In such systems of social hierarchy the rich remain rich and the poor remain poor and in specific times of turbulence, this system still continues with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer till the upheaval comes to turn tables.        It is a movie which shows horror and also works as a commentary on the political and social situation in the country. According to Brian Wilson, a writer and filmmaker, “Land of The Dead may be seen as a necessary reaction to the present atmosphere of terrorist threat, political disillusionment and George W. Bush” (Wilson 2002).       Romero here, in this political allegory is a critic of the people of the American society who are cooped up in their holes, not wanting to face the reality. They are the apathetic citizens who close their eyes to the problems of global disturbance and terrorism, which has most affected the United States of America, and are waiting for somebody else to take that first step.        It is a violent and gore movie with an edge of satire to it which showcases that the city of Pennsylvania is being attacked by zombies, who moan and groan, produce an unintelligent grunting sound and have only one basic desire – to each human flesh. They are evolving and are everywhere. Over the last three movies of Romero, the zombies have learnt to use their brains and they are firing arms. They have learnt to think and communicate and they have memories to guide them through on their path of gothic destruction. This change in the character of the zombies over the horror movies by Romero, also imply the shift in the political situation of America        Big Daddy played by Eugene Clark is the monster who gets the sympathy from the audience. He and all the zombies in the movie represent the suppressed middle class and the lowest of the lower class, which gets killed by the zombies and become one of them. The rich elites are holed up in a skyscraper, their bastion, Fiddler’s Green where they think they will be safe from the walkers. But unfortunately for the rich folks, the zombies strike them and ironically, the elites find that the electric barricade which they had for their safety has now turned into a solid wall, barring their own escape. The only people who stand between complete zombification of the city are a few handfuls of mercenaries led by Riley, played by Simon Baker. These mercenaries also have commercial interest at heart. They crusade through the dead city in their vehicle, Dead Reckoning, to make food and other items of luxury, to which their rich counterparts are accustomed, available to them. Thus, it is evident that the movie is about class warfare.        This is how he has cleverly used allegory to depict the current political state and played a satire at the Bush’s America. It would not be exaggeration to say here that zombies are a reflection of us – the people, of what we can be at our worst. It is a metaphor cleverly used in Romero’s ‘Land of The Dead.’ In Eric Melin’s words, ’It’s a metaphor for homosexual repression, the civil rights movement, feminism, the counterculture, or an unwinnable war in Vietnam, depending on who you talk to (Melin 2008). When the viewers look at the dead walkers from this angle, they feel pity and sympathy – for the anarchic zombies.         Land of The Dead is a look at the politics of social class system, from the eye of an observer. The movie is a view from the magnifying glass of the current day scenario. It is complete with the three class division of the society. In trying times also, the wealthy and powerful at the top still attempt to maintain their control over lives as it was. The world is crumbling and disintegrating. The social cover is falling apart. Even at such an hour of need and cataclysm the wealthy are searching for their comfort. The poor people who have always been facing trying times, even while alive, who were on the streets living a hard earned life, enjoying and struggling with gambling and drugs are getting butchered on the streets of Pennsylvania. As mentioned earlier, the movies evolve from the socio-economic and political scenario of the times. As, Andrew Tracy have to say about this, ‘Movies are inseparable from the social, cultural and political climate of their times, yes, but seldom in the way they’re depicted in the “informed” media. For every writer who actually traces the links between politics and aesthetics and opens up a conversation about new ways of viewing our films and our worlds ... there are scores among the press flock who simply catalogue surface traces and palm them off as telling political commentary” (Tracy n.d.). The films based on such issues cannot be exactly as per the state of affairs. Thus, it is required to refurbish the contents with more drama to make the viewers understand the point. In arts like painting and music, the art is an outlook and a reflection of the artist doing it but in filmmaking, the director has to keep his audience in mind. Irrespective of whatever is on the records, the director does imbibe certain ideologies of his own which are sometimes not in limelight in the movie, but contain the inner meaning often termed the visceral outlook or satire. To put it simply, it’s selling the awareness of the audience back to them in a sensational way, because sensation sells. In this movie, Land of the Dead, when Riley and his mates go outside of Fiddler’s Green to the city where the zombies are lurking to eat them away to provide the rich people with their necessary amenities, it speaks how the rich people are living off the hard labour of the masses, even if it means endangering their lives for the sake of personal benefit. Also, Fiddler’s Green and the rest of the city of Pennsylvania is depictive of a world comprising of both the upper class and the lower class citizens, who are breathing an air that’s smothering them with the constant pressure of the fear that lurks at the outside of the perimeter. The political drive of the movie is so strong that after a time, instead of feeling sorry for the living people the audience feels sorry for the zombies. Noteworthy here is also the fact that this is a post 9/11 flick and the overall synopsis of the movie urges the citizens of America to not behave as if nothing has happened, as if it can’t get repeated again, but to face the circumstances and find precaution before it gets too late. The bottom line is the class system is dwelling and swelling and soon a time would arrive when the middle and lower classes would stop being resilient and join hands together to take matters in their hands. Here, it can also be suggested that Big Daddy is of a democratic outlook and Kaufman is of a republican outlook, because Big daddy tries to unite the men folk and together they bring the establishment down while Kaufman, on the other hand is more concerned about maintaining his reign at the top and in the angst made some awfully wrong decisions which marked his downfall. It is said that all movies, mainly those which fall under the ‘horror’ genre are politically motivated. Land of the Dead is also one such movie which speaks at length about the capitalism thriving in America and how the people of the lower strata of the society are forced into paying a price for this. Apart from this hidden political satire and the intelligent zombies the movie is the same as other such films of this category, with corpses rising from the dead, the zombies dragging themselves after the living humans to eat their flesh, a lot of blood and gore and ghoulishness all the way. But it is the link to the present day situation which is underlined in Land of the Dead that makes it as popular as it is. There are some others who view the movie from a different perspective. They opine that Land of the Dead is about boundaries. Boundaries between the living and the dead. Boundaries between the people who are dead but returning to behave like living humans and those who are living human but behave like dead. It points an arrow towards the hardships with which a lower class person lives his life, amidst constant fear of what the day would have in store for him, and sometimes thinking, if he would be alive to see that next day. The unfortunate people belonging to this class live a life of extreme dearth and poverty. They are broadly unaware of what they can get and try to find happiness in whatever small things life offers them and to add to their miseries are further suppressed by the rich, thus making the rich richer and the poor poorer. Those who attempt to put a stop to such tyranny are crushed at the seed level itself and for other they do not matter. All this while, the rich folk who are unaware of the precariousness of the situation are going about life as usual, engaging in their daily chores, satisfied with the boundaries of rivers and electric barricade around them which they think would be enough to keep them secure. This boundary is not just to keep away the zombies but it also marks their territory. This is the boundary of which Romero indicates in his yet another horror film Land of the Dark. He has muffed the boundaries and has yet tried to show the engaging difference of living and non living. All his previous films of this genre also have similar political agendas at the bottom, but because this movie has come after a series of shocks that America had to go through, does this movie makes a remarkable mention as a political satire. As Michael Sicinski has rightly pointed out about it in his review of the film, “It does precisely what any good political film should do – it connects ‘here’ and ‘elsewhere’” (Sicinski 2005). The war that is reeled in Romero’s Land of The Dead is an allegorical representation of his interpretations and reasoning. The sort of community of zombies in the movie, led by Big Daddy (Eugene Clark) see seem to be fighting for territory whereas it is only their mean of survival. It binges on the acquirement of territory by both groups. It may be seen as a multitude of social and political upheaval but the notion is politically tinged. But as is the case of the struggle of living beings in real life, where the class system prevails, that the survival for one is the encroachment on other’s territory and the second group feels that he is being attacked upon. But one group’s struggle for survival is another group’s sense of being attacked, not just physically but also in terms of identity. Romero plays with this public notion in this film. Trevor Link says, “It’s not a happy thought to consider, but more than a few of America’s wealthy elite might see the scene in which the zombies break through the skyscraper walls and instinctively imagine the poor and marginalized coming to claim their positions in society, along with their wealth.” (Romero 2005). The Land of The Dead theorizes with the events of the past, which could also be categorized under the mistakes of the United States of America which have germinated the root cause of evil. When the zombies gain consciousness and they target the haven of the elites, Fiddler’s Green, they represent the Israelites, who were liberal, from the Biblical story of Exodus, where they cross the Red Sea with a Black Moses in search of Canaan. Similarly the repeated efforts by Riley (Simon Baker) and his desire to go to Canada, provides the viewers with the impression of the period of the Vietnam draft-resisters and also the time when slavery was prevalent in the country and hundreds of slaves were tortured to work on the project of the Underground Railway. Unfortunately, in the movie the zombies do not find their own land and are thus forced to wander helter-skelter. George Romero’s Land of the Dead is a passionate critical examination of the class system and the racial antipathy that is flourishing under capitalism. It is a contravention of boundaries and counterfeit security which provide a false sense of conformity to the greedy, self interested preachers of capitalism that they are safe. But the question that it lefts it’s viewers to ponder upon is, whose boundaries are left unguarded?  The viewers need to understand the ambivalence that is in every layer of Romero’s way of showing the progression of the zombies who progress from physical advance to strategies of presentation. In all of Romero’s horror films, the actions of the zombies are mainly working upon showcasing themselves as us- the people of the country. The characters are successfully portraying this by drawing emphasis on the body and its limitations. These are such boundaries which are often tried to repress. This leads to a physical anxiety which is shown as a sadistic annihilation of bodies and recognizing our own emptiness.  Nobody has written more aptly about the relevance of Romero’s Land of the Dead than Mario DeGiglio- Bellemare. He writes, “Romero’s new film offers a very important statement on the reality of “lockdown America,” with its gated communities, its stark class divisions, and its racial demarcations. It is also a film that speaks to the post 9/11 context, with the talk of security parameters around North America, the reality of walls in Palestine, and the endless fences that barricade the business elite from protesters. The tower of Fiddler’s Green evokes the attacks on the twin towers in New York, which is confirmed by Cholo’s (played by John Leguizamo) statement that he will wage “jihad” on Kaufman (and Kaufman’s very Bush- like statement that he will not neg. The tower of Fiddler's Green evokes the attacks on the twin towers in New York, which is confirmed by Cholo's (John Leguizamo) statement that he will wage "jihad” on Kaufman (and Kaufman's very Bush-like statement that he will not negotiate with “terrorists”). Romero is highlighting here how so-called threats from the “outside’ are ultimately linked to the concentration of wealth within the U.S "terrorists”)” (DeGiglio- Bellemare 2005). To conclude, we can say that Romero’s cinema does not imbibe false optimism in its approach. It is always about hard reality. He likes to serve to his audience the hard facts but do not guide them through to the end result. He leaves it on his viewers to make their own wise judgement. This film is a jibe at the foreign policies of The United States of America and the flourishing real estate in the country, which has mainly come from America’s own territory increasing tactics. The line of Romero’s work in The Land of the Dead gives a utopian ache that he desires to make this world a better place but on the other hand he is also well aware of the fact that this is not as easy to achieve. Through his zombies who have learnt to think and work and who have joined hands with their likes to reach their final goal, similarly the citizens should actively join hands to the current scenario of politics. Like each of the zombie knew what he wanted, similarly all the people know what should be done and unlike the zombies, the real people can distinguish between the right and the wrong, they must come up to express their views about the same. Romero’s cinema, which gorges on humanistic deficiencies, urges its audience to understand the significance of human values and a far-reaching political change associated with the betterment of all, rather than those at the top. Reference List DeGiglio- Bellemare, Mario. Film Review: Land of the Dead. Vol. 9. Journal of Religion and Film. 2005. Print. Melin, Eric. Why Zombies Matter – “They’re Us!” Scene Stealers. 2008. Print. Romero, George A. Land of the Dead. Journey by Frame. Trevor Link. 2005. Print. Sicinski, Michael. Cinema Scope. Green Cine Daily. 2005. Print. Tracy, Andrew. Land of the Dead: Trash Compactor. RiverseShot.com. n.d. Print. Wilson, Brian. Edifying Horror: Brief Notes on Land of the Dead. The Film Journal. 2002. Print. Read More