Zombie Minstrelsy
If we think about Night of the Living Dead (1968) playing in theaters and drive-ins in the midst of the racial conflict of the civil rights movement then we can glimpse some of the power of this film. With the main character Ben (Duane Jones) being African-American the film can be read not only as a zombie film but as an allegory on race and the meaning of “blackness” in a white world. Although NotLD relates to the social and political upheavals of the sixties, for Ben whiteness signifies a social order based on white dominance and how it positions him as a non-white outsider; there is little difference between the whiteness of the zombies and the whiteness of the humans. First in the matter of race we can connect the film with images prevalent within the historical context of the sixties. The images in NotLD of German Shepherds with police would be recognized from news footage and press photos as the dog of choice to suppress and disperse civil rights protesters. Furthermore images of zombie-hunting police officers and non-uniformed deputies side-by-side strongly resembles images of police and civilian conspiracies against civil rights workers that occurred in the South during the civil rights movement.
This intertextual dimension applies to the set of still images that appear at the end of the film. Certainly the black and white photographs of the disposal of Ben’s body by an all white gang both fit the low budget nature of NotLD and add a visually striking and dramatic element to the death of Ben. However the grainy, dot matrix quality to the photos connote a certain type of image; they have a documentary and journalistic feel as though they were snatched from a Life magazine or a newspaper. The journalistic realism of the images seems to suggest, on the level of the horror narrative, a chilling sense that these events are possible thus adding to the horror of the film; but the journalistically styled photos of an all white mob gathered around a slain African-American connects the scene with the historical reality of racist acts such as beatings, lynching and burnings. Also the manner in which the film frames the group is important; the white men of the group are shot from a low angle to give them a feeling of dominance over Ben. White dominance is further connoted as one photo shows a sinister “meat hook” that one of the vigilantes wields which reads as a “removal” tool, but also as a vigilante weapon to be used against Ben. The whole sequence has a menacing feel that goes beyond the denotation of the scene as merely gruesome thrills of the “zombie” genre to a place where the viewer feels as though she is witnessing through news photos the racist brutalization of Ben’s body.
The ending is highly ambivalent as it breaks off a narrative that portrays Ben as the most dominant character. In the politics of representation Ben’s character runs counter to the racist stereotypes found in Hollywood films. Ben comprises “traditional” characteristics of whiteness: rationality, courage, resourcefulness. When compared to Harry Cooper, the white father of the family featured in the film, Ben displays a confident authority that violently ends with Ben wrestling a gun from Harry and later shooting him.
Beyond its intertextuality and prescient progressive politics of representation NotLD engages with racial discourses in another way. Romero has stated in interviews, “In the script, his race is never mentioned. In my mind, when I wrote that initial scene, he was a white guy”. The casting of Duane Jones as Ben was a matter of convenience. But as stated above to cast an African-American actor in the lead role regardless of the director’s original intent within the historical context of the civil rights struggles automatically engages with racial discourses and practices.
What I suggest is that Romero’s original vision of Ben as white and then casting a black actor deftly plays with the racist tradition of black-face minstrelsy and turns it on its head. Traditionally black-face minstrelsy was the racist practice of white performers donning black face to gain access to African-American personae and then reproducing racist stereotypes. Romero’s twist on minstrelsy permits Ben to carry the burden of racial meaning as a signifier of blackness while also escaping any restrictions based on race as a textual and racial category. Romero unconsciously created in Ben a character that resides inside and outside of racial discourses.
This relates to Richard Dyer’s insight into the compelling paradox at the heart of whiteness as a racial category. Dyer states that whiteness as a racial category is both visible and invisible. One thing Dyer seems to be suggesting is that as a visible category, or signifier, whiteness is granted, ideologically and socially, a position of power. At the same time whiteness as a racial category is invisible; that is whites are never marked or viewed as being determined by their race. On the other hand Dyer suggests that other races however are defined in racial terms; each individual who is a member of a “non-white” race has his or her nature defined by their race, furthermore they are defined in relation to the “universality” and “normality” of whiteness.
Dyer’s insight resides at the heart of Ben’s minstrelsy; as a signifier Ben is encoded as racial, as being African-American, as non-white; but as a signified Ben connotes all of the traditional meanings associated with whiteness. In NotLD race becomes, in Stuart Halls’ words, a “floating signifier” that confounds and counters the traditionally oppressive representations of race.
