Essay Questions

What would a Freudian analysis of the film suggest?

The film opens with a brother and sister arriving at a cemetery ostensibly to pay respects at the grave of their dead father. In fact, they are only making this pilgrimage to please—or, really, to shut up their mother—and the son even goes so far as to admit he can’t remember what his dad even looked like. The opening thus sets the stage for a Freudian psychology approach to analyzing the film as the living dead representing repressed memories returning to the surface of consciousness to create anxiety and a reaction to that anxiety capable of moving from neurosis (Barbara) to psychosis (Karen Cooper).

What aspects of the film would a Marxist analysis focus upon?

Marx himself suggested that the overarching metaphor from the horror genre applicable to his economic theories is the vampire. The bloodsucking vampire subsisting on the lifeblood of others is a perfect Marxian symbol for capitalism, of course. Within the Marxist dialectic, cannibalism is symbolically linked with consumption and consumption with capitalist consumerism. Therefore, any interpretation of the film pursuing analysis from an economic perspective would focus upon the cannibalistic practices of those returning from the dead. The specifics of this connection would—like so so many other metaphorical avenues—be open to interpretation. For instance, the dead returning to feast upon the living could be a Marxist symbol for how capitalism’s dependence upon a consumer-based economics becomes so ingrained that it does not even stop for death. Another reading might suggest that the film exhibits a Marxist point of view by suggesting that consumerism cannibalizes everything in its path, even the family unit as the traditional foundation of society.

What makes the deaths of the young couple—Tom and Judy—so subversive to the established conventions of genre filmmaking?

The generic conventions of horror and science fiction films—not to mention most mainstream movies—insist that the social order be re-established by the end so the world can continue on. Central to this convention had always been one very predictable element: whether coming under attack from vampires or aliens or giant bugs or even nuclear annihilation—the fertile hero and the heroine capable of bearing children must survive even if every other character is killed. The future of the world depends upon procreation. The presentation of Mr. and Mrs. Cooper as being practically incapable of standing each other disqualifies them from survival, especially as the dying Karen proves their lack of worth as parents as well. Needless to say, the racial tension at play makes it clear that Ben and Barbara cannot be the only survivors who go on to populate the world. According to all established generic film conventions, Tom and Judy must absolutely, positively be the only two characters guaranteed not to be killed. That they are is one of the most subversive moments in the history of American film.