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Symbolism In Night Of The Living Dead

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At the time of its release, Night of the Living Dead (Romero, 1968) was the first film of its kind. The movie was shot on an extremely low budget that utilized limited technology and infinite creativity. As a matter of fact, the creativity that George Romero displayed with this work has shaped many of the concepts that are used in the modern era of film making. The idea of zombies as the world knows them today can be directly correlated to the ones in the movie itself. Likewise, using graphic content the way Romero did was unheard of in this era. Despite its unorthodox style, Night of the Living Dead does not fail to be more than just a story about zombies antagonizing a group of people. The film uses a multitude of techniques that create an array of signs and symbols. These can be used as various underlying meanings for the viewers. Moreover, the symbols can be used as direct references to the events of the late 1960’s. This work also takes advantage of the fears that people had at the time so that it could be a more successful production. The different techniques used in Night of the Living Dead created many different signs and symbols for the viewers to …show more content…

This is in part to the symbols and things in the movie that have a striking resemblance to actual events that occurred in 1968. One example of this is the way that a large part of this movie is shot. A more specific example of this would be the scene at the beginning of the movie when Barbra is running around the house, falls, and then keeps running. This take, along with a lot of the movie is shot with a handheld camera. At the time of this film’s release, the United States was directly in the middle of Vietnam. Vietnam was one of the first wars that was heavily caught on camera. As a result, a great deal of viewers could have seen resemblance between Vietnam news footage and Tom ripping the shirt off a zombie right before he gets in the

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