[Download] "Our Zombies, Ourselves: Exiting the Foucauldian Universe in George A. Romero's Land of the Dead (Critical Essay)" by June Pulliam ~ Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Our Zombies, Ourselves: Exiting the Foucauldian Universe in George A. Romero's Land of the Dead (Critical Essay)
- Author : June Pulliam
- Release Date : January 01, 2010
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 92 KB
Description
IN GEORGE A. ROMERO'S NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD SERIES, HUMANS STRUGGLE in a post-apocalyptic world to set up a functioning social network in an environment where they are no longer at the top of the food chain. In each subsequent film in this series, it seems likely that humans will be driven to extinction by zombies in spite of their supposed superior intelligence and access to technology. Michel Foucault's ideas about discipline, a technology of power that regulates the behavior of individuals, permit us to understand why in Romero's Dead series the odds are against human survival. The individualizing and totalizing effects of discipline have rendered humans incapable of developing class consciousness. As a result, members of the proletariat are doomed to waste their energies in intra-class power struggles. Zombies, however, are free of the effects of discipline. As a result, in Land of the Dead zombies have formed class consciousness, an accomplishment which might eventually give them hegemony over humans. Land of the Dead (2005) is the fourth film in Romero's Night of the Living Dead oeuvre, which includes Night of the Living Dead (1968); Dawn of the Dead (1978); Day of the Dead (1985); Diary of the Dead (2007), a prequel to Night of the Living Dead; and a yet-to-be-named sixth installment in the series which is due to be released at the end of 2009. Land of the Dead has a positive reputation among film critics as an entertaining work that engages in what some view as broad political satire. (1) In Land of the Dead, we see that zombies can learn and work cooperatively much better than humans ever could, perhaps because through death they have been reborn free of the effects of discipline. The zombies' ability to learn and work cooperatively is momentous, with implications for both the living characters in the film and viewers familiar with the genre, since the creature is more typically represented as a being whose mindlessness makes it vastly inferior to humans. (2) These abilities give zombies a distinct advantage in that they are ultimately able to develop the class consciousness that is a precondition for socialist revolution.