Day 27: Night, Dawn, Day, Land, & Diary of the Dead

It is more than likely that until the day he dies, George Romero will make zombie movies that point out the ills of society. He might even continue after that, because it seems that the same problems he's been pointing out over the years: racism, classism, and consumerism among other themes.

The thing about Romero's Dead series is that the zombies aren't the bad guys. They are simply part of that world. They may not seem like anything natural, but they represent two things that are very natural, human nature and death. The walking dead can almost be considered innocent when their actions are compared to those of the survivors. The zombies are driven by one thing, the need to feast on living flesh. There is some base version of survival in their instinct. They may not need living flesh to survive, they're going to rot and decompose either way, but there is a purity in their single-mindedness.

No, the true villains of these films are those in humanity who seek more than survival in the end of the world. They come in the form of a lynch mob-like group of hillbillies in the end of Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, as well as marauding bikers in Dawn, and they are the remnants of the military-industrial complex in Day, Land and Diary of the Dead.

It's not to say that the zombies are "good guys." They simply are. Romero always presents a group of human survivors that are simply trying to live, to carry on with some sort of life as the good guys. And they inevitably come into conflict with the dregs of humanity that have survived, ultimately leading to the destruction of whatever society they have tried to restore, leaving even less people to carry on. There is never any action on the part of the zombies, they are only able to feed when the good guys and bad guys collide. In other words, humanity always brings death and destruction upon itself because it can't move past things as petty as race, religion, or material wealth.

Romero has shown us these images again and again, and in Diary of the Dead he shows how ineffective it is to simply watch these events unfold. It takes action to survive and build a better society. We can't beat death, but we can defeat those who selfishly put themselves above the greater good. It just seems that we are stuck in a pattern of watching instead of doing.