Racism in NofLD

"Beat 'em or burn 'em": Race and Power

To those unfamiliar the zombie movie genre, it might seem hard to see how a film like Night of the Living Dead could be regarded as a political film. However, the film is one of the most important cultural records of its era. Romero himself has explicitly commented that the film is a document of contemporary social changes. We don't have to take the director's word for this, since the film's political themes are hardly hidden from the audience.

But why should a film about zombies be considered as a film about race? One reason lies in Romero's selection of zombies as the film's monsters of choice. Why zombies, as opposed to vampires or dragons or giant beetles? It is important to remember the zombie's origin in the voodoo tradition in Haiti (indeed, the phenomenon is taken so seriously in Haiti that the country's Penal Code considers making someone into a zombie as a form of murder). According to the belief, Haitian zombies lack freewill and perhaps souls. They become zombified by a "bokor" (sorcerer) through spell or potion, and are afterwards used as slaves. It is this connection with slavery that allows us to equate zombies with people of colour. This is not an entirely new conception. Two years before Romero's film, for example, the link between zombies and slaves had been used in John Gilling's British zombie film for the Hammer Studios, The Plague of the Zombies (1966). Set in a Cornwall, an evil squire uses black magic to turn his villagers into zombies and exploit their labour in his dangerously unsafe tin mine. Thus the zombie is a metaphor for, in Gilling's film, the exploited working class, and in Romero's film for the oppressed racial minorities of America.

The film's immediate social context further suggests its racial significance. Night of the Living Dead is set at a time of racial upheaval and protest in America. Black people had been given faith in the possibility of the betterment of their conditions. With the death of Martin Luther King, however, many people lost this faith and abandoned the idea of peaceful resistance. White and black militant groups like the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam, and the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nation sprang up (mentioning these groups together does not, incidentally, imply a moral equivalence between them). To many people, it seemed as though there might be a race war in America. Conservative, reactionary discussions of this possibility often focused — as they sometimes do today — on the possibility that "we" might soon be outnumbered by "them." The line in Night of the Living Dead "we don't know how many of them there are" highlights this racist concern with numbers and the fear of being outnumbered or "swamped." This fear was not restricted to America; 1968 was also the year of British Conservative MP Enoch Powell's notorious "Rivers of Blood" speech, which predicted bloody racial conflict in the United Kingdom Powell was duly sacked for his comments by the party leader Edward Heath.

Of course, Night of the Living Dead is not the only film of its time to deal with issues of race. In Guess Who's Coming To Dinner? (1967) Sidney Poitier played a black man engaged to a white woman; the film details the reactions of each partner's family to the interracial marriage. In that film, however, racial issues were dealt with in a quite explicit way — they were the focus of the film. In Night of the Living Dead, on the other hand, racial tensions are not explicitly mentioned, making them, paradoxically, all the more evident. By casting a black man as a hero, Romero, the independent filmmaker, implicitly rejected the values of Hollywood, which at that time typically eschewed black heroes. In recent years, we have become accustomed to visible minorities playing the "virtuous" characters in films (in fact, some critics now believe that this has in itself become another form of racist misrepresentation: after all, if visible minorities are always the "good guys," doesn't this imply a lack of confidence in portraying them as fully-rounded human beings?). In 1968, however, the novelty of a black hero was striking.

While racial issues are not explicitly foregrounded in the film, the dialogue makes continual reference to the ways in which racial minorities have been treated in the past in America:

Chief, if I were surrounded by say six or eight of these things, would I stand a chance?

Well, if you had a gun, shoot 'em in the head. If you didn't, get a torch and burn 'em, they go up pretty easy. Beat 'em or burn 'em.

The redneck hostility of this language here is reflected in later films about racial hatred in America, such as Alan Parker's 1988 film Mississippi Burning. Finally, the way in which the zombies are hung from trees in the final scenes of the film inevitably invokes the racist lynchings of America's past.

Roger Ebert likes Dawn of the Dead

"Dawn of the Dead" is one of the best horror films ever made -- and, as an inescapable result, one of the most horrifying. It is gruesome, sickening, disgusting, violent, brutal and appalling. It is also (excuse me for a second while I find my other list) brilliantly crafted, funny, droll, and savagely merciless in its satiric view of the American consumer society. Nobody ever said art had to be in good taste.

It's about a mysterious plague that sweeps the nation, causing the recently dead to rise from their graves and roam the land, driven by an insatiable hunger for living flesh. No explanation is offered for this behavior -- indeed, what explanation would suffice? -- but there is a moment at which a survivor solemnly intones: "When there is no more room in hell, the dead will walk the Earth."

Who's that a quotation from? From George A. Romero, who wrote and directed "Dawn of the Dead" as a sequel to his "Night of the Living Dead," which came out in 1968 and still plays the midnight circuit as a cult classic.

If you have seen "Night," you will recall it as a terrifying horror film punctuated by such shocking images as zombies tearing human flesh from limbs. "Dawn" includes many more scenes like that, more graphic, more shocking, and in color. I am being rather blunt about this because there are many people who will not want to see this film. You know who you are. Why are you still reading?

Well ... maybe because there's a little of the ghoulish voyeur in all of us. We like to be frightened. We like a good creepy thrill. It's just, we say, that we don't want a movie to go too far. What's too far? "The Exorcist"? "The Omen"? George Romero deliberately intends to go too far in "Dawn of the Dead." He's dealing very consciously with the ways in which images can affect us, and if we sit through the film (many people cannot) we make some curious discoveries.

One is that the fates of the zombies, who are destroyed wholesale in all sorts of terrible ways, don't affect us so much after awhile. They aren't being killed, after all: They're already dead. They're even a little comic, lurching about a shopping center and trying to plod up the down escalator. Romero teases us with these passages of humor. We relax, we laugh, we see the satire in it all, and then -- pow! Another disembowelment, just when we were off guard.

His story opens in a chaotic television studio, where idiotic broadcasters are desperately transmitting inaccurate information (one hopes the Emergency Broadcast System will do a whole lot better). National Guard troops storm public housing, where zombies have been reported. There are 10 minutes of unrelieved violence, and then the story settles down into the saga of four survivors who hijack a helicopter, land on the roof of a suburban shopping center, and barricade themselves inside against the zombies.

Their eventual fates are not as interesting as their behavior in the meantime; there is nothing quite like a plague of zombies to wonderfully focus your attention on what really matters to you. Romero has his own ideas, too, and the shopping center becomes a brilliant setting for a series of comic and satiric situations: Some low humor, some exquisitely sly.

But, even so, you may be asking, how can I defend this depraved trash? I do not defend it. I praise it. And it is not depraved, although some reviews have seen it that way. It is about depravity.

If you can see beyond the immediate impact of Romero's imagery, if you can experience the film as being more than just its violent extremes, a most unsettling thought may occur to you: The zombies in "Dawn of the Dead" are not the ones who are depraved. They are only acting according to their natures, and, gore dripping from their jaws, are blameless.

The depravity is in the healthy survivors, and the true immorality comes as two bands of human survivors fight each other for the shopping center: Now look who's fighting over the bones! But "Dawn" is even more complicated than that, because the survivors have courage, too, and a certain nobility at times, and a sense of humor, and loneliness and dread, and are not altogether unlike ourselves. A-ha.

To what extent are Hollywood films simply ‘products’ made to make a profit?

One of the key purposes of film entertainment has always been the making of money, though there is a myriad of ‘uses and gratifications’. Films can also be used for diversion, information and news-gathering, social interacting through personal relationships and personal identity. The Hollywood film industry, however, is notorious for its supposed main aim of simply making money. One could argue that George Lucas is a prime example of a film director who has created a franchise and rides upon its financial success. His last role as an active director was in 2005 during the last Star Wars film, since then he has remained in the background ‘producer’ position and has had a minor directing role in 2012’s ‘Red Tails’. Though Lucas is one of Hollywood’s most successful directors, his portfolio is not as extensive as other veteran directors, such as Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese – both infamous for their strong and constant work ethic. ‘Star Wars’ is also a good example of how Hollywood are fond of making sequels and also prequels – in order to extend the commercial success of a film. This is notable in Dreamwork’s productions such as Kung Fu Panda, which spawned a recent sequel and the Shrek series, which made a decline in critical appreciation as the series went on to its third and fourth films.

The digital age has shaken up the industry, with many film bosses realising the need for a more immersive experience, rather than an audience experience – viwers now want to feel involved in film’s action. Auteurs like Quentin Tarantino have rejected these new styles of editing and shooting, whereas others – even veteran Martin Scorsese has explored 3D filming in his winter release ‘Hugo’. James Cameron exploited the sudden craze in cinema-goers for 3D and Imax with his special effects extravaganza in 2009 ‘Avatar’. This went on to become the highest grossing film of all time, due to the viral and word-of-mouth hype which spread through its notoriety as a visually immersive experience.

Weinstein Company warned to back down in Bully classification row

Cinema owners warn that all future Weinstein films could get an NC-17 rating if company boycotts MPAA ratings in row over its anti-bullying documentary

Weinstein Company warned to back down in Bully classification row

This article was published on guardian.co.uk at 12.54 GMT on Wednesday 29 February 2012.

Ratings row ... Harvey Weinstein has been warned not to boycott MPAA's ratings following a row over documentary Bully. Photograph: Danny Martindale/WireImage

Oscar-winning film producer Harvey Weinstein has been warned not to pursue his current high-profile campaign against the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) over its prohibitive rating for the documentary Bully.


Weinstein and his brother Bob, who have been instrumental in bringing the anti-bullying film to the big screen through The Weinstein Company, are unhappy the documentary has been handed an R rating, which means many of its target audience will not be able to see it in cinemas, and have threatened to boycott the MPAA's rating process altogether over the decision.

However, the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO), which represents cinemas, said earlier this week that any such move might result in all Weinstein Company films being handed an automatic NC-17 rating in future.

"If you decide to withdraw our support and participation in the rating system and begin to release movies without ratings, I will have no choice but to encourage my theatre-owner members to treat unrated movies from the Weinstein Co in the same manner as they treat unrated movies from anyone else," NATO president John Fithian wrote in a letter to the Weinsteins.

He added: "As a father of a nine-year-old child, I am personally grateful that TWC has addressed the important issue of bullying in such a powerful documentary. Yet were the MPAA and NATO to waive the ratings rules whenever we believed that a particular movie had merit, or was somehow more important than other movies, we would no longer be neutral parties applying consistent standards, but rather censors of content based on personal mores."

The Weinsteins hit back with a statement of their own which referenced a recent high-school shooting in suburban Cleveland in which a student who was allegedly the victim of bullying shot dead three other teenagers. "As a company we have the utmost respect for NATO, but to suggest that the film Bully could ever be treated like an NC-17 film is completely unconscionable, not to mention unreasonable," they wrote. "In light of the tragedy that occurred yesterday in Ohio, we feel now is the time for the bullying epidemic to take centre stage, we need to demand our community take action."

More than 75,000 people have signed an online petition urging the MPAA to overturn the R rating handed to Lee Hirsch's film, a decision which was made on the grounds of language. There are said to be six instances of the word "fuck" being used in the documentary, which is due to open on 23 March in the US.


While the MPAA ratings are in theory not legally binding, they are firmly established in the US and any breakdown of the current voluntary system would risk the appointment of a more prohibitive federal or state-appointed censor, something neither studios, film-makers or cinema owners would want.

Finnish sci-fi Nazi movie is hot ticket at Berlin film festival

Iron Sky, which imagines Nazi invasion from secret moon base, sells more tickets than Werner Herzog and Angelina Jolie films.

The queue for tickets at the Berlin film festival. Photograph: Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters

There are a lot of worthy films premiering at the Berlin film festival over the coming 10 days. A three-and-a-half-hour epic tracing China's history, three documentaries about the Fukushima disaster, Werner Herzog's look at Death Row and Angelina Jolie's take on the Bosnian war.

But which film proved more popular than almost anything else the day the tickets went on sale? A Finnish sci-fi comedy about Nazis living on the dark side of the moon.

Iron Sky tells the story of how Hitler's top scientists moved to a lunar military base known as the Black Sun shortly after the second world war ended in 1945. For more than 70 years boffins beavered away on a fleet of spaceships that would one day return to Earth and finish what the Nazis started. In 2018 the invasion begins.

The Finnish-German-Australian co-production proved the second most popular film the day the box office opened at the festival, also called the Berlinale, according to Berlin's Tagesspiegel newspaper. It was beaten to the top spot by Don – The King is Back, the latest film from Bollywood megastar Shah Rukh Khan. Fans of the Indian heartthrob camped out in a Berlin shopping centre for three days and nights in order to get tickets for the film, which sold out in minutes.

But elsewhere it was business as usual at the traditionally rather serious festival. This year's event, the 62nd, focuses on social upheaval and political awakening, screening documentaries and fictional works from Arab film-makers, which trace the turbulent progress of the 2011 mass uprisings across the region and explore political and philosophical questions left in the wake of the often bloody demonstrations.
The Egyptian film Reporting a Revolution, directed by Bassam Mortada, follows six journalists on the frontline during 18 days of anti-regime protests in 2011. In the Shadow of a Man, directed by Hanan Abdalla, has four women talking about how a new society should look.
The film festival is well known for engaging in political debate. Last year, it became a platform to protest against the arrest of the Iranian director Jafar Panahi. Accused of inciting opposition protests in 2009 and making a film without permission, Panahi was banned from travelling outside Iran and was consequently unable to take up the seat he had been offered on the Berlinale jury.
This year the festival will continue the debate about the position of the artist in society with the international premiere of a documentary about the dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.
But it's not all doom and gloom. Berlinale organisers have coaxed some of Hollywood's biggest names to sprinkle a little stardust over the icy German capital. Jolie will be hawking The Land of Blood and Honey, her directorial debut about the Yugoslavian civil war, while Javier Bardem will screen the documentary he produced, Sons of the Clouds: the Last Colony, about a forgotten colonial war in the western Sahara and its abandoned victims. Meryl Streep will sweep into town to accept an honorary Golden Bear – Berlin's answer to the Palme d'or – as a recognition of her 30-plus-year reign at the top of Hollywood's tree.

The biggest screams on the red carpet are likely to be reserved for Robert Pattinson, the British dreamboat who stars in the wildly popular vampire movie series, Twilight. The teen idol is expected to show up to promote his new film, an adaptation of Guy de Maupassant's novel Bel Ami, in which he plays a scoundrel who rises through the ranks of 19th-century Parisian society by manipulating and seducing women.

This year, the organisers have gathered together a surprisingly starry jury to award the prizes. Jake Gyllenhaal and Charlotte Gainsbourg join the Dutch photographer and film-maker Anton Corbijn (who had a hit with the Joy Division film Control) on the international jury, which is chaired by the veteran British director Mike Leigh.
One film vying for the award, Les Adieux la Reine (Farewell My Queen), starring Diane Kruger as Marie Antoinette, will launch the festival on Thursday with its world premiere.

The Berlinale, which runs until 19 February, is ranked as one of the world's top film festivals alongside Cannes, Toronto, Sundance and Venice.

Harrison Ford not set for Blade Runner sequel, say producers

The producers of Ridley Scott's forthcoming follow-up deny reports actor is being considered to reprise role from 1982 sci-fi classic

Replicant revival ... Harrison Ford hangs on in the original Blade Runner. Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext/Warner Bros

The producers of Ridley Scott's forthcoming followup to his 1982 sci-fi cult classic Blade Runner have denied that Harrison Ford is returning to the role of Rick Deckard.

1. Blade Runner - The Director's Cut
2. Production year: 1982
3. Country: USA
4. Cert (UK): 15
5. Runtime: 117 mins
6. Directors: Ridley Scott
7. Cast: Darryl Hannah, Daryl Hannah, Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young
8. More on this film

Twitchfilm reported yesterday that Ford was in early talks to reprise his role as the future cop, who is tasked with hunting down a gang of rogue bioengineered humanoids, called "replicants", in Scott's earlier film, itself based on the Philip K Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? However, producer Andrew Kosove of Alcon Entertainment told Deadline: "It is absolutely patently false that there has been any discussion about Harrison Ford being in Blade Runner. To be clear, what we are trying to do with Ridley now is go through the painstaking process of trying to break the back of the story, figure out the direction we're going to take the movie and find a writer to work on it. The casting of the movie could not be further from our minds at this moment."

Kosove compared the Blade Runner followup to Scott's long-awaited forthcoming return to science fiction, Prometheus, which has been described as a film which is not a prequel or sequel, but exists within "the same universe" as its predecessor, 1979's Alien.

"What Ridley does in Prometheus is a good template for what we're trying to do," he said. "He created something that has some association to the original Alien, but lives on its own as a standalone movie." Kosove was asked if Scott's plans might allow Ford to return. "In advance of knowing what we're going to do, I supposed you could say yes, he could," he replied. "But I think it is quite unlikely."

Talk of Ford returning to the series sparked huge online debate yesterday, with many arguing that the actor's appearance in the movie would ruin Blade Runner's central enigma: whether Deckard is himself a replicant. The point has been argued back and forth by fans in the 30 years since the original film's release, resurfacing whenever a fresh cut of the film emerges. There have been several of these: Scott's 1992 director's cut, which excised the original version's studio-enforced expositional voiceover and pegged-on "happy ending", seen by many as the definitive version.

How far do the narratives of the films you have studied for this topic explore questions of belonging and exclusion?

 ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’ 1985, directed by Stephen Frears and written by Hanif Kureishi is a comedy drama, set in the suburban areas of London under Thatcher’s administration. The film’s narrative follows protagonist Omar (Gordon Warnecke), a second-generation Pakistani in Britain, who must bring his uncle Nasser’s failing laundrette to profit amid familial tensions and an unconventional relationship with Johnny (Daniel Day Lewis), a white national and punk. The film deals with social issues such as racism, homosexuality, identity and the economic climate’s effect on Britain. Alternatively, ‘East is East’  set in early 70s Salford, sees the Pakistani Khan family struggle under the patriarch chippy-owning George (Om Puri), his English wife Ella (Linda Bassett) and their family of six sons and daughter.

From the very start of ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’, it is made evident that the film will deal with exclusion or belonging within a community. We are introduced to Johnny and his fellow punk friend squatting in a house. Their costumes signifies the pair as outsiders – they are instantly identifiable as punks with their shaven ‘Mohican’ hairstyles and dark, leathery attire. Though the 80s were notorious for a rise in punk culture and gang communes, punks were still outcasts of society and not socially well-perceived – particularly under the conservative gaze of Thatcher’s government. And perhaps rightly so, due to these groups anti-social and often extremist right-wing political agenda. The nature of their eviction from their illegal residence is symbolic of this as they are driven out rather violently by antagonist Salim’s men. The fact Salim exerts more power in this particular scene – over that of Johnny is indicative of their changing times of Britain – the rising importance of capitalist ‘rat race’ and a decline in the importance of the race of the ‘rats’ involved. We are then introduced to Omar, who nurses over his drunkard father in a dingy, council estate apartment. The death of his mother still hangs in the air – the roaring train tracks serving as a constant reminder outside, becoming a symbol of the destructive power of a husband upon his wife. It is a train Omar’s mum is killed with – and it is implied Tania, Nasser’s daughter, meets the very same end and willingly too. The train could be considered to be a phallic image and therefore it’s killing of the two women could represent female’s subjugation under the patriarchal society. As well as this, the train suggests a sense of modernisation in the 80s, the rushing, hustle and bustle of London’s metropolis and the need to take off – and leave behind one’s roots in pursuit for fortune. Omar’s ‘papa’ warns him that ‘(they) are under siege by the white man’ and that ‘education is power’. Omar’s father recognises that racial tension exists between the Asian and black communities alongside the dominant white in Britain. He is represented as a hypocritical figure – eager to reap the rewards of a democratic society whilst simultaneously holding xenophobic views.  In contrast to this, Nasser, his brother seems to be embracing western culture and society. As a successful businessman, Nasser - when discussing Pakistan and Britain declares ‘that country's been sodomised by religion. It's beginning to interfere with the making of money. Compared with everywhere... it's a little heaven, here.’ -. It is with irony that Nasser appears to oppose the doctrines of religion, yet refers to Britain as a little ‘heaven’. Nasser shares similarities with ‘George’ from East is East’. Like Nasser, George appears to have one foot in his conservative Pakistani roots and the other firmly in Britain. He reminisces over the fact that when he first arrived in the country he came with ‘nothing’ and now he ‘has his own business’. Both Nasser and George recognise the commercial and retail freedom that can be gained from Britain – it is a place to make money. But, perhaps even more than this as George has chosen an English name to use – implying he is willing to fit in with British society and become part of it. He has also married an English wife, Ella. He even lives in the house that is under her name – thus it can be seen that George is not wholly conventional and may stray from traditional Muslim doctrines (such as marrying a fellow Muslim). The line ‘I’ll have a half cup’ is a recurring motif in the film and is the response George gives when Ella asks whether he wants a cup of tea. The reference of ‘half’ may be representative of the fact George is half Pakistani and half British. To conflict with this, he often displays old-fashioned ideas such as demanding the complete and unquestioning obedience of his wife and family and the idea of arranged marriage. Hypocritically, George has a traditional wife in Pakistan who he often uses as a tool to incite jealousy in his British wife Ella. Like ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’ the ill treatment of women is also evident in George’s family. He aggressively beats Ella when she attempts to defend her innocent son 9whom he also beats) and then attempts to strangle or maim her after he humiliates him in front of the Shah’s. He repeatedly tells her and his family that ‘he knows what is best for them’ and that they must listen to him.

There are clear tensions between the Pakistani characters within ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’ and the white punks who are friends with Johnny. In the end, the punks seek revenge on the family by beating up Salim and vandalising the laundrette. They feel threatened by Johnny’s switch in alliance and the fact he chooses to favour his relationship with Omar, rather than keep to them and their extremist ways. It is clear they feel a great amount of animosity toward the Asian community: ‘why are you working for them? Pakis.’ The Pakistani’s are referred to with this racist epithet for the duration of the movie. The subjugation of non-white races is presented by the fact Salim is smashed to the ground by vengeful punks and crawls shamefully away in fear. In ‘East is East’ the youngest Khan, Sajit befriends an English boy named Ernest. Ernest’s grandfather is a bigoted old racist, supporting the words of Enoch Powell and is a keen advocate for his repatriation programme – both are seen distributing leaflets at one point. Ernest is the opposite of his grandfather – he plays willingly with Sajit and appears intrigued and charmed by the Khan’s foreign ways. Ernest also indicates he fancies the Khan’s daughter Meena  who is considerably older than him, and who treats him dismissively – she’s too busy playing football with other boys on the block. This coincidentally alludes to ‘Bend it Like Beckham ‘ (2002), in which the main character – a second generation Pakistani girl; Jessminder and her culturally-rebellious ambitions of becoming a footballer.

During the conservative era of Thatcher’s Britian, the hegemonic and social norm was to lead a heterosexual lifestyle. Omar opposes this by maintaining a homosexual relationship with Johnny. It is implied Omar’s father is aware of his son’s homosexuality or at least jokes about it ‘fix him up with a nice girl…I’m not sure his penis is in full working order.’ Likewise in ‘East is East’, the oldest son Nazir is disowned from the family by George – after he disgraces the family by not committing to the full ceremony of his wedding – jilting his bride-to-be at the crucial moment. It is later revealed Nazir is gay and has run off to start a successful fashion-design company with his male partner. His siblings indicate clear disapproval in his new lifestyle and partner –acting awkwardly when he arrives and staring in an almost revolted way at their surroundings. It is clear, even within the family – that the heterosexual hegemonic ways are dominant

To conclude, both ‘East is East and ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’ deal with belonging and exclusion in society within the UK. ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’ seems to be havier on the homophobic aspect of 80s Britain, as well as the tensions between races. In ‘East is East’ the homosexual agenda is more downplayed and though there are racial tensions, there seems to be more focus on the strained bonds of immediate family members.