Eating ‘Dawn’ in the Dark

Abstract

Romero’s masterpiece about cannibal zombies plaguing the world is set in a US shopping center, redefining the zombie so as to infect consumer identity. The popular perception of mindless consumer as zombie is owed strictly to Dawn of the Dead (1979), and extends far beyond the film’s genre, demographics and era. This film - itself a commodity - has earned a place in the American imagination by undermining that very imagination’s dependence on commodity culture. A combination of film analysis, cultural studies and personal narrative, this essay endeavors to tell the story of the story called Dawn of the Dead by locating the postmodern zombie historically in popular culture, analyzing the film as a satire of what Romero calls ‘the false security of consumer society’, exploring Dawn as a commodity itself (one appropriated by the very consumer culture Romero sought to subvert), considering Dawn as a master tale spawning ‘rip-offs’ and hybrids, and articulating all the while the parallels between Dawn’s postmodern zombie and the North American consumer.