Sociology Professor (and Zombie Expert) Todd Platts Breaks Down a Horror Classic
On a chilly October night, one week before Halloween, PVCC’s Films Talk Back series screened a fitting flick for the occasion: George A. Romero’s 1968 zombie survival classic Night of the Living Dead. The shadows of the undead flickered off the walls of the auditorium at the Main Stage Theater in the V. Earl Dickinson Building, as a crowd of 25 or so horror fans sat tense in their seats as the situation of the film’s characters—a group of seven trapped in a farmhouse—battled for their lives.
Despite being over 50 years old, Night of the Living Dead still holds up well and is regarded as one of the most influential zombie films of all time. Utilizing a relatively small budget of around $120,000, the film has become one of the most successful horror movies of all time and has spawned five subsequent films and a 1990 remake, all helmed by Romero.
After the film, sociology professor and PVCC’s resident zombie expert, Todd Platts, took the stage. Platts discussed numerous aspects of the film and dispelled some myths about it. For one, it wasn’t exactly the first “modern” zombie movie to be released. Platts traced the origins of the film through the “weirdies” (a term that was ascribed to Night of the Living Dead itself) of the 1950s and 60s, that is, offbeat and often schlocky horror films that usually featured some sort of alien, ghoul, arachnid, or other monster. Platts also went into the history of zombies themselves, beginning with Haitian Vodou through Louisiana Creole folklore and into the American mainstream in the mid-20th century.
Platts also dove into the role of race in the film, something that has been analyzed by film fans and critics alike. Night of the Living Dead’s protagonist, Ben, is a black man, while the rest of the characters are white. While Romero has said that the film wasn’t meant to be political— Ben’s race isn’t brought up a single time—Platts points to interviews given by Duane Jones, who plays Ben, where Jones says that he was keenly aware of how he was presenting the character. The moment of the film where racial politics feel the most prevalent is in the film’s conclusion, when (spoiler alert) Ben, the only remaining survivor, is killed by a party of cops and volunteers hunting zombies. A shocking ending that, as Platts points out, felt very real in 1968, when Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated mere months before the film was released.
Far from a simple zombie thriller, Platts showed the significance of Night of the Living Dead and the movies that came before that influenced it, as well as the deeper layers and historical context of the film that have made it so widely discussed.
