Using Zombie Films As Supplemental Texts

By Author: emaly su
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As most English teachers can attest, "Are we going to watch the movie?" is the one question we can count on students asking when studying a book that has been adapted for the screen.

This question can give me chills like no horror flick can. By the time Will Smith starred in his version of I Am Legend, the book had been filmed at least three times. There are good reasons to show films in an English class, and students' need for media literacy becomes more important as multimedia communication technologies become more ubiquitous. And using film in a unit on the undead makes sense, as most students' prior knowledge of the undead likely comes from movies and television in the first place.

I did not want to show any ...
... of the cinematic versions of 7 Am Legend, primarily because the students' engagement with the novel was so complete. They had a sense of connection with Neville, an understanding of him as a complex, dynamic character that arose from personal engagement with the text. I did not want to subvert this hard-fought interpretation with one that, through special effects and polish, might seem more "legitimate."

Nor did I want their still-forming impressions of the story to be sullied with a filmmaker's version of events. These comparative exercises have value, but I wanted to give the students a different kind of experience when using film in the classroom. So, as / Am Legend represents a beginning of sorts with regard to zombies in literature, I went to the origins of the modern cinematic zombie, the flick that started it all: Night of the Living Dead (NLD).

When George Romero wrote NLD, he was inspired in part by Matheson's vampire-like creatures in 7 Am Legend (qtd. in Russo 6); however, he likely wasn't referring to the functional, society-rebuilding creatures that appear at the end of the book. Rather, in the seminal zombie film Night of the Living Dead, Romero gives viewers a re-presentation of what Neville experiences at the beginning of 7 Am Legend, where hordes of mindless zombies trap survivors in their homes.

NLD is a remarkably simple conceit in this respect, allowing my classes to focus less on the intricacies of plot and instead examine how a film can present a scenario similar to a novel, but using a different set of tools.

Our approach to NLD mirrored the approach we took to 7 Am Legend in some respects. Just as Legend used prior knowledge of vampires and the undead to challenge assumptions, NLD used expectations of the common Hollywood fright flick and turned them on their head. Where Legend played on conventions of form, however, NLD was largely responsible for establishing the conventions of the modern zombie movie. Using their knowledge of modern horror films, students were able to examine Night of the Living Dead for its cultural impact as well as for its inherent value as a text for study.

During our study of 7 Am Legend, we had explored the notion of conventions, or the common way things are done both in literature and in this case specifically with regard to monsters and their subsequent legends. That Matheson chose to toy with our understanding of vampire/zombie conventions was one of the reasons my classes were as fascinated as they were.

Night of the Living Dead provided another opportunity to look at the conventions of horror films. In some respects, NLD was responsible for creating the conventions we now expect when watching a scary movie. Throughout our viewing of Night of the Living Dead, students were quick to point out what they noticed was common to many present-day horror films.

Their comments reflected issues of gender ("Why do women always go helpless in these films?"), to politics ("I knew the government had something to do with this" when news reports reveal a top-secret meeting being held in Washington), to media and the changing role of broadcast news ("You know the news today would not be this calm and helpful," referring to the periodic news updates that appear throughout the film).

Students were surprised to find other horror movie conventions flouted. In one encounter midway through the film, an African American student mentioned to a classmate that she was surprised: "Usually the black guy dies first." This is a truism so common in horror films that it has been parodied in horror satires such as Scream and Scary Movie. But not only did Ben, an African American character in Night of the Living Dead, not die first, he broke another convention of movies of the 1960s: he was the hero of the movie decades before having African American leading men would become common Hollywood practice.