Document Type
Article
Abstract
[First paragraph]
The borders that are built for us, and that we often cross seeking to establish our identities, come in many forms, and the mere act of passing through them entails risks of many sorts—physical, psychological, and cultural. The struggle to maintain these borders often plays itself out in popular culture. Consider one example, incorporated in the classic zombie film Night of the Living Dead (1968). Its iconography has become a well-known component of many American cultural narratives: an isolated farmhouse, barricaded against the shambling forms of the living dead, with the forces of martial walking armed through the countryside, blasting away at any moving creature they see. As long-term observers of these films know, the barricades that serve as a seemingly stout barrier will fail because the house cannot keep out the mindless hordes that are attacking it. In fact, those inside who have relied on this fragile boundary will soon be thrown on their own against the hordes outside. The border that seemed strong and reliable—invoking images of American pastoral perfection, or consumer paradise, or scientific achievement—disappears as the fingers of the living dead claw apart the walls of the house and begin their feast.
Repository Citation
Gradisek, Amanda, and Ron Scott. "Reconceiving and Redeeming the Self: Passing, the Harlem Renaissance, and Zombies." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 17, no. 2, 2017, pp. 1–19. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol17/iss2/2