Reviving the Dead in Southwestern PA Zombie Capitalism, the Non-Class and the Decline of the US Steel Industry
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SHANNON MADER Reviving the Dead in Southwestern PA Zombie Capitalism, the Non-Class and the Decline of the US Steel Industry Night of the Living Dead (George Romero, 1968) (photo appears courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) 1979 was a traumatic year in American shelter this small group for an indefinite history. It was the year that 51 Americans period. Soon, they must fend off both the were taken hostage in Tehran, Iran. It was the undead (who, haunted by their habits in the year of the nearly catastrophic accident at the living world, inevitably show up to wander Three Mile Island nuclear plant near Harris- the atrium) and the living, who wish to get burg, Pennsylvania. And it was the year in a piece of the foursome’s stockpile of re- which the President of the United States an- sources. Despite its lighter tone (the earlier nounced in a nationally televised address that film was relentlessly grim; Dawn’s setting the nation was suffering from a “crisis of offers several opportunities for comic relief) confidence” that struck at its “very heart, and garish colors (the earlier film was shot soul, and spirit.”1 in stark black-and-white), Dawn’s portrait Perhaps no film better captured the of societal breakdown ultimately trumped country’s apocalyptic mood than George Night’s—where Night ended with the zombies Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1979).2 A belated being vanquished, Dawn ended with the sequel to Romero’s legendary midnight movie humans being vanquished.3 Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn portrays Successful though it may have been in cap- America as a nation in utter chaos—its cities turing the national mood, Dawn was, overrun with zombies and its countryside however, distinctly less successful in captur- ruled by roving motorcycle gangs and armed ing the mood of the region in which it was posses. The story follows four characters at- filmed, Southwestern Pennsylvania, to which tempting to protect themselves from the the era brought locally specific woes. For zombie invasion by barricading themselves in Southwestern Pennsylvania, 1979 was the an indoor mall, which with its seemingly lim- year in which the U.S. Steel Corporation, the itless supply and variety of goods promises to nation’s largest steelmaker and 15th largest Axes to Grind: Re-Imagining the Horrific in Visual Media and Culture 69 Harmony Wu, editor, Special Issue of Spectator 22:2 (Fall 2002) 69-77 REVIVING THE DEAD IN SOUTHWESTERN PA manufacturer at the time, announced that it questions of ideology altogether) and Steven would be closing 16 plants in eight states and Shaviro’s The Cinematic Body (which features laying off 13,000 workers. Though the move a Deleuzian reading of the film that is genu- would end up being dwarfed by the subse- inely innovative).10 But even Shaviro, novel quent downsizing of the entire steel industry, though his approach may be, uncritically re- it was seen at the time as “one of the biggest produces Wood’s political assessment of the industry retrenchments in modern history.”4 film and its maker, concluding that Romero is To the communities affected, the scaling back a “radical [who is] critical of contemporary of U. S. Steel was seen in almost apocalyptic American culture.”11 terms: “What we are experiencing in cities While acknowledging the film’s intelligence like Youngstown and Pittsburgh and Gary and richness, this essay takes issue with the is nothing short of economic genocide, a job by-now canonic reading of the film as leftist extermination program.”5 Yet, despite the fact critique of consumer capitalism, arguing in- that it was filmed on location in Pittsburgh, stead that the film’s critique of capitalism Dawn makes no reference, not even indirectly, is rendered problematic by, among other to the decline of the steel industry and its dev- things, its relentless focus on consumption to astating social and economic effects on the the utter disregard of production. Ironically, communities of the region.6 this elision of the role played by production It is curious that this omission has not been in a consumer economy reproduces the very noticed by ostensibly progressive critics, logic of shopping malls themselves, effacing as given that in the more than two decades since they do all signs of production. Thus, although its original release, Dawn has been canonized the film may constitute a devastating critique within film studies as a progressive—indeed of consumerism, a critique of consumerism is even radical—critique of consumer capitalism not ipso facto a critique of capitalism. Further- and analysis of the failures of capitalist indus- more, despite their superficially Marxist try seems in line with the Marxian aims of trappings, the readings of Wood and Ryan and much of the discourse on the film. In Holly- Kellner leave out of the equation one crucially wood from Vietnam to Reagan, Robin Wood hails important component of any genuinely Marx- the film “for represent[ing] the most progres- ist analysis: the problematics of social class. sive potentialities of the horror film,” while in Camera Politica, Michael Ryan and Douglas The Logic of Zombie Capitalism: Kellner praise the film as one of “the most Consumption without Production important socially critical monster movies of Wood and Ryan and Kellner succeed in its era,”7 and even go so far as to describe it as spelling out Dawn of the Dead’s critique of con- a “Marxist dawn.”8 sumerism, but the exact nature of its critique Representing as it did the first serious of capitalism goes unexplained. Instead, engagement with the film by a major critic, consumption/consumerism becomes almost Wood’s has proven to be the most influential wholly identified with the system of which reading of the film, setting the terms of the it is merely a part. The result is that capitalism critical discourse on Dawn. Indeed, one could ends up being defined not by a specific mode argue that almost everything that has been of production or set of social relations, but by written on the film since then has been written what is a largely cultural and fairly histori- within the framework established by Wood; cally recent phenomenon: consumerism. this certainly applies to Ryan and Kellner, If Wood’s and Kellner and Ryan’s analyses whose reading is essentially an extended foot- nevertheless seem “true” to the film, that is note to Wood.9 The only notable discourses because the film itself never goes beyond on Dawn that are not influenced by Wood and the issue of consumerism. Its use of an indoor with which I am familiar are Gregory Waller’s mall as a metaphor of America indeed The Living and the Undead (which eschews encourages a conflation of consumerism and 70 FALL 2002 MADER Zombie capitalism in George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1979)—a system of pure consumption, with no production (photo appears courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) capitalism by identifying America with a metaphors not for consumerism per se, but for place where products are consumed but not that which reproduces consumerism: the zom- produced.12 Wood’s and Ryan and Kellner’s bies “represent, on the metaphorical level, the readings do nothing to contest this conflation; whole dead weight of patriarchal consumer in fact, they unwittingly reproduce it. capitalism, from whose habits of behavior and Only a few pages long, Wood’s argument is desire not even Zen-Buddhists and nuns… are deceptively simple, though far less reductive exempt.”14 Thus, rather than being metaphors than Ryan and Kellner’s ostensibly more so- for the consumerist ethos, the zombies are phisticated reading. While Ryan and Kellner metaphors for the process by which consumer assert in no uncertain terms that the zombies capitalism reproduces this ethos. Wood’s dis- “represent programmed compulsive con- tinction here is subtle but crucial: it is the sumption,”13 Wood is more careful. Instead of reproduction of the “habits of behavior and interpreting the zombies as a straightforward desire” of consumerism—not consumerism metaphor for consumerism, Wood simply ob- itself—that the zombies embody. serves that the zombies are “contaminated By interpreting the zombies in this way, and motivated” by the same thing that moti- Wood highlights an aspect of the zombies vates the four protagonists and the motorcycle which Ryan and Kellner do not fully flesh out: gang—consumer greed. The zombies may that the zombies are not simply/only consum- carry this greed “to its logical conclusion by ers, but they are also the producers of consumers. consuming people,” but that does not mean The people the zombies attack and eat become that they are metaphors for consumerism in zombies. This production through consump- Wood’s eyes. Rather, he sees the zombies as tion is a critical issue, as it differentiates the AXES TO GRIND 71 REVIVING THE DEAD IN SOUTHWESTERN PA zombies from the living; the living simply creates products for the consumer to con- consume, while the zombies produce future sume, but also insidiously creates “a need felt consumers. By equating the zombies with by the consumer.” In Marx’s formulation, consumerism, Ryan and Kellner elide this dis- “Production not only supplies a material for tinction altogether, thereby lumping the living the need, but it also supplies a need for the and the dead into the same general category— material…Production thus not only creates an that is, of consumers. As a result, Ryan and object for the subject, but also a subject for the Kellner fail to see the zombies’ role as agents object.”16 Dawn would thus seem to be echo- of cultural reproduction.