Going South

Halloween in Savannah. Gothic dripping Spanish moss. Yes. All of that. But it is watching Romero's Night of the Living Dead that strikes most deeply. Duane Jones. Here is the African-American actor who leads a hapless group of terrified white people hiding from the zombies. A role not "intended" for a black man makes the film an extraordinary example of both color-blind casting and writing. It is also the intelligence of this man, his unapologetic certainty. So many turns in the story when the dynamics could have festered in cliche racist fear-driven portrayals: a white woman seduction, a master/slave exchange between men, etc. Though there is the paranoid husband who can't persuade anyone to stay in the basement with his wife and child, it is more of a territorial argument between two men not between a black and a white man. But then, the unfortunate ending with police and dogs (sans firehoses) and the killing of the black man (mistaken as a zombie). More images of racism come to mind linking media coverage to domestic facts. In LA92 the overhead shot of Rodney King being beaten is repeated (this time from a news helicopter) when black men pull a white man from his truck to beat him up. Only this time the image is accompanied by a newscaster's appalled declaration of shock. America has an intractable double standard when it comes to race. And race masks class. Always. (November 1, 2017)