DAWN OF THE DEAD (1979) image analysis

George A Romero links very heavily to context in all of his films. This film concentrates on consumerism. In the 1970’s there was a lot happening in America and one event was the rise in shopping malls. He was the first director to really emphasise the idea of shopping malls as they were a new phenomenon in the 70s. America was also becoming obsessed with money which is shown in this scene as they are stealing money from the mall even though it is worthless now following the zombie apocalypse.

The audience at the time would have responded differently to this film compared to modern audiences as everything was new then whereas now shopping malls are a regular occurrence in our lives. This idea of changing audiences is looked at by Janet Staiger who is the main critic behind “Audience Studies” stating that audiences closer to the era the film was made in will react more strongly to the film compared to now.  By understanding their contemporary audience, we can understand horror films even more.