From Sugar to Oil: The Ecology of George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Oloff, Kerstin

doi:10.1080/17449855.2017.1337677

From Sugar to Oil: The Ecology of George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Oloff, Kerstin

Authors

Dr Kerstin Oloff k.d.oloff@durham.ac.uk
Associate Professor

Abstract

Reading the zombie as an essentially ecological figure, this article argues that zombie aesthetics are necessarily animated by the combined exploitation of alienated labour-power and appropriation of unpaid work/energy, material resources, agricultural lands and fossilized fuels. Though oil had always been crucial to the globalization of the zombie via the film industry, an overt preoccupation with oil only belatedly seeped into zombie aesthetics, just a few years before the global oil crisis of 1973. Marking a clear shift in zombie aesthetics, George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) transformed the zombie-labourer into the human flesh-consuming petro-zombie horde. It is with Romero’s now canonical film, therefore, that the zombie truly enters the age of petromodernity.

Citation

Oloff, K. (2017). From Sugar to Oil: The Ecology of George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968). Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 53(3), 316-328. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2017.1337677

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Nov 10, 2016
Online Publication Date	Aug 31, 2017
Publication Date	Jul 1, 2017
Deposit Date	Aug 26, 2015
Publicly Available Date	Oct 12, 2016
Journal	Journal of Postcolonial Writing
Print ISSN	1744-9855
Electronic ISSN	1744-9863
Publisher	Taylor and Francis Group
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	53
Issue	3
Pages	316-328
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2017.1337677

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Copyright Statement
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Journal of Postcolonial Writing on 31/08/2017 available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/17449855.2017.1337677