Contributions by Julien Achemchame, Julie Assouly, David Church, Suzanne Desrocher-Romero, Hélène Frazik, Pierre Jailloux, Nicolas Labarre, Sophie Lécole-Solnychkine, Janice Loreck, Stella Louis, Kingsley Marshall, Krista Mitchell, Karen D. Thornton, and Arnaud Widendaële
Best known for Night of the Living Dead (1968) and its sequels, George A. Romero (1940–2017) was a writer, editor, director, producer, and influential pioneer of the horror film genre. Beyond Zombie Politics: The Art of George A. Romero’s Cinema gathers a group of contributors to explore Romero’s work beyond the Living Dead films with two parallel but complementary tendencies within twenty-first-century film studies: the renewed interest in horror aesthetics and the emphasis on filmmaking as a collaborative practice.
Opening with an original interview with Suzanne Desrocher-Romero, who shares her views on the late director’s craft and influence, the anthology is divided into three sections that deal with genre, musical motifs, and the (re)creative process. Each chapter adopts fresh methodologies to focus on an area that has received little academic study. Contributors investigate the films’ relation to subgenres like the counterculture movie or the witchcraft film; their debt to slapstick comedy or the recurrence of specific visual motifs like hands; the editing and the handling of space; the use of makeup and music; the films’ relation to comics; and their adaptation into other media. Authored by established and up-and-coming experts of horror and the Fantastic, the chapters in Beyond Zombie Politics aim to offer fresh insights into an important body of work, to contribute to current studies of the evolution of horror aesthetics, and to map the borders between exploitation, independent, and mainstream film.
Beyond Zombie Politics: The Art of George A. Romero's Cinema. University Press of Mississippi, 2025.
https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/B/Beyond-Zombie-Politics
Reviews
"With Beyond Zombie Politics Roche, Boutang, and Cornillon have assembled a collection that completely revolutionizes how we can, and should, think about Romero as an artist, about film theory as a translator, and about cinema as a medium. This is an innovative, forward-thinking, and necessary intervention into writing about Romero and his work and marks the start of a new chapter in the further exploration of this unique artist and those he worked with."
- Wickham Clayton, author of SEE! HEAR! CUT! KILL! Experiencing “Friday the 13th”
"[This book’s] primary strengths lie in the close attention it pays to often-overlooked facets of Romero’s filmography, its novel use of theory, and its careful engagement with existing scholarship in both English and French. A well-organized and comprehensive study, Beyond Zombie Politics will have a significant impact on how scholars and fans think about Romero, his work, his contexts, and his intertexts."
- Miranda Corcoran, author of Witchcraft and Adolescence in American Popular Culture: Teen Witches
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
David Roche, Adrienne Boutang and Claire Cornillon
Interview with Suzanne Desrocher-Romero
Julien Achemchame
Part I. Genre, Culture, and Identity
Chapter 1 The Specter of Failure: Personal and Professional Disillusionment in George A. Romero’s Counterculture Trilogy
David Church
Chapter 2 From Pittsburgh to Pennsyltucky: Romero’s Pennsylvania Through the Lens of Critical Regionalism
Julie Assouly
Chapter 3 Feminist Investments: Women, Empowerment, and Witchcraft in Jack’s Wife
Janice Loreck
Chapter 4 Slapstick in George A. Romero’s Horror Comedies: The “Crazy Body” and Relentless Repetition
Arnaud Widendaële
Part II. Visual and Aural Motifs
Chapter 5 Seeing with Your Hands, Touching with Your Eyes: Visuality and Hapticity in the Films of George A. Romero
Sophie Lécole-Solnychkine
Chapter 6 Nightmares of Confinement: An Analysis of a Key Motif of Romero’s Films
Hélène Frazik
Chapter 7 “I Am Dead”: Unnatural Editing in the Films of George A. Romero
Pierre Jailloux
Chapter 8 “There Is No Real Magic”: The Fantastic in George A. Romero’s Sound Worlds
Krista Mitchell
Part III. Collaboration and Adaptation
Chapter 9 Library Music and the Zombie Score: Soundtrack as Animator and Agitator in Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Kingsley Marshall
Chapter 10 Makeup Artists of the Dead and the Creation of the Romerian Monster
Stella Louis
Chapter 11 Authenticity, Nostalgia, and Playfulness in Creepshow
Nicolas Labarre
Chapter 12 Audacious Spectacle or Postmodern Deconstruction? NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD—REMIX
Karen D. Thornton
Filmography
Bibliography
Contributors
Index
