Arts Studies and Criticism

Religion and culture are interact with each other, and by the definition of Clifford Geertz, rituals can be expressed by quite a lot of ways in art. No one can doubt that in our world we are surrounded by religious symbols, which represent themselves via paintings, musics and movies. In this article, the author wants to elaborate how the horror movie, this unique movie genre, worked in illustrate social issues of civil rights movements of 1960s. In Night of the Living Dead, the zombies represent the middle class racism and the complacency about racism, which are  indifferent and bloodthirsty.  The dynamic process of killing the zombies presents the rituals of the U.S. that the heroes always conquer the evil. On the other hand, the evil always stands for the shortcoming of humans. The fighting between the righteous and the evil never stops.