7.6–Sample Analysis of a Film

Hunter Plummer
ENGL 203-Section
Instructor Name
June 8, 2021

“Those things don’t make any noise”: Silence and Power in Night of the Living Dead

Strong titles like this one indicate part of the focus and argument of the writing.

For almost seven minutes, not long into George Romero’s 1968 film Night of the Living Dead, the only “dialogue” to speak of is the female protagonist Barbra’s labored breaths and piercing screams. For this period, from her attempted escape from the first zombie to Ben locking them inside the abandoned house, the audience watches something like a silent film in which the story is told entirely through images and music. Even when the film’s dialogue-driven form returns, silence remains: most notably, Barbra spends most of the action continuing to not speak, and as Ben says, the zombies “don’t make any noise.” To be quiet in the film is to be in danger or to be seen as dangerous, but white men’s reactions to these silences cause more psychological and physical harm, further adding to broader conversations about race and gender surrounding Night of the Living Dead.

In the opening statement, the writer identifies the text and author to clarify the essay’s focus to the reader. This is a crucial point of communication in writing the introduction. An additional writing strategy is to open with brief discussion that helps connect your audience to the content. For example, the writer might explain their personal connection to the genre, make opening comments about similar films in the genre, pose a hypothetical question about related subject matter that they offer thoughts on, and more to welcome a broad audience before focusing on the more localized purpose of the writing.
The thesis statement informs the audience of the argument (claim) about the message(s) the writer interprets from a close reading of the film; it leads and/or guides essay content. It is also not always a single statement, as it can sometimes be extended into 2–3 sentences to fully develop the claim the writer wishes to make. Although traditionally found at the end of the introduction paragraph, the thesis often moves around within the paragraph’s structure.

Even before Barbra’s muted struggle, the film begins with silence. The first three minutes of the film are credits shown over shots of Barbra and Johnny’s car, accompanied only by the score. When they finally make it to the cemetery, Johnny is shocked when the radio suddenly starts working, the implication later being that the other-worldly origins of the undead disrupted the signal and plunged their car into silence. Then, just before the first zombie appears, Johnny repeatedly tells Barbra to get up from her silent prayer at their father’s grave; in this final moment, he is clearly uncomfortable and tries to take control by filling the silence that had already consumed them in the car and foreshadows the terrifying silence to come. Immediately following his protests, they see the zombie, the true silent enemy he should be focused on. Instead, he jokes about the man “coming to get you, Barbra,” leaving them both vulnerable to attack. The fight itself is loud because of Barbra’s screams, but once Johnny is thrown to the ground and dies, her actions become a pantomime, a performance without words.

The topic sentence (first sentence) informs the reader about the focus of the body paragraph; in general, they act as mini-thesis statements (persuasive arguments) to guide and organize the content. The opening statement to this paragraph informs us that silence— as a critical point of analysis—occurs at the start of the film. This statement—like the other topic sentences in the essay—helps establish analysis of a specific sequence in the movie (the close reading) to make for a paragraph of concentrated, related, and relevant content discussion.
In the second statement, the writer might incorporate specific film terms such as “establishing shot” when alluding to the first scene of the movie. We can use terminology specific to film to demonstrate our authority of the subject matter, thus strengthening the ethos of the writing.

The moment the zombie turns his attention back to Barbra, the score returns and quickly builds with horn-heavy music that is menacing and unnerving and accompanied by repeated, long notes from the strings. The score reflects Barbra’s fear, both growing to the point of being overpowering. The sound effects added in post-production (the car crashing, the thunder clapping, etc.) are nearly indistinguishable from the cacophonous soundtrack. Finally, when the noise and her fear reach a fever pitch, the horns suddenly stop as Barbra closes the door to the zombie. For a brief moment the only sounds are the storm outside and Barbra’s labored breathing. With each new discovery as Barbra then explores the house—the room of taxidermy, the corpse upstairs, and the dead phoneline—the horns once again build. The taxidermied animals lining the walls are perceived silent threats until she realizes what they are, and the corpse she finds is a silent reminder of the threat outside. The phoneline, however, is the clearest symbol of the fear of silence. We see the zombie pull the phoneline down and Barbra try in vain to call out, her face contorting in silent anguish; she has been denied her one opportunity to be heard. She has been silenced to the outside world, to either warn them or seek rescue.

The use of repetition may indicate a need to edit at the word level or it might function as a strategy of emphasis. In this paragraph, the writer might consider using similar/related words for “phoneline” to break up the repetition; however, toward the end, the writer claims “she has been denied” and “she has been silenced” in repeated word choice to reinforce the analysis of Barbra’s situational fears connected to the absence of sound and being unable to utilize her voice.

Within seconds of his arrival onscreen soon after this, Ben is talking, filling Barbra’s continued speechlessness. Unlike, Johnny, however, he does not exert authority over her by trying to get her to speak. Instead, he too will confront the zombies silently. Ben’s arrival signals the end of Barbra’s turn as a silent film star; her silence suddenly becomes infantilizing, and her entire demeanor slackens. Occasionally, she will monologue or have an outburst of emotion, but for most of her remaining time onscreen, she is silenced and sidelined. She has become someone without autonomy and whom Ben feels responsible for, whom he must protect from the zombies and Mr. Cooper. It is the latter man’s appearance, along with Tom’s, that truly disrupts the situation. When they emerge from the basement, Mr. Cooper continually insists he could not hear the racket in the rest of the house and that they had no way of knowing what was happening, so they stayed put. Ben quickly pokes holes in these discrepancies, including by pointing out that “Those things don’t make any noise.” Here Ben, a Black man, proves to know more about these enemies than anyone else, any of the white people, in the house; he knows that they are slow moving, are not especially strong, and most importantly do not make noise, their most menacing and distinctive quality.

The writer uses this paragraph’s topic sentence to indicate a shift in focus from Barbra to Ben regarding sound and silence. As much as the opening statement to a paragraph makes a claim related to the initial thesis, it also functions to maintain the flow of writing by transitioning from one topic to the next or presenting a continued/expanded discussion from a previous paragraph.

The radio plays throughout this sequence and that of Ben’s silent fortification of the house. What sets Ben’s silence apart from Barbra’s when she first comes to the house is the radio, the human voices perpetually “scoring” his work and connecting them both to the outside world. It is a passive way of filling the silence compared to Mr. Cooper’s attempts to wrest power from Ben through his incessant talking. Whereas the radio (and then the television) is a presumed white man imparting information, Mr. Cooper offers little more than speculation and antagonism. He perpetually argues with Ben and Mrs. Cooper and is the character most uneasy with Barbra’s silence. For a time, after almost letting the zombies kill Ben, Mr. Cooper joins Barbra and the others in a stunned silence, only to be revived when the television, their connection to the outside world, goes out. Confronted with larger overwhelming silence, he only talks about getting Ben’s gun, which he sees as the key to authority. This need to be in power and to fill the space with his presence brings about his murder (at the hands of Ben), his becoming one of the undead (at the hands of his largely silent daughter, a figure of both infantilization and terror, a Barbra and zombie), and the deaths of everyone else in the house.

The use of specific scenes, dialogue, and details from the film offers support to the writer’s claim and demonstrates their knowledge of the text throughout the essay.

At the end of the film, Ben, the lone survivor of the house’s night of terror, hears gunshots and barking overhead. This means that something other than the silent undead are above and that this might be his chance at rescue. Unfortunately, someone in the zombie-hunting mob of white men tells the sheriff, “There’s something in there. I heard a noise” and shoots Ben through the open window. Despite searching for their prey for hours and the sheriff espousing confidence on television that they were doing a great job, the agreement that a noise demands immediate murder rather than rescue indicates a woeful misunderstanding of the silence/noise dichotomy in this situation. Ben’s inability to make himself heard because the white men outside act so quickly, the impression that noise is the sign of a zombie, and the hunters’ disinterest to find out who is really inside by calling out (making their own noise) are his death sentence. The white hunters recall Mr. Cooper’s insistence that the noises overhead might have been zombies, and neither group was willing to investigate further. They perceived a threat based on inaccurate impressions and over-zealous confidence and acted upon it.

Although this sample writing represents a close reading with a focus on the writer’s perspective only, other voices could be added to the conversation by providing secondary source material (research) should the assignment call for such a requirement. Through its content, the essay also presents various avenues to which it may connect to theoretical approaches, namely feminist film theory and critical race theory. In general, Night of the Living Dead’s subject matter makes it a film that can be examined through various lenses of criticism.

In Night of the Living Dead, the enemy is silence, the inability to be heard or to hear what is coming. Barbra’s encounter with the first silent killer essentially silences her and thus strips her of power for the rest of the story. Every man in the film tries to fill the silence but ultimately falls victim to it. Mr. Cooper’s over-confident attempts to become the dominant voice among the group contribute to his downfall, and Ben’s position as the voice of reason, as the only character using his voice to speak accurately about the silent zombies, is brought to an end by the same demand to be in power, to be heard no matter what. Even Johnny’s death at the beginning is the direct result of his trivializing the terror of silence that approaches. While some of the white men who insist on exerting authority face consequences by the silence they try controlling, they take down those already silenced by power structures, like Barbra and Ben, in the process.

The conclusion effectively functions to remind the reader of the essay’s focus and argument, provides reasoning to the claim(s), and demonstrates how the analysis was carried out. Toward the end, the writer might also go beyond the narrative to show how this one analysis connects to a larger framework in literature and/or society, which can be helpful as the topic concerns social issues; they can leave the reader with something to contemplate beyond the essay’s analytical framework, as effective writing (and sometimes not-so-effective writing) lingers with the reader to want to know more, discuss more, and continue the conversation.

Work Cited

Only the primary source was discussed, so the Work Cited contains a full citation for the film.