Romero likes to claim that Night was not supposed to be a “racial piece.” He didn’t intend for his film, the start of the modern zombie film, to overtly offer any commentary on race despite its filming in 1967 and its proximity to the Civil Rights Movement. When I watch the film, I cannot help but see the commentary on race, racism, and the lingering impact of white supremacy. Ben could survive flesh-devouring monsters, but he couldn’t survive the white racism that imagines and portrays black people as less than human, as monsters.
I find myself thinking of Night and Ben a lot lately. I remembered Ben when I heard that a Tulsa police officer, Betty Shelby, shot and killed Terence Crutcher, even though his back was turned and his hands were up. I remembered Ben when I read that a Charlotte police officer shot and killed Keith Lamont Scott, who was in his car waiting to pick up his son up from school. His wife of 20 years, Rakeyia Scott, recorded took video with her cellphone. I read the transcript of the video, in which she pleads with the cops to not shoot her husband. “He better not be fucking dead,” she says to the cops.
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