DOTD (1979) First Image Analysis

 

 

This scene from Dawn of The Dead (1979) demonstrates how inadequate Stephen is as being a dominant male hero. He continuously shoots a zombie in the stomach, failing to kill it. Roger walks up, pushes Stephen’s gun away and fires one shot to the zombie’s head, killing the zombie straight away. The pushing away of the gun is a phallic signal and shows Roger’s power over Stephen.  Stephen then messes up again afterwards as he attempts to shoot a zombie to save Roger, but misses and the bullet ends up skimming past Peter instead. This scene shows the importance of Andrew Sarris’ auteur theory as George A. Romero’s influence is key as to why this scene is so distinctive, with the short Roger having more power than the taller, more attractive Stephen. Here we see Romero’s auteur tendency to flip expectations of characters because in a standard film, the good looking TV traffic reporter would be the hero. However in this case, Stephen is an inadequate character and continues to be until his death in the mall due to his greedy possessiveness (“It’s ours. We took it.”).