The zombie manifesto : the Marxist revolutions in George A. Romero’s Land of the dead.

Four decades after re-inventing the zombie film into its modern understanding, George A. Romero continues to use the zombie film to assert his leftist political ideologies and social satire. With each subsequent film, Romero’s zombies continue to gain self-awareness until Land of the Dead where zombies learn they are the oppressed class. Therefore, I argue that to understand not only Romero’s evolving zombies but also the entirety of his narrative arc, one must view the films as an allegory for the class antagonism and revolution proposed by Karl Marx in The Communist Manifesto. This thesis will analyze the representational fluidity of the zombie within Land of the Dead through two distinct Marxist lenses—the proletariat revolt against the bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie revolt against the monarchy—while also exploring the implications of the representationally transferable zombie to the overall meaning of Romero's long-gestating Marxist narrative.