Approaching Abjection and Night of the Living Dead

In replying to Professor Pat, it is worth noting that he is correct in stating that Kristeva’s “Approaching Abjection” eases the understanding of the movie “The Night of the Living Dead,” which has philosophical meanings to it. At the same time, it is possible to disagree with Professor Pat in his thoughts that the film can only be understood without looking at other aspects.

Well, other literary aspects play vital roles in understanding the film. For instance, the director uses metaphors, allusions and paradoxes to help the audience have a better understanding of the film’s deeper meaning (McCabe & Holmes, 2011). That is, the movie is not just about zombies eating flesh, but it is a representation of what the American society is, in terms of political and social undertones.

Nonetheless, I agree with Professor Pat that philosophical interpretations of the film are better explained through Kristeva’s thoughts as described in her essay “Approaching Abjection: The Power of Horror.” In the essay, Kristeva tries to explain what causes horror or the feeling of disgust, and thus explains why this happens.

It might be simple, but Kristeva’s philosophical views are incredibly thoughtful and very insightful to how human beings behave whenever faced with a situation of disgust or horror. That is, Kristeva describes the feeling of disgust and horror as ‘abject’ which is thought of as something that is unacceptable to human beings.

In the essay, Kristeva asks why people despise vomit or corpses yet it is something that just a few minutes or days earlier were considered okay (Jones, 2009). Well, she explains that this is because both the vomit and the corpse have crossed the boundary of being thought as ‘normal’ or simply disrupting the realities of human beings.

Therefore, according to Kristeva, an abject is something that disrupts our realities by interfering with order, borders, positions, and rules. Hence, this definition of the term ‘abject’ broadens its meaning from simple disgusting and horrific objects to even aspects of immoralities.

The same applies in the film “The Night of the Living Dead,” which is dominated with instances of the disruption of order and peace. Because of this, it is fair to support Professor Pat’s thoughts that everything about the film boils down to Kristeva’s theory on abjection, which she defines as the process of forming our identities.

Now, how does abjection help human beings form an identity? Kristeva explains that abjection involves the process of detaching ourselves from abject objects/situations/people. In other words, whenever something or someone disrupts our realities, we tend to dissociate with it, and thus refer to it as an abject (Nye, 2003).

However, this is simply a way of defining our identity, which is evidenced in the film, whereby the zombies are disrupting the realities of the human beings. From the movie’s analytical point of view, the audience watching the movie also identifies themselves from the film’s representation of the American society.

That is, while it is an abject (disgusting and horrific) thing watching zombies eat flesh, the audience feels empathy for the main characters to never be victims of “the living dead” who have come to disrupt order and societal peace.

Regarding disciplinary perspective in the film “Night of the Living Dead,” one noticeable aspect is that of race. While Ben, the main character, manages to kill off the zombies who attack them inside the house, he unfortunately falls victim to trigger-happy rednecks who mistakenly shoot him dead thinking he is a zombie.

Without a doubt, this was a surprising addition to the film’s plot, which acted as an ‘abject’ to the audience. Although the director wanted to portray the aspects of police mistaken killings on African Americans, the situation also represents the abjection described by Kristeva.

References

Jones, D. (2009). Rationalizing Epidemics (5th ed., pp. 12–24). Harvard University Press.

McCabe, J., & Holmes, D. (2011). Reversing Kristeva’s first instance of abjection: the formation of self reconsidered. Nursing Inquiry, 18(1), 77–83. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1440-1800.2010.00499.x

Nye, M. (2003). Religion (4th ed., pp. 25–29). Routledge.