Cielesne wymiary ideologii: Postać zombie w horrorach George'a Anderw Romero

Abstract

The aim of this dissertation is to show that the zombie characters created by George Andrew Romero expressed the bodily dimensions of various ideologies. The dissertation was divided into five chapters. The first chapter includes five subchapters discussing the concept of the film genre, the definition of the lexeme horror, the function of the zombie myth in folk culture and beliefs, the functioning of ideology in horror, as well as the presentation of the role of deformation of the human body in horror films. The second chapter presents the characters of vampires and zombies appearing in the world's horror cinema throughout its historical development. The third chapter discusses in four subchapters the outline of the creation of vampires and zombies in American and European contemporary culture, the ideological messages of American zombie horror films, the issue of cannibalism and zombie characters characteristic of the voodoo cult. The fourth chapter is entirely devoted to the film work of George Andrew Romero. The dissertation analyzes the director's biography, from his early years to his death in 2017. Chapter five of the work presents the possibility of a multicultural, symbolic reading of the zombie phenomenon. Romero's films were analyzed and interpreted in terms of their genre features, background, space and symbolism. When analyzing the corporeality of zombies and all aspects of ideology related to this criterion, the work used critical discourse analysis as a research method due to its perception of cultural texts in an interdisciplinary way.