Police Brutality in the Night of the Living Dead
Zachary Silvestri
Professor Ehritz
English 112
March 6, 2013
Night of the Living Dead Proposal I am generally pretty good at research; however, this topic gave me a little bit of trouble as trying to learn about police brutality in the 1960s isn’t something that can be easily quantified into a specific set of data. The majority of my evidence came in the form of pieces written a number of years after incidents with little physical evidence to support them. However this is a by product of researching something that was actively covered up and denied for a number of years before the truth ultimately began to come out. After concluding this research, there is no doubt in my mind that there was a significant amount of police brutality in the 1960s and a lot of it was either racially motivated or escalated in severity largely due to race. While there is no outwardly racist violence in the “Night of the Living Dead” film, there are significant racial undertones throughout that make these findings useful for evaluating this film. While I began my research project focused soley on the issues of police brutality and abuse of power, my paper has shifted to include a lot more information about the racial issues surrounding the film than I initially planned. I believe this is a result of the reality that racial tensions crept into almost every facet of society in the 1960s and thus to cover a topic as controversial as police brutality, it almost goes hand in hand. The main challenge with this is that there really isn’t any outward racism in the film but with knowledge about the context it is set in, it is pretty easy to pick up on the racial undertones. Overall I am happy with the direction my paper is headed and feel that I have a number of solid sources that will give me the footing I need to write a quality paper.
Bibliography
Donner, Frank. "The Return of the Red Squads." The Nation 15 Oct. 1985: 1+. Academic Search Complete. Web. 1 Mar. 2013.
Professor Ehritz
English 112
March 6, 2013
Night of the Living Dead Proposal I am generally pretty good at research; however, this topic gave me a little bit of trouble as trying to learn about police brutality in the 1960s isn’t something that can be easily quantified into a specific set of data. The majority of my evidence came in the form of pieces written a number of years after incidents with little physical evidence to support them. However this is a by product of researching something that was actively covered up and denied for a number of years before the truth ultimately began to come out. After concluding this research, there is no doubt in my mind that there was a significant amount of police brutality in the 1960s and a lot of it was either racially motivated or escalated in severity largely due to race. While there is no outwardly racist violence in the “Night of the Living Dead” film, there are significant racial undertones throughout that make these findings useful for evaluating this film. While I began my research project focused soley on the issues of police brutality and abuse of power, my paper has shifted to include a lot more information about the racial issues surrounding the film than I initially planned. I believe this is a result of the reality that racial tensions crept into almost every facet of society in the 1960s and thus to cover a topic as controversial as police brutality, it almost goes hand in hand. The main challenge with this is that there really isn’t any outward racism in the film but with knowledge about the context it is set in, it is pretty easy to pick up on the racial undertones. Overall I am happy with the direction my paper is headed and feel that I have a number of solid sources that will give me the footing I need to write a quality paper.
Bibliography
Donner, Frank. "The Return of the Red Squads." The Nation 15 Oct. 1985: 1+. Academic Search Complete. Web. 1 Mar. 2013.