JP: Film Analysis 2 - Dawn of the Dead (Snyder, 2004)

Dawn of the Dead (Snyder, 2004)
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NARRATIVE

Tzvetan Todorov (1969) coined the term "narratology" for the analysis of a narrative into its structure. The story is what is narrated as a chronological sequence of themes and plot lines, therefore the plot represents the logical structure of a story, explaining why its events occur.

The narrative of the opening scene is generic in how it is structured. The scene is set in America suburbia, and within the first five minutes the audience are introduced to the concept that people have turned into zombies. The tension rises as the female protagonist tries to escape from her loved ones who have turned to zombies and are trying to kill her.

The audience are positioned with the protagonist, from the opening scene, who is a mother and wife. Therefore the audience are positioned with a US citizen that is not a zombie, offering a 'traditional zombie movie' perspective that the audience is always positioned with the character trying to escape from the zombies.

The major themes used in the narrative of this opening sequence are...

Tension is created through the juxtaposition of the shot of 'Breaking News' and the shot of the protagonist waking up. This links the two shots and suggests that something bad will happen to the protagonist. Tension is also created with the building use of rhythmic sound as the protagonist struggles to keep her dying husband alive. The tension is maintained through the fast cutting rate during the sequence where the daughter attempts to bite the protagonist. Also the sequence starting in the bathroom when the protagonist creeps up to the door is full of tension due to the use of no sound - just silence - connoting fear and the connotation that something is wrong shines through.

REPRESENTATION & IDEOLOGY

Ordinary citizens are represented in this opening sequence, along with infected people (zombies). Despite this, large macro groups such as homosexuals, different ethnicities or people with different regional identities aren't represented as the three main characters in the sequence seem to be part of a traditional nuclear family in America and are all white.

It is difficult to identify the ideological discourse from this film opening sequence because it is a zombie film, and is so 'far from home' that it seems unrealistic, because zombies are not real. It is therefore hard to isolate different audience readings and beliefs from this sequence.