Night Of The Living Dead

Night of the Living Dead is a 1968 zombie film. Within this film the main character, Ben hold up in a Pennsylvania farm house while at the same time trying to protect themselves from the recently dead - the zombies. However, this film tackles race not within the movie as much as it does on the outside.

Though from the outside this movie may look like the classic zombie horror film it made a giant decision within its casting. During a time where black actors were not often cast as the lead, Duane Jones portrayed the main character Ben. During the 1960's black characters were often given the over the top personalities as we saw in Spike Lee's "Bamboozled," but instead Ben was a central character with no "ethnic" personality traits. As reported in How Casting a Black Actor Changed, Night of the Living Dead, "Director George Romero agrees with that recollection: “Duane Jones was the best actor we met to play Ben. If there was a film with a black actor in it, it usually had a racial theme, like 'The Defiant Ones.' Consciously I resisted writing new dialogue ‘cause he happens to be black. We just shot the script. Perhaps 'Night of the Living Dead' is the first film to have a black man playing the lead role regardless of, rather than because of, his race ("How Casting a Black Actor Changed, Night of the Living Dead.")."  Even the director knew that he was taking a large risk by portraying a script that was written for a non-specific race with a black actor.

Though we still see racial casting problems (#OscarsSoWhite, anyone?) this movie took a giant step towards the right direction. Of course there will always be problems in casting for race specific characters, but for a character that can be portrayed by any race, the door should be open for any one to be casted. In this case Romero knew that Jones was the best character to portray Ben, regardless of the times and the fact that black actors didn't usual play the "serious" role.