I don’t know that it was possible for a black character in the 60s to “slip the confines of race.” I do believe Romero when he says there was no intention to raise the racial issue with the casting of a black actor in the role but I don’t think it’s reasonable to conclude that race is not part of the landscape of the movie just because there’s no overt mention of it.
I never said there was an actual subtext written in or planned.
But This film does not exist in a vacuum and despite the fact Mr. Romero did not go out of his way to create a message one may have been created.
Not because Cooper was playing the part of a racsist but because as the viewer we can read into Coopers unwillingness to accept Ben as a leader.
I think the confusion arrives because Ben is a 3 dimensional person rather than your typical “Type” which exists in many horror movies and because of this we can see his motivations and those of the others with more layers than just he’s good he’s bad.
No, no one goes out of their way to point out his blackness, but that doesn’t mean the characters would not have nticed it or had feelings about it. After all we are looking at 1960s America here. Race was a big issue… That can not be denied, so why would we assume that race was not an issue to the characters of this film?
Romero did not set out to make it that way but the issue is there, none the less, because Ben is Black.
If it wasn’t we wouldn’t be pointing at Ben and saying look they have a Black hero who is a realistic human being. It also says a lot about films today that Ben still stands out as an interesting exception to the rules.
But as Romero said, he hired the best person for the role and race did not enter into it. The script does not specify Ben’s race (or Cooper’s for that matter), and I think that it is interesting–and sad–that colorblind casting apparently cannot exist because some viewers insist on reading racial messages that were never intended by the filmmaker.
Can’t you judge a character by the content of his character and not by the color of his skin?
gobear - honest question here, not intended to be pointed or ironic:
If they cast a woman in the Ben role, because she was the best actor they knew, would you say that her being a woman wasn’t an important aspect of the film?
Yes. Look at Alien. Does Ripley’s gender have anything to do with the plot? Look at the execrable 1990 NotLD remake with Patricia Tallman (Lyta from Babylon 5) as the lead. Is her her gender at all relevant to the resolution of the film?
I think that there are times when a symbolic or allegorical interpretation is intended by filmmakers–Apocalypse Now, for example. There are times when racial or gender themes are relevant to a film,–look at Thelma and Louise, which would have been a completely different movie if two men had been the leads or the racial conflict between Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier in The Defiant Ones.
Conversely, there are times when imposing an allegorical interpretation on a movie is simply perverse. I agree that having a black lead in a film was revolutionary for the 60s, but in terms of the film itself, Ben’s blackness is insignificant. There is no racial tension in the film–the truly revolutionary aspect of Ben’s character is that his blackness is unremarkable. It is, in fact, the picture of a colorblind society that supposedly we are striving for.
Are we as a society going to continue to say, “Sorry, sir, I know you want to be appreciated on the strength of your portrayal alone, but you are black and every role you play must be viewed through the prism of race.”?
Was Morgan Freeman’s race important in Deep Impact? Was Halle Berry’s race important in Swordfish?
I don’t think you give enough credit to the viewer. Yes, the audience member is a passive subject being acted on by the film. However, the viewer is also an active agent in the generation of meaning. Each individual brings their own emotional baggage to the film. Maybe I’m hung up on race or homosexuality, so that’s what I’ll take out of a film. Whether the film really included those messages or not doesn’t really matter. I won’t say that any honest interpretation isn’t valid.
You watch the same film I do and you get something different out of it. That’s great, and it’s fun to try to see things in a different way. While I don’t agree with your interpretation, I know that it still has value. Our different interpretations probabily reflect on our individual differences. In short, we both see what we want to see.
Just for the sake of argument, I’ve got to say that Ripley’s gender is important to Alien. The whole perversion of maternity whith the alien “impregnating” a man is represented more starkly through the actions of a female protagonist. But that’s just my interpretation. 
The first time I saw NotLD (on Night Flight), Ben’s race did not even register. So I will say that my first impression of the film was color blind, so in that sense I will agree with the notion that Ben’s race is not important to the film’s aesthetic.
However, there is a racial subtext in the movie. I did notice that on repeated viewings. Just because the filmmaker might not have intended for it to be there doesn’t mean it’s not there. It’s there in the way the actors interpret their characters. It has to be if they’re doing their job right. It fits for a jerk like Cooper to be a racist. Ben is suspicious of everyone because he’s black and they’re all white because he’s used to being abused by white people. It’s a richer, more realistic movie for the way race is portrayed. No one ever comes out and talks about it, which is the way racism usually plays out in real life.
The use of black and white in this movie also connects it to the alien invasion movies of the 50’s and the monster movies of the 30’s and 40’s. They’re in black and white, and they’re scary so the viewer (especially the late 60’s viewer) is going to be more inclined to be scared by black and white movies. It just puts you in that mood.
And speaking of the documentary aspect, I have always loved the newscasts. Very Cold War.
Tell you what: I’ll fire up the DVD and try to see things your way, y’all. OK?