Dawn of the Dead Image Analysis (2004)

Here we have a shot of Ana and Steve, just as Steve has turned into a Zombie. Ana is not your typical female in a horror movie. Normally the blonde haired female, is your stereotypical female victim, but Ana, is a female survivor. As we can see, Ana has her hair tied up. This generally connotes a character as being a more tough, more of a tomboy. Ana is holding what would usually be found in a male hand rather than a females as a gun is classed as a phallic symbol (something relating to male power). Janet Staiger looked at how audiences respond to films. In eras with high censorship, certain things which were more shocking people would react more strongly to, for example Ed Gein. If this scene of a woman killing a man was shown at an earlier time period, the audience may have caused an outrage at the thought of a woman being more powerful than a man, especially at a time when women still had no rights.