The main Cohen thesis that I thought of while watching Dawn of the Dead is thesis 1 that being the monster as a cultural body. To properly analyze this connection, there needs to be a separation of the three main groups of the movie. The zombies, the bikers, and the protagonists. The zombies are simple minded. The shuffle slowly down streets, outside malls, and stores without any real sense of direction until something that breaks the homogeny in their lives appears. Much like at how at the beginning of the film the common people rally against the warnings of the scientist because he suggests unorthodox measures against the zombies. Eventually these common people all turn from metaphorical zombies who all wanted to stick their heads in the sand, go shopping, and live there lives freely without a care in the world to actual zombies who shamble about the confines of their consumerist meccas just as they had done in life.

Around the time of this movie in the 60s and 70s there was a lot of counterculture to the Leave it to Beaver lifestyles people lead in the 50s. People started to challenge the ideas of marriage and patriarchal institutions which lead to some radical ideas about how people could leave their lives e.g. hippies and communes. From that counterculture spawned a counter to the counterculture that perceived this societal change as moral degradation. This is represented as a caricature by the bikers. They loot and pillage safe houses across the country, places where people are just trying to get by. Amidst the apocalypse they almost seem at home, laughing and smiling as they grab arms full of random objects. Toying with zombies by throwing pies in their faces before finally beating them to death with hammers or bats. They are at odds with our protagonists who represent the last bastion of society in the world. The protagonists embody what the old cultural hegemons thought they were. People who got married, had kids, and tried to live their life away from the chaos. The protagonists are vastly outnumbered versus the bikers and the zombies. This feeling of being outnumbered amongst the degraders of society was a common thought amongst the conservatives of the old guard as the years went on, before finally signaling the end of traditional values and uncertain future much like our protagonists as they fly away at the end.