The Sub‐Subaltern Monster: Imperialist Hegemony and the Cinematic Voodoo Zombie
2008; Wiley; Volume: 31; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/j.1542-734x.2008.00668.x
ISSN1542-734X
Autores Tópico(s)Literature, Magical Realism, García Márquez
ResumoWith the popular success of the first talkie horror films, Hollywood of the 1930s was anxious to find the next big-screen monster. Surprisingly, the creative efforts of filmmakers lead them not to the usual mythologies of Europe but rather to exotic Caribbean travel literature. Sensational books like William B. Seabrook's The Magic Island of 1929 had begun to draw the American public's attention away from the Old World and toward the New, specifically the island of Haiti. According to Seabrook and other ethnographers, powerful voodoo priests, commanding the knowledge of African mysticism and ritual, were able to kill their enemies and bring them back from the dead as mindless servants. This violation of the taboos of death peaked people's interest in a previously unknown horror: the zombie. It did not take long for this voodoo-based monstrosity to make the jump from folklore to popular entertainment, and the first true zombie movie arrived in 1932: Victor Halperin's White Zombie. Based on the stylistic model of Tod Browning's Dracula (1931), this movie presents audiences with the exoticism of the Caribbean, the fear of domination and subversion, and the perpetuation of the imperialist model of cultural and racial hegemony. White Zombie uses the exotic setting of postcolonial Haiti to entrance eager viewers while accentuating the prevailing stereotypes of the "backwards" natives and western imperialist superiority. In fact, the film emulates the sociopolitical theories and criticisms of Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, and Edward Said, emphasizing a type of Hegelian master/slave dialectic as well as the dominance of one culture (embodied in the voodoo master) over another (that of the zombie slaves). However, casting the native in the position of power over his peers allows a film like White Zombie to present a more complicated view of a postcolonial society, one in which the western model of colonial imperialism has been adopted by the new nation's cultural apparatus. In this light, the film may also be critiqued as cultural discourse through the theoretical lens of Gayatri Spivak, for the new "sub-subaltern" class of the zombie is literally silent, enslaved, and unable to connect with the dominant culture through any liminal space of discourse. For a western white audience, the real threat and source of terror in these films are not the political vagaries of a postcolonial nation or the plights of the enslaved native zombies, but rather the risk that the white protagonists might become zombies themselves. In other words, the true horror in these movies lies in the prospect of a westerner becoming dominated, subjugated, and effectively "colonized" by a native pagan. This new fear—one larger than merely death itself—allowed the voodoo zombie to challenge the pantheon of cinematic monsters from Europe, becoming the first thoroughly postcolonial creature from the New World to appear in popular horror movies.1 1. Although zombies would have to wait for George A. Romero's' Night of the Living Dead (1968) to reach to the level of the bankable franchise—like Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolf Man—Gary D. Rhodes insists "White Zombie had achieved enough success in 1932 to significantly impact the evolution of the horror film cycle" (161). The voodoo zombie would be featured in a number of moderately successful horror films like Revolt of the Zombies (1936), King of the Zombies (1941), I Walked with a Zombie (1943), Zombies of Mora-Tau (1957), and The Plague of the Zombies (1966). They also would appear in science fiction narratives as well, like Creature with the Atom Brain (1955), the infamous Plan Nine from Outer Space (1958), Invisible Invaders (1959), and The Earth Dies Screaming (1964). See Peter Dendle's The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia for a detailed description of all the major twentieth-century zombie films and Jamie Russell's exhaustive Book of the Dead for a detailed cultural survey of the entire zombie phenomenon. Yet in spite of recent critical acclaim from film scholars like Gary D. Rhodes, White Zombie is a fundamentally negative portrayal of race differences and class struggle; the movie ultimately re-presents negative stereotypes of the native by propagating the imperialist paradigms of the West. As I have discussed at length elsewhere (Bishop 2006), the zombie is a unique Hollywood monster inasmuch as it originated in the folkloric and ritual practices of the New World, specifically in the Republic of Haiti. Because of this distinctive etymology, one must first consider the historical, political, and cultural environment that produced the zombie before making a detailed critique of a film like White Zombie. As a former colonial establishment, Haiti is a complex land of synthesis and hybridity, a liminal space where western Christianity fused (albeit irregularly) with ancient African ritual and mysticism. The resulting religious system came to be known in the West as voodoo,2 2. Alfred Métraux renders the term voodoo as vaudou in French Creole, Joan Dayan writes vodou, and Wade Davis spells it vodoun; for this article, I will be using the more familiar westernization voodoo for clarity. I will also be using zombie instead of the (rather more accurate) spelling zombi. a much maligned and misunderstood set of beliefs and rituals that deal directly with death and the spirit world. In addition to potions, love charms, and voodoo dolls, the zombie—the "living dead"—came to be a source of both fear and fascination to white westerners, and the movies produced by Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s exploited this exoticism to draw crowds to the theaters. To provide readers with a concise historical framework for a detailed discussion of the zombie in twentieth-century American film culture, I will rely on three quintessential books concerning Haiti, voodoo, and the movie White Zombie. The first is Alfred Métraux's 1959 study Voodoo in Haiti, one of the most comprehensive texts about Haitian history, voodoo practices and rituals, and the origins of the zombie. A similarly authoritative and important book is Joan Dayan's Haiti, History, and the Gods, a definitive text on Haitian history and culture. Published in 1995, Dayan's book investigates not only the historically significant events in Haiti's variegated past but also considers the impact of voodoo on Haitian culture and literature. Finally, Gary D. Rhodes's 2001 book White Zombie: Anatomy of a Horror Film provides important historical background and a detailed analysis of the first feature-length zombie movie. Rhodes presents a thorough overview of the development of the zombie narrative from exotic folklore to mainstream Hollywood entertainment. Haiti, the second oldest independent nation in the western hemisphere, has a complex and violent history, founded primarily on the mixing of slaves with diverse African cultural origins with European imperialists and Christians. Haiti became a French colony in 1697, and because of a constant influx of new labor from Africa, slaves far outnumbered the French settlers by the end of the eighteenth century. A revolt was almost inevitable, and the fight for Haitian independence officially began with a solemnly performed voodoo ceremony on the night of August 14, 1791 (Dayan 29). Over ten years of brutal violence followed, and finally, in 1804, Haiti became the "only locale in history for a successful slave revolution," resulting in the first "Black Republic" (Dayan 3). Dayan thoroughly charts the complex history of rulers, coups, and civil war that followed over the next century until the 1915 invasion and occupation of Haiti by the United States Marines (285–86). Their overt goal was to modernize the island—building roads, hospitals, and schools—and to establish a stable democratic government (Rhodes 70–71). A direct result of the limited US occupation was increased western awareness of and increased curiosity and fascination with voodoo rituals and zombie practices. Métraux defines voodoo as "a conglomeration of beliefs and rites of African origin, which, having been closely mixed with Catholic practice, has come to be the religion of the greater part of the peasants and the urban proletariat of the black republic of Haiti" (15). As more and more native Africans were brought from the Gulf of Guinea as slaves, voodoo received a constant influx of tribal rituals and beliefs, resulting in a new "syncretic religion" that drew heavily from "the ancient religions of the classical East and of the Aegean world" (Métraux 29). Some of the slaves were inevitably priests or "servants of the gods" who knew the old rites and rituals and were able to resurrect them in exile (Métraux 30). Voodoo quickly became an important part of daily life in Haiti, and after the revolution against the French ended in 1804, the religion was allowed to grow and develop more freely without constant influence from colonial Catholic priests (Métraux 40). Métraux emphasizes that most importantly, voodoo gave hope to the Haitians—first to the slaves, and later to the poor (qtd. in Mintz 5). The exotic and mysterious rituals and religious beliefs of voodoo were eventually discovered by the West, and the conversion of the zombie from folklore to entertainment was inevitable. According to both Rhodes and Métraux, the first detailed account of Haiti written for a western audience was Sketches of Hayti: From the Expulsion of the French to the Death of Christophe by W. W. Harvey. This 1827 text presents a rather negative account of the perceived "savagery" of the rebellion of 1804 but does not directly discuss the presence of voodoo and pagan ritual practices. The first major American writer to examine Haiti was Spenser St. John, whose 1884 Hayti, or the Black Republic is even harsher than Harvey's, emphasizing both voodooism and cannibalism (Rhodes 72; Métraux 16). In fact, most nineteenth-century nonfictional accounts of Haiti are decidedly negative and one sided, focusing on primitive and taboo behavior; it was not until 1907 that a sympathetic text, Haiti: Her History and Her Detractors, was published by J. N. Léger. This book champions voodoo as an important social and cultural ritual, helping to define the people of Haiti in terms of their African heritage and tradition (Rhodes 74). Of greater interest to the narratological investigation of the zombie itself is Rhodes's etymological tracking of the term zombie. The first recorded use of the word in print appeared as early as 1792 in a text by Frenchman Moreau de Saint-Méry, where he defines it as a "Creole word that means spirit, revenant" (qtd. in Rhodes 75). However, the term was more often used in the 1800s to describe the voodoo snake god or to refer to Haitian revolutionary Jean Zombi (see Dayan 37). It was not until 1912 that the word zombie became associated with the living dead; an essay by Judge Henry Austin in New England Magazine refers to a Haitian poison that causes a comatose state in a victim that could be mistaken for death (Rhodes 75). Also in 1912, Stephen Bonsal published The American Mediterranean, which documents the account of a Haitian man who was found tied to a tree days after his confirmed death and burial (Rhodes 76). Although these two references discuss the condition of the living dead, it was not until William B. Seabrook's 1929 travelogue The Magic Island that the phenomenon was directly linked to the term zombie.3 3. Rhodes does mention a number of fictional predecessors to White Zombie, most of which emphasize voodooism in general rather than zombiism in particular. For instance, Captain Mayne Reid's The Maroon: A Tale of Voodoo and Obeah (1883), which features a voodoo witch doctor who brings his own corpse back from the dead; Henry Francis Downing's play Voodoo (1914), which concerns English Barbados in the late 1600s and features the first use of a voodoo chant; Alice Calland's poem "Voodoo" of 1926; and Natalie Vivian Scott's play Zombi (1929), set in New Orleans and featuring the character of Marie Laveau (Rhodes 76–78). More than any other author, Seabrook is credited with bringing tales of voodoo and the zombie to a mass American audience (Rhodes 78). After a journalistic trip in 1924 to Arabia, Seabrook decided to travel to Haiti to perform a first-hand anthropological investigation into voodooism. He learned Haitian Creole and even lived with a native "sorceress" named Maman Célie, attempting to immerse himself fully in the local culture (Rhodes 79). Seabrook was exposed to the creation of ouanga charms, potions, and powders, and he took active part in a number of authentic voodoo ceremonies and rituals, culminating in his direct exposure to real zombies. In The Magic Island, he describes these creatures as dumb workers, "plodding like brutes, like automatons. … The eyes were the worst. … They were in truth like the eyes of a dead man, not blind, but staring, unfocused, unseeing" (Seabrook 101). Seabrook was even bold enough to shake hands with one of the zombies, confirming the physical existence of the creature and leading him to surmise a nonsupernatural explanation for the phenomenon (101–02). The American public, however, was probably less interested in the science and more in the spectacle, and Seabrook's book became a huge success, forever establishing the idea of the "living dead" in the imaginations of the West.4 4. Métraux presents a brief yet detailed account of the zombie in his book, providing a more scholarly anthropological perspective than Seabrook's sensationalism. According to Métraux, Haitian zombies are "people whose decease has been duly recorded, and whose burial has been witnessed, but who are found a few years later living with a boko (a voodoo priest who practices dark magic) in a state verging on idiocy" (281). Ethnobiologist Wade Davis performed an even more scientific investigation of the zombie ritual in 1985, and he published his findings in the book The Serpent and the Rainbow. Davis writes about a "zombie powder"—called coup poudre—that renders its victims clinically dead (90). Those well versed in the administration of this powder could conceivably create the illusion of raising the dead, for the active nerve agent, called tetradotoxin (Davis 134), "induces a state of profound paralysis, marked by complete immobility during which time the border between life and death is not at all certain, even to trained physicians" (Davis 142). Although these early texts eventually lead to a variety of voodoo-based zombie movies, Rhodes limits his critical investigation to White Zombie, written by Garnett Weston and directed by Victor Halperin. According to Rhodes, the general structure of Halperin's film comes from fairy tales and Tod Browning's Dracula; Rhodes presents a detailed comparison of the plot of White Zombie with that of Dracula to show how "its use of travel to a foreign land, its treatment of the hero and heroine, [and] its inclusion of a wise elder" parallel the earlier film precisely (21). However, Rhodes also points out that the primary literary antecedents for White Zombie are Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust (22), George Du Maurier's Trilby (26), and, of course, Seabrook's The Magic Island (30). White Zombie features the virtually unknown zombie creature from Seabrook's accounts, but because the details of the creature's construction were unknown (or at least undocumented) at the time, Halperin and Weston drew on the concept of hypnotism and mesmerism featured in Du Maurier's novel. Through a method of synthesis, the two filmmakers were able to invent a cinematic monster as yet unseen by western audiences.5 5. I would argue the primary visual antecedent of the shambling zombie to be the somnambulist from Robert Wiene's Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920), but Rhodes makes just a passing reference to this landmark film. In addition to the central monster's originality, the popularity and success of the voodoo zombie movie can be largely linked to its inherent exoticism. Western people, particularly at the turn of the century, were becoming acquainted with and fascinated by primitive cultures. Brett A. Berliner pursues the reasons behind this interest in the exotic in his 2002 book Ambivalent Desire. Although he focuses his study on the French obsession with Africa in the 1920s, his understanding of exoticism clearly applies to Americans' perspective vis-à-vis the Haitian people in the 1930s. Berliner links exoticism with escapism, defining the exotic as being "constructed as a distant, picturesque other that evokes feelings, emotions, and ideals in the self that have been considered lost in the civilizing process" (4). Berliner also emphasizes how travel literature, a fundamentally exotic genre, established the mythology of the "noble savage" in the minds of western readers (5) and how, after World War I, members of the French military returning from Africa caused the French to redefine their representations of the African as "a grand enfant, a big child" (10). Ultimately, the French of the 1920s saw the black natives of Africa as mysterious, unusual, and entertaining, and "some metropolitans traveled in search of ethno-erotic adventure, and many discovered beauty in the black body" (Berliner 236). On a basic level, intellectual westerners wanted an escape from their own hectic "modern" lives and looked to native cultures to recapture the simplicities of the past. Movies like White Zombie not only exploit the exotic black native but also take advantage of the popular tendency to romanticize ancient lands, imposing castles, and mysterious figures. The tone and style of most early zombie movies echo the Gothic stylization of films such as Dracula and Frankenstein—yet their tales are much closer to home. Although the action takes place in the Caribbean rather than on US soil, the films are certainly more a part of the New World than those set in Romania or Easter Europe. In a way, voodoo-themed horror movies represent the "West's East." That is, for many Americans, Africa, India, and Asia were locations too remote to seem tangible; they represented the colonies of European empires and existed on the other side of the globe. Caribbean lands, however, were more local and "real," providing Americans conceptually accessible "primitive" countries and mysterious native peoples. Yet zombie movies invariably function as horror-inducing narratives because of the presence of the zombies themselves. Unlike modern zombie movies like those created by George A. Romero, the fear in these early films comes from being turned into a zombie rather than being killed by one (Dendle 3). The central horrific feature is therefore the loss of autonomy and control, having one's will stripped to become a slave of a native, pagan authority. Unlike most movie monsters of the 1930s, the zombie was sired directly by the imperialist system. Creatures like Dracula, Frankenstein's golem, and the werewolf were primarily European constructs, born of diverse western mythologies and ethnic folklore. The zombie, on the other hand, was a new monster for a New World—it was discovered in the actual contemporary religious practices and daily folklife of postcolonial societies in Haiti and the Caribbean. For the local populations of these exotic islands, zombies were more than just escapist entertainment and fantasy; they were a real part of life and an actual potentiality. Furthermore, the zombie was an ideological manifestation of the social and political superstructure in these newly liberated colonies, using fear to encourage hard work and subservience. When the western cinematic versions of these folkloric creatures are examined, zombies must be recognized as a metaphorical manifestation of the Hegelian master/slave relationship and the negative dichotomous social structure of colonialism. Dayan's discussion of Haitian zombie folklore makes it clear why voodoo in general and zombiism in particular must be examined through the theoretical lens of postcolonialism. Although the original term zombi was a Creole word for "spirit," in voodoo culture it ironically refers to someone lacking a soul (Dayan 37). According to anthropologist Melville Herskovits, "in Dahomean legend the zombis were beings without souls, 'whose death was not real but resulted from the machinations of sorcerers who made them appear as dead, and then, when buried, removed them from their grave and sold them into servitude in some far-away land'" (qtd. in Dayan 36). No supernatural fate could echo the realities of slavery more, for "the phantasm of the zombi—a soulless husk deprived of freedom—is the ultimate sign of loss and dispossession" (Dayan 37). Zombification results in the total capitulation of autonomy, making it the most feared threat to the Haitian folk; becoming a zombie (either by having a sorcerer steal one's spirit or by turning one into the "living dead") is the "most powerful emblem of apathy, anonymity, and loss" (Dayan 37). Dayan ultimately succeeds in tying the history of Haiti with the mythology of the zombie: "Born out of the experience of slavery, the sea passage from Africa to the New World, and revolution on the soil of Saint-Dominque, the zombi tells the story of colonization" (37). By presenting the zombies as a manifest "Other" vis-à-vis the human protagonists, movies like White Zombie echo G. F. W. Hegel's (1931) master/slave dialectic. According to Hegel, the dialectical relationship between a master and his slaves is grounded in the need for recognition and self-consciousness—and this interaction must occur on both sides. Frantz Fanon makes the distinction between Hegel's dialectic and an actual master/slave relationship clear: At the foundation of Hegelian dialectic there is an absolute reciprocity which must be emphasized. It is in the degree to which I go beyond my own immediate being that I apprehend the existence of the other as a natural and more than natural reality. If I close the circuit, if I prevent the accomplishment of movement in two directions, I keep the other within himself. (217) According to Fanon's critique, this reciprocity is missing in the real-life relationship between a master and a slave, for "the master laughs at the consciousness of the slave. What he wants from the slave is not recognition but work" (220). Because Fanon's Negro wants to become like the master, he is "less independent than the Hegelian slave. … [turning] toward the master and abandon[ing] the object" (221). Even less recognition and interaction occur between a voodoo master and his zombie slaves. Because zombies lack self-consciousness, autonomy, and the desire for liberation, an inflexible relationship exists between them and all humans. In the voodoo priest/zombie relationship, the interaction is fundamentally one sided: the zombie lacks the intellectual capacity to recognize the master at all, firmly closing Fanon's circuit. Zombies thus represent an exaggerated model of colonial class/race segregation, for there is no possible dialectical model in such an exaggerated and literal master/slave relationship. This loss of agency and the reinstitution of a system of domination is a cultural manifestation of the colonial politics criticized by Aimé Césaire. According to his ruminations in Discourse on Colonialism, the system of imperialism leads to the perception of other humans as animals, what Césaire calls the "boomerang effect of colonization" (41). By embracing an ideology of superiority, colonization fails to encourage human contact but rather the "relations of domination and submission"; in other words, colonization means "thingification" (42). Such declarations clearly apply to the zombie mythology, wherein human individuals are reduced to beasts of burden, dumb animals incapable of any real human contact or discourse.6 6. Métraux describes the zombie as "a beast of burden which his master exploits without mercy, making him work in the fields, weighing him down with labor, whipping him freely and feeding him on meager, tasteless food" (282). In fact, the zombie represents the ultimate imperialist dream—a slave laborer that is truly a thing, unthinking, unaspiring, and nonthreatening. Césaire continues with a more far-reaching critique of the West, for he sees all postcolonial barbarism as being tied to the bourgeoisie class (76). The result is the exploitation of the proletariat worker, and the zombies in films like White Zombie are the ultimate manifestation of the subservient working class. The zombies are not only subservient due to their lack of will and autonomy; they also lack the power of speech. This characteristic leads one naturally to Gayatri Spivak and her seminal essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?" In her detailed analysis of the subordination of women in subaltern cultures, Spivak presents the colonial social hierarchy (specifically of India) as outlined originally by Ranajit Guha: Dominant foreign groups. Dominant indigenous groups. … Dominant indigenous groups at the regional and local levels. The …"people" and "subaltern classes."… (Spivak 284). In Spivak's critique, women and slaves constitute a social level beneath the lowest group, creating a fifth level that is doubly subordinated. This group is generally ignored and marginalized by not only the dominant foreign (i.e., white) class but also their own indigenous (i.e., native) populace. Spivak's primarily interest lies in issues of (re)presentation, and the purpose of her investigation is to find ways of recognizing how members of the subalternized classes communicate. Although the subaltern are "silent" in terms of official politics and culture, they do have the ability to talk with each other, which can potentially result in organization and revolution. The subaltern thus constitutes a potential threat to the imperialist powers, not merely a marginalized group worthy of intellectual study. Spivak's critique of the colonial class system relates to the social system of the zombie narrative as well. When the same hierarchy is applied to a film like White Zombie, the zombies constitute a sixth level—what I call the "sub-subaltern" class—below that of indigenous women and (living) slaves. They are subordinated for two reasons: (1) the master has no responsibilities toward a group of automatons that require little food, no pay, and no time off, and (2) the zombies have no voice, no opinions, no consciousness, and (most importantly) no ability to organize. Spivak's subalternized women can find a voice once they have an audience that is willing to listen; ethnographers can interview them, document their opinions and ideas, and represent them to the western world. Zombies have no such audience and no such ability—they have no opinions, ideas, or even voices with which to speak. Thus, the sub-subaltern differ from Spivak's conception in kind rather than merely degree. They are truly "other" because of their fundamental lack of humanity.7 7. Yet there is nonetheless a relationship between the sub-subaltern and the rest of the class hierarchy. Because members from all levels of this hierarchy can potentially become zombies, the structure faces possible inversion through which "slaves" become masters of other "slaves." As I shall illustrate later, this inversion becomes a key element in analyzing White Zombie. Hegel's dialectic does become useful, however, when examining the voodoo and imperialist origins of zombie mythology. In a 1964 interview with Fernade Bing, Métraux defined voodoo as "a syncretic religion that has blended together not only different African cults but also certain beliefs from European folklore" (qtd. in Mintz 4). Thus the invention of the zombie is a direct result of imperialism and cultural synthesis—the natives of French West Africa and emancipated slaves from the United States were relocated to the West Indies (and Haiti in particular) where their tribal beliefs were "integrated" with western Christian ideology. The result is a hybridized form of western voodoo mysticism, where natives offer food and wine to statues of the Virgin Mary, pray to their dead family members for guidance and protection, and hire priests and witch doctors to carve voodoo dolls of their enemies—and where supernatural creatures like the zombie represent the colonial experience. The only real dialectic, therefore, is in the union of pagan with Christian beliefs—the ancient theological and ritual practices of Africa provided voodoo sorcerers the ability to turn people into zombies; the Christian belief system made the loss of agency and self-control all that more horrific. The creation and (mis)use of zombies is the perfect realization of the imperialist hegemonic model: those in power (or rather, those who have power, like a voodoo priest) can enslave and conquer others; those "others" literally lose their language as well as their autonomy—they are the ultimate iteration of the slave. Whereas colonial peoples were subjected to the control of their imperialist masters, the zombies must similarly do all commanded them by their voodoo masters. Therefore, on one level, the zombie provides the oppressed the opportunity to oppress, and western civilization is thus threatened. Furthermore, making a zombie is a process of "uncivilization"; the now exaggerated Other becomes subservient and marginalized—and unlike the educational and missionary efforts in most European colonies, there is no attempt made to civilize the zombies and improve their place in society. The story of White Zombie is relatively straightforward and melodramatic. Although the actual time period of the film is un
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