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‘We’re more than just pins and dolls and seeing the future in chicken parts’: Race, magic and religion in American Horror Story: Coven

2019; Intellect; Volume: 38; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1386/ejac.38.1.29_1

1758-9118

Jennifer O’Reilly,

Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies

Abstract This article will examine intersecting representations of race, magic and religion in American Horror Story: Coven. Coven traces the presence of witchcraft and voodoo in New Orleans from the nineteenth century to the present day. The season presents two conflicting and racially divided modes of magic: the predominantly white coven who are descendants of the Salem witches and the African American voodooists, led by the most infamous voodoo queen in the United States, Marie Laveau. These two sects are sworn enemies who have competed for power in the city since the coven first arrived in New Orleans. Following a truce between the two groups, the city was divided and white and black spaces were created in which the two groups could practice their magic separately. This article will discuss the way in which Coven presents magic in the city as racially and physically segregated and will pay particular attention to the depiction of African American magical practices. This article will interrogate the ways in which Coven echoes historical accounts of Marie Laveau and how it presents the nature and function of voodoo in New Orleans. It will question in what ways Coven conforms to and deviates from established voodoo tropes, arguing that in some ways Coven perpetuates pejorative impressions of voodoo whilst disrupting others. It will argue that, through Murphy and Falchuk’s depiction of ceremonies, rituals and the voodoo deity Papa Legba, Coven sensationalizes voodoo and presents its practices as spectacle. It proposes that this contemporary image of voodoo is part of a cultural tradition established through nineteenth and twentieth century treatments of African American magic that includes depictions of black culture based on the tradition of blackface minstrelsy, Harlem Renaissance recoveries of folk traditions and popular ethnographies of the city. It will suggest that in a similar way to these historical representations, Coven draws on racialized stereotypes of the primitive and the savage to present voodoo as dark and dangerous. Yet, primarily through the figure of Marie Laveau, it will also argue that Murphy and Falchuk depict voodoo as a symbol of resistance to racialized and gendered violence and oppression, and that in many ways Coven grants agency to voodoo women. Using voodoo as a lens, this paper will address broader debates around intersecting hierarchies of race and religion, the representation of race and the visibility of black culture in America.