The Sub‐Subaltern Monster: Imperialist Hegemony and the Cinematic Voodoo Zombie
The Journal of American Culture May 12, 2008 DOI: 10.1111/j.1542-734x.2008.00668.x (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Historical analysis Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Citations | 54 |
| Key points | Argues that the 1930s Hollywood zombie film emerged not from European myth but from sensational Caribbean travel literature, particularly William B. Seabrook's The Magic Island (1929), and that Victor Halperin's White Zombie (1932), styled after Dracula, used postcolonial Haiti to present exoticism, fear of domination and subversion, and the perpetuation of imperialist cultural and racial hegemony. |
Abstract
With 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 whileThe Journal of American Culture, 31:2 r2008,