In cinema, Zombies have long represented our society’s deepest fears: aside from the obvious fear of mass contagion, their brainless, soulless legions have symbolized loss of individual agency to communism (Creature with the Atom Brain, Teenage Zombies), mass consumerism (Dawn of the Dead, Night of the Living Dead), mega corporations (Resident Evil), and more.
The very first feature length zombie film, White Zombie, was released in 1932. You may be able to guess at much of its plot from the title: a beautiful, innocent, blonde woman is engaged to marry a banker in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. However, a local plantation owner also has eyes for her, and when his attempts to seduce her away from her betrothed fail, he turns to the Vodou priest (played by none other than Bela Lugosi) who has been supplying him with compliant labor in the form of reanimated dead, to help him bring the bride-to-be under his spell. Needless to say things do not go as planned, and our sweet bride becomes a zombie slave herself.
White Zombie was based on the 1929 book The Magic Island by traveler and author William Seabrook. An immediate best-seller, it was hailed by many at the time for its valuable insight, offering deeper understanding and relatability to Haitian culture. Retrospectively however, we can see that the book did less to promote insight and understanding, and far more to promote the image of Black people as scary, spooky, and supernatural… and quite essentially “other.”
I find zombies spectacular because of their ability to simultaneously represent fears of one thing and fears of its opposite. Since the 1950s, zombies have paradoxically embodied society’s fear of communism as well as its fear of unchecked capitalism.
In the 1930’s Haitian zombies we can easily see the evils of slavery and colonialism. We are introduced to reanimated corpses as labor – in the sugar cane fields in Seabrook’s book, in the sugar mill in the movie – men who “work faithfully” and “are not worried about long hours.” The Magic Island and White Zombie were both set near the end of the US occupation of Haiti, which had instituted foreign land ownership, racial segregation, press censorship, and forced labor, and which by that point was already the obvious failure that Haitians still feel the repercussions of today.
And at the same time, we can also see these zombies representing society’s fear of Black populations it did not control. Certainly the latter was better for business: when White Zombie was released in theaters, promoters were encouraged to hire Black talent to dress in exotic garments, beat drums, and brandish magical props outside of theaters.
That sort of fear-mongering imagery, of course, doesn’t exist in today’s society nearly 100 years later. Oh, wait….
Happy Halloween, Kossacks.
