Zombies: An Unnatural History

Monsters

• Cultural construction• Embodiment of

culturally/historically specific fears

• The role of the Enlightenment

Apocalypse

• Book of Revelation• Medieval and early

modern Anti-Christ narratives

• Modern apocalypse

Zombies: Embodiment

• Can the zombie be seen as a representation of what the human really is?

How many hours are in a day when you don't spend half of them watching television? When is the last time any of us really worked to get something that we wanted? How long has it been since any of us really needed something that we wanted?

The world we knew is gone. The world of commerce and frivolous necessity has been replaced by a world of survival and responsibility. An epidemic of apocalyptic proportions has swept the globe causing the dead to rise and feed on the living. In a matter of months society has crumbled, no government, no grocery stores, no mail delivery, no cable TV. In a world ruled by the dead we are forced to finally start living. (Walking Dead Compendium, back cover)

Historical contexts

• World War II: Holocaust and Hiroshima/Nagasaki

• Muselmänner and hibakusha (Muntean)

What does the Zombie represent?

• Slavery and Oppression?

• Late capitalism?• Questions of

subjectivity and embodiment?

Early Literature

• Near Eastern resurrection legend

• Arabian Nights (“History of Gherib and his Brother Agib”)

Early Literature

• Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818

Early Literature

• Edgar Allen Poe, “Ligeia” (1838)

Early Literature

• Edgar Allen Poe, “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” (1845)

• Ambrose Bierce, “The Death of Halpin Frayser” (1893)

Early Literature

• August Derleth, “The House of Magnolias” story of zombie slave revolt on a U.S. Southern plantation, June 1932

1930s

• Horror films:• The Cabinet of Dr.

Caligari (1919)

• The Golem (1920)

Boris Karloff in The Mummy (1932)

Karloff, The Ghoul (1933)

Karloff, The Walking Dead (1937)

Karloff, Frankenstein (1931)

White Zombie (1932)

• Dir. Victor Halperin• First film to figure

zombies• Bela Lugosi as Murder

Legendre

Matheson, I am Legend (1954)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

The Plague of the Zombies (1966)

Romero, Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Romero

Italian/Euro Zombie cinema

Thriller (1983)

Raimi, Evil Dead franchise

28 Days Later (2002)

Video games

Graphic novels

Zombie remakes

Rammbock 2010

Genre

Genre

Genre

“Zombiegate” (2011)

Zombis and Zombies

• Zombi: singular, created by a single master, connected to slavery and imperialism

• Zombie: “evil, contagious and plural”, connected to capitalism and consumerism

Haitian Revolution

• 1791 Rebellion breaks out in French colony of Saint-Domingue located on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola

• Revolution from 1791-1804

Haiti Pre-Revolution

• Island of Hispaniola• “discovered” by

Columbus, 1492• Sugar cane production

begun in 1493• Indigenous population:

est. 500-750K in 1492 to 29K in 1514

Saint-Domingue

• Became the French colony of Saint-Domingue

• French presence began in 1659

Haiti pre-Revolution

• On eve of revolution was the world’s leading producer of coffee and sugar

• Brutal working conditions with high mortality rates

Haiti pre-Revolution

• Estimated 850,000 to 1 million slaves brought to St. Domingue

• 5 to 6 of slaves died yearly

• Child mortality was 50%• Laws concerning slaves

encoded in the Code Noir of 1685

Some Sources on Haiti

Haitian revolution and the U.S.

• Many planters went to New Orleans• Brought with them Haitian beliefs: Vodou,

based on spiritual beliefs and practices from W. and Central Africa

• These mixed with spirituality from American slaves, Native Americans to become Voodoo, which both those of African and American descent began to practice

Zombie etymology

• French ombres (shadows)?• Bonda word zumbi to Haiti through

Portuguese slave traders?• Name for a non-American slave revolt?• Attributed as the name of a leader in the

Haitian revolution?

The Zombie

• The Haitian zombie can take various forms– Soul stolen from a living person to bring luck or

heal illness– Dead person who has willing given his/her body to

the Voudou gods– Reanimated corpse controlled by master who

resurrects it

Zombie/Zombi

• Haitian zombie did not travel over with Voudou

• Entered through 19th c. stories as the zombi and then more broadly in the 1930s

• 19th c. versions were a type of spirit

Zombi stories

• “The Unknown Painter” reprint from Chamber’s Edinburgh Review in Ohio newspaper, The Alton Telegraph, 1838

• “Last of the Caribs: A Romance of Martinique” Decatur Illinois Daily Review, 1879

Zombi

• Zombi was given as the name of a heroic leader in a slave revolt in Brazil as described in “Extracts from the Modern Traveller” in May 1845 in the American Freeman, a magazine for free African Americans and abolitionists

Zombis—Haitian Revolution

• Zombi myth has clear connections to slavery• Insurgent battle cry reputed as: “We have no

mother, no child; What is death?”• Slavery as “social death” (Patterson)• Some see the Zombi as a metaphor of Haiti

itself: a successful slave revolt that has led to a sad national history

Zombis and Haitian revolution

• Voudou sometimes attributed as giving power to insurgent troops and rendering them insensate to pain and injury

U.S. Occupation of Haiti

• 1915-1934• Frequent changes in

government, prohibition against foreign land ownership and concern over German influence prompted U.S. intervention to protect U.S. interests

U.S. Occupation of Haiti

• Invasion force of Marines• Essential government control despite Haitian

opposition• Reinstituted some forced labor practices

White Zombie (1932)

• Dir. Victor Halperin• First film to figure

zombies• Bela Lugosi as Murder

Legendre

Zombie characteristics

• Can be controlled for labor• Can exist in extreme conditions• Murder Legendre in White Zombie about the

zombies in his sugar mill: “they work faithfully, and they are not worried about long hours”

Zombie/Zombie master

• Zombies can be seen as representing “ideal” laborers

• It is the zombie master who is terrifying

Ouanga (1936)

• Clelie, a mixed-race woman, attempts to make a white woman into zombie because she desires her fiance

Revolt of the Zombies (1936)

• Another Halperin film • Set in Indochina• Army of Zombies

created by Cambodian zombie master, sent to fight Austrian soldiers in the trenches in WWI

• General von Schelling pleads for the future of the “white race”

I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

What kind of fears do these zombies embody? (Kordas)

• Fear of African-Americans• Fear of eastern and southern European

immigrants (Legendre in White Zombie)• Fear of Asian immigrants in the West (Revolt

of the Zombies ‘36)• Fears of the New Woman (Madeleine in White

Zombie)

The New Woman

• Dracula (1897)• Fears of “white slavery”

Zombies and moral transgression

• Jessica Holland (I Walked with a Zombie) is turned into a zombie after she plans to run off with her brother-in-law

Wade Davis

• The Serpent and the Rainbow, 1985

Davis’s 3 part thesis

• Social structuralist and functionalist argument—zombification is a form of social control

Davis thesis

• Materialist-pharmacological argument –zombification is made possible by the making and use of certain pharmacological powders by sorcerers

Davis thesis

• Cultural-Psychological argument—the first two elements must be knit together in order for the process of zombification to work

• The process is chemical, but also social/psychological/cultural

The Magic Island (1929)

• William Seabrook• Introduced the Haitian zombie as mindless

figure controlled by someone

Tell My Horse (1938)

• Zora Neale Hurston Tell My Horse: “Parlay cheval ou”

• A way of speaking without taking credit for the speech

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960)

• Folklorist, anthropologist, author

• Wrote her most famous work, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) during her Haitian fieldwork