"It is not by chance that there exists the myth
of the zombie, that is the living dead, the man whose mind and soul have been
stolen and who has been left only the ability to work. The history of colonization
is the process of man's general zombification." (39) It is ironic that as resistance
to the US occupation of Haiti in 1932 increased, that the film White Zombie
should be released as the first in a long line of genre films which depict Vodoun
and the Haitian people as devoted to diabolic practices. Bloodthirsty sorcerers,
bent on possessing and making zombies of blanc women, as a means of increasing
his social status. These sorcerers threaten to cross boundaries of social station
and racial segregation, for this and their zombies must be destroyed to maintain
social order. The maintenance of this order is precisely the reason Washington
gave for the occupation at the time. Vodoun is viewed as being one of the primary
reasons Haiti is a nation and its people are free. By so characterizing the
symbol of their freedom and tying it to the memory of slavery, the symbol of
their empowerment becomes again a symbol of their enslavement.
It is obvious that much of Haiti's misfortune since the Revolution is directly
tied to the establishment of a free African state in the Americas. Whenever
they deem it necessary, the Western media has identified the people of Haiti
with the soulless, wandering husks called zombies. It is apparent to any who
would look carefully, that any time the United States wants to characterize
the Haitian people for political purposes, they turn to these horror-filled
images to instill fear in the populace and insure the continued economic disparity.
"The accursed fate conjured by the myth of the zombie is that of the Haitian
experience of slavery, of the disassociation of the people from their will,
their reduction to beasts of burden subject to a master."
Works consulted
Olmos, Magarite Fernández & Paravishni-Gebert, Lizabeth. Ed. Sacred Possession: Vodou, Santería, Obeah and the Caribbean. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997.