In both cases, however, the person to worry about is not the powerless zombie themselves, but the voodoo sorcerer who made them so. Although Jessica Holland (actress Christine Gordon), the zombie of the title, is once again a beautiful white woman, this film presents a more accurate and less sensationalised version of the voodoo religion and its Haitian followers. On the other hand, Tourneur’s ‘I Walked With A Zombie’, whose basic storyline is loosely based on ‘Jane Eyre’, presents a more enlightened view of Haitian society.
Bishop discusses how the earlier movie, ‘White Zombie’ exploited deep-seated racial and sexual prejudices in its audience by showing a native Haitian voodoo sorcerer called Legendre (actor Bela Lugosi) turning the white female protagonist, Madeleine Short Parker (actress Madge Bellamy), into the ‘white zombie’ of the title. The chapter concludes by explaining how these folk tales were introduced to the continental USA during the American occupation of Haiti between 19, through ethnographic studies and travelogues.Ĭhapter Two summarises the early history of American zombie cinema, focusing on two representative films in particular, Victor Halperin’s 1932 movie ‘White Zombie’ and the 1943 film ‘I Walked With A Zombie’ by Jacques Tourneur. This zombie mythology was supposedly used by those in authority in Haiti to promote fear and obedience amongst the poor working class, lest they should be the next one to be turned into a dull-witted monster. Bishop discusses the history of Haiti as a country, the place of the voodoo religion in Haitian society and the folkloric origins of the zombie as a soul-less, mindless, shambling person who has allegedly been resurrected from the dead by a voodoo priest. He also suggests that zombie films are an acute indicator of the level of social anxiety in the USA, with the periods when zombie films have been most popular coinciding with times when Americans have been particularly fearful due to war, civil unrest or, most recently, terrorism.Ĭhapter One explores the origins of the zombie in Caribbean folklore.
He asserts that zombies are a peculiarly American fictional construct, originating in the voodoo religion as practiced in the Caribbean country of Haiti. The introduction sets out Bishop’s two-fold thesis for the book. There are five main chapters, bookended by a substantial introduction and a set of conclusions. Given the subject matter, this book has the potential to be of interest to a wide range of genre fans, well beyond the audience of film studies academics for whom it was originally intended. ‘American Zombie Gothic’ is a book-length presentation of his academic work on the place of the zombie in horror films. Kyle William Bishop is an Associate Professor of English at Southern Utah University in the USA.
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