Introduction
White Zombie is an American horror movie directed and produced by Halperin’s brothers, Edward and Victor Halperin. The 1932 movie theme is formulated from a play by Kenneth webs Broadway. The White zombie movie was among the American terror movies to be accepted by the Nazis. The movie’s setting is based in Haiti at the sugarcane plantation and the sugarcane mills (Jumpcut 9). The film involved human characters and the living dead (zombies), which the movie’s writer has figuratively used to pass the intended message successfully. Various themes have also been unveiled in the film, which include culture, race, and ethnicity. These themes have been comprehensively discussed in this paper.
Culture
Culture is one of the major themes portrayed by Tonny Halperin in the horror movie. It exposes clearly that farming was a common economic practice in film. Sugarcane plantations are visible in the film as also a sugarcane mill. The zombies are used as slaves in the sugarcane mill to provide labor. The Legendre describes the slave zombies as faithful, not considering the long hours they work in the sugarcane mills (Jumpcut 13).
The Legendre turns out from being a priest to a murderer; he obtains more from the people he enslaves in the factory. The zombies operating the Legendre sugar factory seem by disparity to consist of unidentified and replaceable slaves. As per Seabrook’s idea, the US occupation led to the appearance of zombies from Haiti. The zombies are thought to originate from the HASCO fields. The zombies started popping up during the big sugarcane season when the factory started offering a bonus on the wages of the new laborers (Allkins 24). When the owner of the factory declared to give incentives to the incoming workers, zombies gradually emerged to work, enriching their lord.
Christianity is another religious culture unveiled in the horror movie. The characters practice Christianity and fulfill Christianity practices such as doing weddings. Magdaline and Neil plan to have a wedding and get married on the Haitian sugarcane plantation, but the owner of the plantation secretly intends to seduce her. The plantation owner later teams up with the mill owner to use the zombie on Magdaline (McAlister 17). During the wedding ceremony, Legendre converts her into a live zombie. Later on, Magdaline body is stolen by Legendre from the mausoleum, and she turns her into a slave in the castle of the zombies (Bishop 43). There are also missionaries in the movie whose primary work is to spread the gospel. Therefore, Christianity turns out to be the main religious culture portrayed in the horror movie.
Burying of the dead is a culture among the people in the horror movie. The movie begins with a voodoo burial on the road; Magdalen and Neil witness the ceremony as they travel to Haiti for their wedding. The corpse is buried at the crossroad to avoid it from being dug and turned out to be a zombie. During the ceremony, the rituals are held, and unique songs are chanted. As the couples travel in carnage to see the Legendre, they pass through a large cemetery where the dead have been turned into zombies (McAlister 17).
At the cemetery, the team meets the zombie bodyguard who steals Magdalen’s scurf. Burying of the corpses was done in tombs; when Magdaline died, she was buried in the grave where the zombie bodyguard later stole her body from Beaumontās mausoleum. Magdalen is turned out to be a mindless slave at the Legendre castle of the zombies.
The community in the movie believes in and practices witchcraft and magic. In the movies, magic is used to achieve various things such as wealth and is also used to frustrate others. The Legendre uses magic to wake the dead and turn them into zombies to work as his slaves. He uses the living dead as slaves in the sugar miller to gain wealth. The zombies work for long hours in the mills, and he claims that the zombies are faithful. The zombie bodyguard also uses magic in the movie; the bodyguard does magic on Magdalein’s scarf and gets her killed during the wedding (Allkins 12). Later on, she is mysteriously woken up and turned into a zombie to work in the Legendreās castle. Magic has also been used as an instrument to create horror in the movie and as a way to gain an advantage over ordinary people.
Ethnicity
Ethnicity is another theme that has been depicted in the horror movie ‘White Zombie.ā The film has involved different actors of all races and ethnicities. The cinema comprises both black Americans and white. The characters in the movie are people originating from the United States and Haiti. Magdaline comes from New York in the United States to get married to her fiancĆ©, who works as a bank employee in Port Ua Prince (Bishop 23).
They meet Charles Beaumont, who convinces them to do the wedding on his estate. It is also noted that people from different ethnicities subscribe to other beliefs; in the movie, the Haitians chased away evil by using drum beats. It was also believed that the zombie the Legendre used as slaves migrated from Haiti when the sugarcane mill started issuing offers to new workers (Brown Nina et al.). Probably the zombies were dead Haitians who had been dug from the grave by the Legendre.
Race
The race is also one of the main themes that dominate the movie. The movie comprises characters from different races, both the blacks and the whites. There are various instances of racism in the movie, Magdaline a white girl from the United States, is mistreated by the Legendre (McAlister 17). The Legendre uses magic to kill her at the threshold of her wedding, and she is later turned into a zombie to work as a slave at the Legendre castle. Racism also occurs when Neil, an American young man, is frustrated by the Legendre (Brown Nina et al.) The Legendre seduces his fiancƩ on the day of his wedding.
He also goes further to kill his fiancĆ© during the time of the marriage. The zombieās bodyguard steals Magdaline corpse from the tomb to perform a ritual on it. Neil seeks assistance from Dr. Bruner, a missionary, to go to the Legendre castle, eventually winning a wills contest. Magdalene is revived, and the married couple is reunited to go back to the United States.
Specific Culture
To understand the culture and the ethnicity in the movie the white zombie, the meaning and origin of the word zombie must be carefully looked into. The word zombie emerged from Haiti and was associated with black magic; the word is used to depict a person raised from the dead (Brown Nina et al.). Even though the word is linked to ghosts or spirits of the dead who were there even before the independence of Haiti. The movie evokes the fear that the dead slaves who died due to torture in the sugar plantations turned to be dangerous and started attacking the white soldiers.
To understand the setting, we look at Haiti; even after she achieved independence in 1804, as a country, it never had political stability, which was a result of poor leadership, cold-showering by the international community, and racism clashes that were mainly color-coded. Of course, independence came with the abolition of slavery, and now the Haitian peasantry began working for themselves, thus stabilizing Haiti’s economy through farming.
During colonialism, the indigenous religion of the people of Vodoo was considerably beaten by the colonial masters who sought to neutralize it. Despite the efforts to retain their faith, Vodou never succeeded to be an official religion in Haiti. in 1826, Jean-Pierre Boyer published the Code Rural to provide a legal base for the anti-Vodou practices that were being practiced to transform and regulate peasantry, the rules in some way documented several offenses including magic (Brown Nina et al.). Looking at the movie, the process of zombification has been borrowed from ancient days. The laws put in place attempted murder by poisoning as the use of substances to reduce a person to a state known as lethargy which was subject to administration and the amount applied.
The film White Zombie tries to tell us how Madeline is passionate about Haiti and the culture of the Blacks, and it tries to portray the issues the women are facing if they are occupied in the new form. When Beaumont changes and starts opposing and discriminating, the black magic Legendre resorts to turning him into a zombie, too, a process he conducts slowly with sadness but pleasure. Beaumont becomes a white zombie, too, making him under the control of his master Legendre.
Specific Ethnicity
The film further shows us that the exploitation of fellow human beings is even done by members of the same ethnic group and race, making white, both male and female susceptible to several economic exploitations such as unpaid labor after they are zombified (Fay 8). The workforce is now at home, as depicted in the film. Everyone is asked to see if the people in the surroundings act differently as zombies were becoming a common phenomenon making people live the life of the master of the living dead, and he controlled everything. Whether willingly or not the white zombies offered a completely different workforce than the usual local slaves, the film dramatizes the effects of these American and Haitian workers under the military.
As a result of reduced American influence in Haiti, western influence increased, and people became curious about the voodoo rituals and the emergence of zombie rituals. Meraux refers to voodoo as an entanglement of beliefs and traditions of the African culture, which might have a mix of catholic practices. This resulted from the interaction between the peasants and the urban settlers who had been introduced to Christianity.
As more slaves were imported, the voodoo continued growing due to the many native Africans brought in, leading to syncretic religion that draws heavily from the ancient religions. Some of the slaves became priests or instead referred to as the servants of the gods, their purpose is to conduct the rites and rituals, which included resurrecting people from exile. Voodoo continued to be an integral part of Haiti, and after the French revolution, the religion got room for growth with no influence from the catholic priests.
Voodoo was famous simply because it gave people hope; it gave them hope that they would be freed from slavery and then deliver them from the yoke of poverty which was their main problem. On basic understanding, it is clear that the western cultures strived to learn the native cultures to run away from their busy, stressful modern life, and they thus sought to recapture the good old days. The movie white movie shows how the black natives are exploited and taken advantage of due to the famous coveted ancient lands, the imposed castles, and the mysteries (Jumpcut 15). The movie white zombie-like any other zombie movie echoes the Gothic styles in acting, which brings the stories closer home.
The white zombie turns out to be an allegory of occupation and nostalgia of culture, and zombie brings s in lasting influence resulting in colonization and slavery. In the end, we see that the evil that was brought about by religion has been overpowered and all the harmful traces of voodoo horror eliminated whereby in the last scene, Legendre’s servants, who were zombies, were tricked and died by jumping over a cliff (Fay 15).
In these final scenes, Beaumont, in his state, tries to revenge for himself by killing Legendre by pushing him to the sea before he could also kill himself. In the end, there are no European witch doctors and the American masters, there remained no evidence of zombie slaves, and Madeline, all of a sudden, all odds resurrect. As we try to believe, she recognizes her husband. She seemed to have forgotten the life of servitude, a sign of a new beginning.
At the time of the release of the white film zombie, there was a prevailing cultural ignorance that easily connected the zombies in the movie to the colonial administration that was in charge of Haiti and was exploiting the natives through unpaid labor and denial of certain democratic rights (Bishop 34). The movie production made the US start to correct its mistakes and thus started withdrawing from this unpopular administration.
Specific Race
The movie also brings out racism in the film, where it connects zombies with the people of color who are the natives of Haiti and are referred to as non-humans or dead people (McAlister 17). This can be compared to the contemporary world’s discrimination of the people of color historically; the same analogy can also be seen in the movie Night of the Living Dead. The zombie is perceived to occupy a space between the living and the dead the same way the backs occupy the space between being human or black human or even an animal (Brown Nina et al.). The plight and the cry of the zombies can be compared to the blacks’ problems as slaves.
Racism is evident as the movie’s setting is in Haiti, a foreign country whose people are portrayed as witches and primitive. Therefore, the illustration above shows how the white zombie serves to depict the reinforcement and criticizing of prejudices and injustices done to other races and ethnic groups by American’s colonial rule, in this case to the people of Haiti.
As one of the significant American horror movies that try to demystify the zombies, this film is culturally and historically significant because it is appropriately read using the lens of colonialism and racial discrimination. Ethnicity is brought out as the themes explain it all. For example, instead of the film demystifying the culture of Haiti to America and the rest of the world, White Zombie takes advantage and exploits the rumors about voodoo existing before its release (Bishop 21). The movie only strengthens the racial dichotomies where the whites are portrayed as holy and righteous while the blacks are brought out to be evil. Finally, the film helps project the stereotypes held by the colonialists and the imperialism that tries to achieve western superiority in economics, religion, democracy, and race.
Importance of Ethnicity and Race
Race and ethnicity are essential in the movie since it has helped the director Victor Halperin address various challenges in the film. The movie has reached out and condemned racism when Neil and Magdalene, white couples from the US, are mistreated on their wedding day. On the other hand, ethnicity has also played a significant role in pinpointing various wickedness that comes along due to different races. Through ethnicity, different beliefs and practices of people from diverse backgrounds have also been addressed in the movie (Brown Nina et al., 22) The Haitians believe that through drum beats, they can keep away the evil spirits.
The zombies that worked in the sugarcane mill as Legendre slaves were considered to have originated from Haiti. Therefore, it can be concluded that both race and ethnicity have played a significant role in accomplishing Victor Halperin’s objective in the horror movie.
Work Cited
Allkins, Kyle. āThose thingsā and āyou peopleā Issues of Racism in Zombie Cinema. 1932 Web.
Bishop, Kyle. āThe Sub-Subaltern Monster: Imperialist Hegemony and the Cinematic Voodoo Zombie.ā The Journal of American Culture, vol. 31, no. 2, 2008, pp. 141ā152. Web.
Brown, Nina, et al. Perspectives: an open introduction to cultural anthropology. 2020. Web.
Fay, Jennifer. āDead Subjectivity: āWhite Zombie,ā Black Baghdad.ā CR: The New Centennial Review, vol. 8, no. 1, 2008, pp. 81ā101.
Jumpcut. āāWhite Zombieā by Tony Williams.ā Jump cut. 1983. Web.
McAlister, Elizabeth. āSlaves, Cannibals, and Infected Hyper-Whites: The Race and Religion of Zombies.ā Anthropological Quarterly, vol. 85, no. 2, 2012, pp. 457ā86. Web.