Atlantic Apocalypse, Origins of the Zombie

The entertainment industry is an important element in the ways people interact with one another today. Pop culture dominates the ways we understand our past and present. While this can expose consumers to interesting and unknown historical narratives, it can also disseminate misunderstandings of cultural icons.

Consider the modern adaptation and idea

of the ghouling zombie, so popular in film and television today. Few people understand the very real history of zombies and the crucial role they played in the Atlantic world of slaves and slave masters. The idea of the zombie emerged in Saint Domingue (present-day Haiti). 1 The brutality of slavery on the sugar plantations in the French colony had resulted in high suicide rates among slaves. Slave owners and slave traders began to ask, “What sort of ‘fear-factor’ can we establish to cease this behaviour?” What developed was the idea behind the undead, brain-eating monsters that we see in films and television programs today.

The slave owners of Saint Domingue used

zombies as a fear tactic to scare slaves away from escaping slavery through suicide. The idea originally emerged within Saint Domingue voodoo culture. It was believed that vodoun practitioners called “Bokors” could transform a slave who had ended

their life into a brainless undead creature, without soul or mind, who would be forced to obey the

Bokor’s every command. The severing of the body from its soul was called “zombification,” and the resulting creature was called “Zonbi’’ or “Zombi.” 2

Severed souls were believed to be stored within bottles and kept safe by the Bokor. The Bokor also controlled the only way for the Zombi to be freed – by breaking the bottle holding the soul. 3 The threat of such an existence had the desired effect

Filmmakers began to be obsessed with the possibility of a soulless creature that would obey its maker’s every command. The idea of the modern day zombie first

appeared in the 1921 German film Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, in English known as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, directed by Robert Wiene. The zombies within this film

exhibited the basic characteristics of the original myth: a unique lumbering gait, lack of

higher cognitive ability, and a devout obedience to another individual. 4 This idea of the obedient, brain-dead creature gained popularity in the film industry as a result of Dr.

Caligari. As it developed, the concept lost a connection to its origins and history. Other early films such as The Night of the Living Dead (1968) made it clear that these creatures were the undead – individuals who had once been living, but had lost their souls and would forever roam as mere physical entities rather than spiritual ones.

The idea of the Zombie snowballed, gaining fictional characteristics over time.

Cannibalism became a popular and key component of the Zombie. Many began to see racial and cultural changes, such as the shift of the Zombie from its Haitain centred myth to the Zombie as a North American creature. In this shift, Zombies became racially white. 5 Though the original myth and representation accurately followed its Haitiain origins, Western culture claimed this idea as their own.

The American film industry became fascinated with this notion of the undead, and Zombies took their place alongside other famous, (or infamous,) horror figures

like the Vampire or Werewolf. 6 As time progressed, film directors, television program

producers, and video game developers integrated their own concepts and interpretations of the character. Warm Bodies (2013) presented Zombies as the same cannibalistic

Nicole Arbour Walking Dead Special FX Makeup Tutorial

and brainless creatures presented in Night of the Living Dead, however, they were now also given human characteristics and the ability to revert to “undead-ness” and come back to life. The Walking Dead (2010) portrayed these creatures as more animal-like rather than undead or human-like. And, in the 2014 story based game, The Last of Us, Zombies were depicted as “infected,” humans who were not actually dead, but possessed by a “zombie parasite,” a virus that grew as a fungus on the brain and took over the physical body.

Zombies have also been used as an

apocalyptic response to current-day struggles. In many cases, different narratives use Zombies or a Zombie apocalypse to explain history, political struggles, and even social epidemics. 7

Though this important cultural narrative has undergone extensive editing and generations of reimagination, the idea of the Zombie, both past and present, is an important element in raising awareness for public health. Melissa Nasiruddin shows that Zombies in pop culture have recently been utilized to increase awareness of public health. One way the idea of the zombie has become dramatically transformed is seen within a few recently developed video game concepts, such as The Last of Us where zombies are simply the result of a pandemic. A very similar concept is

also seen in I Am Legend (2007), where the focus of the film is the journey towards discovering a

vaccine to cure the infected zombiism. Nasiruddin argues that these concepts are helpful to allow us to consider urgent public health issues and how we should react to them. 8

Changing characteristics and narratives reflect the way that History is written as narratives are often defined by those with the most powerful voices. The history of the Zombie and its portrayal from platform to platform reflects the different ways historical events are told based on those who hold the power to tell them. Many elements of pop culture today are rooted in historical events connected to an overriding concept of power. In much the same way that Haitian slaves were dominated by white slave-owners obsessed with instilling fear through myths, articles of pop culture are today dominated by a seemingly superior white American culture. American pop culture has erased the history of slavery from Zombies; understanding Zombies within the context of slavery in the Atlantic world world helps us to restore this forgotten history.

ERIN KEHLER HISTORY MAJOR