The Fear of Otherness in Horror
Keywords: Master-Slave, Modern Zombie Myth, Monster/Monstere, Spirit-admonishing Object, Vaudoux/Vodou/Voodoo, Zonbi/Zombie,
From the early onset of horror in American cinema, horror films have used American’s fear of the “Other” or anyone different to drive their narratives. In Universal Pictures’ pantheon of monsters, Dracula represented the fear of the Eastern European foreigner and their moving into our neighborhoods, the Wolf Man is our fear of evil in ourselves, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein is based on our fear of science and playing God and the classical Mummy is about colonial subjects pertaining specifically to Europe due to Egypt’s proximity to European countries. Similarly, the Zombie finds its origins in Haiti and is associated with the United States and their fear of voodoo (a made-up American word) which stems from Haiti’s vodou/vaudoux culture.
The film White Zombie (1932, Halperin Productions) is the first American horror film featuring zombies. Unlike the modern zombie of George Romero’s creation, the zombies depicted in this film are created and controlled by Murder Legendre’s voodoo. Unsurprisingly, the film primarily takes place on plantation and the audience also learns that Murder has a sugar cane mill that is run by zombies. The parallel notions to the slavery of African Americans by white men is hard to go unnoticed, harkening to a master-slave relationship between the two. What is also interesting in the scene where the zombies are introduced in the sugar cane mill, is that the sounds made by the gears and zombie-powered machines sound similar to those of the modern day zombie. Instead of the zombies themselves making these sounds, they are created by the environment.
In this film we not only see the master-slave dichotomy at play but also the fear of voodoo and the way it is used to compels people to the master’s whim. This also plays into White Zombie’s theme of masculinity and control over women’s bodies as Murder convinces Charles Beaumont (the film’s protagonist) to transform his partner, Madeleine, into a zombie to force her to marry him through use of a potion (a spirit-admonishing object). Later in the film, Charles begins to regret this decision and wishes for Murder to reverse the spell but soon realizes he himself is beginning to turn into a zombie as well. These events all play on the idea of American’s fear of voodoo and the ability to lose control of one’s own body.
Similarly, in I Walked with a Zombie (1943, RKO Radio Pictures), the film deals with the fear of Haitian Vodou and heavily features Vodou rituals as the source of fear and evil. Here, there main characters travel to the source of evil, a Caribbean island where the population is inhabited by descendants of slaves. Even though the film primarily focuses on the enslavement of people by means of Vodou rituals and the fears of becoming enslaved by descendants of slaves, one of the characters, Wesley Rand, himself is enslaved as well. In this instance he is not enslaved by means of ritualistic magic or anything of that nature but he is enslaved to alcohol. In the scene where he meets Betsy on her day off, he drinks until passing out and the next day becomes angry when Paul suggests they not drink during dinner. It is ironic that the characters are so afraid of Vodou rituals and their ways of life but are perfectly accepting of being enslaved to a bottle.
Wesley Rand, played by James Ellison, passed out due to overdrinking.
In both these films, many of the fears displayed as horror are rooted in American fears of Haitian Vodou and slavery. Part of the fear stems from the white characters fearing that they can be enslaved by these rituals themselves, almost as if it were a form of revenge sought by African slaves. These rituals are also shown to be primitive and overtly sexual in a time where American culture is predominately conservative. This Otherness is what drives the horror of the film and the audience’s reaction to the unknown of other cultures. We tend to fear the unknown and when different cultures are envisioned in a horror fashion, it causes more fear and racism towards these people.
