Demonized Haiti

Abraham Elizondo

Professor Ramos

English 102

12 December 2019

Demonized Haiti

The Zombie, one of the biggest fears that Americans now and days enjoy to see not only because we know that zombies aren’t a real life monster but there is movies like zombieland and games like “Left 4 Dead”, Black ops Zombies and many more that make zombies not as scary as they were back in the 1900’s when it all started. The word zombie actually came from Hatians that called these creatures a “Zombi” and the reason behind all this is because the rural Haitian spiritual belief system, believed that those who would have died from an unnatural cause like murder would stay at their graves. During this time and location Voodoo was the type of cultural thing that was going and they believed that the dead bodies would be revived by a witch doctor who would keep them as a personal slave, granting it no agency. And a little background on a successful slave rebellion and independence from France in 1804, Haiti was actually demonized by the west as a threat to imperialism. Voodoo was also brought into this and when the United States took over Haiti in 1915, they tried to fix this problem with catholic missionaries to get rid of all the curses and beliefs. Now this ties down to an American man by the name of William Seabrook which was one of the first to be made aware of the zombi. He was taken to a American Sugar company, and that is where he was introduced to the “zombies”.

Now I know you’re probably thinking, how is there zombies at a warehouse when it should be employees working. Well it very much was employees working, but as a matter of fact they were working like slaves and not getting any hours of rest, no breaks and no benefits, nothing but hard labor. Seabrook actually explains by saying “ The supposed zombies continued dumbly at work. They were plodding like brutes, like automatons. The eyes were the worst … They were in truth like the eyes of a dead man, not blind but staring, unfocused, and unseeing.” Personally this is scary to me not by the way he describes the people but just the fact that a company can treat people this way and not even care how they are changing physically, they literally were killing these people slowly. But apparently Seabrook was ignorant to this horrific act and even wrote a book by the name of The Magic Island and exposed zombies to America. The Seabrook story is how it all started but as time started to change the zombie stories started to change as well and people started to add their own modifications to make them either more terrifying or just making it more realistic to make it more of a fear for those who watch. Personally I don’t really find zombies scary but most people actually have a phobia called Kinemortophobia and is very common, honestly I’m not sure why that is but my guess is that they think that the undead comes back to life at a certain point or the people that know the background behind the voodoo and all that other nonsense actually believe and they get scared of it. I’m not saying it’s not a real thing but it’s hard to believe when their are films, games, and movies on zombies, and it’s almost like a joke now and days and we are even killing them in the games, movies and everything else. So my point is why be scared of such a thing even in movies the humans end up conquering the undead. One film that was really eye catching to me was the “World War Z”, now that one was actually more realistic and the storyline made much more sense because Gerry Lane as Brad Pitt which was a former United Nations investigator who must travel the world to find a way to stop a zombie pandemic. And has he goes on a quest to find a way to stop it, he finds a cure but the cure doesn’t kill the zombies it simply just makes the normal human being invisible to the zombies, I’m not too sure on why they choose that conclusion but it was far more interesting than the other zombie movies that had been coming out. Also this film was one of the most realistic films in 2013 and still till this day it seems like it can be a reality because the zombie crisis started because of a disease and not just out of nowhere like the rest of the films it had a meaning and went more into depth with it, not just focusing on killing them but finding a cure to stop them was much bigger than the rest. Mostly now in the modern days we live in, zombies are more thrilling rather than terrifying because the walking dead doesn’t exist, and everyone knows this, according to David Rudd, from the University of Memphis said that because they know the risk of something like a zombie attack is marginal, they experience excitement instead of fear, and I understand that because before it was a fear for many people and now they enjoy it and pay to watch gruesome bloody dead bodies chase and eat others but maybe it’s not that, that they enjoy maybe its because humans are naturally good at empathy, “empathy is restored when people discover things they share, and sometimes that’s pain and suffering”. So that means that some people might enjoy these films because they like to see the pain the blood the death of others? So really we are the monsters or are the zombies the monsters.. Joke it’s still the brain eating zombies that are. But why do we view them as monsters, well one reason being because they are different and not human and that’s not what we are used to seeing everyday, we are used to seeing familiar faces and what not but this also ties down to the monster theories. So one of the theories that can be applied to the zombies is thesis one, The monster’s body is a cultural body because like vampires they can live forever and so can zombies because they really don’t eat much but that’s not the only it’s because being a zombie they don’t know who they are or what it is, it just know how to kill and eat it is only the pure body. Another theory that really ties down to the zombies is thesis six, Fear of the monster is really a kind of desire because zombies are always in huge groups and they don’t eat each other they just attract each other and pretty in a way work together to eat also they show lots of aggression and are very violet because all they know is kill but to them it’s eating. And the last theory that I believe ties down to zombies being monsters is theory four, The monster dwells at the gates of  difference this one is the most obvious because they aren’t human and look so much different than humans but they are still in the flesh. 

In conclusion, Zombies have come a long way from being one of the scariest creatures to becoming an excitement to the people. But there is still a small possibility that the undead can be a reality but its slight to none in this case, that doesn’t mean people don’t have a fear for them after all fear is what makes us view monsters as scary and something bigger than us, the effects of fear are strong and the way we view things is the way we view our own personal reality, therefore we the people create the monsters from within our fears.  

Works Cited

Zachary Crockett, “How the Zombie Represents America’s deepest fears”. Vox.com. Oct 31, 2016. 

Kimberly Hickok, “Reasons we have an undying interest in the undead”. Live science.com. August 17 2018. 

Frank T. McAndrew, “Why we fear the zombie apocalypse”. Why do zombies occupy such a special niche in the universe of horror. Psychology today.com. Oct 11, 2018 

Abraham Elizondo

Professor Ramos

English 102

12 December 2019

Demonized Haiti

The Zombie, one of the biggest fears that Americans now and days enjoy to see not only because we know that zombies aren’t a real life monster but there is movies like zombieland and games like “Left 4 Dead”, Black ops Zombies and many more that make zombies not as scary as they were back in the 1900’s when it all started. The word zombie actually came from Hatians that called these creatures a “Zombi” and the reason behind all this is because the rural Haitian spiritual belief system, believed that those who would have died from an unnatural cause like murder would stay at their graves. During this time and location Voodoo was the type of cultural thing that was going and they believed that the dead bodies would be revived by a witch doctor who would keep them as a personal slave, granting it no agency. And a little background on a successful slave rebellion and independence from France in 1804, Haiti was actually demonized by the west as a threat to imperialism. Voodoo was also brought into this and when the United States took over Haiti in 1915, they tried to fix this problem with catholic missionaries to get rid of all the curses and beliefs. Now this ties down to an American man by the name of William Seabrook which was one of the first to be made aware of the zombi. He was taken to a American Sugar company, and that is where he was introduced to the “zombies”.

Now I know you’re probably thinking, how is there zombies at a warehouse when it should be employees working. Well it very much was employees working, but as a matter of fact they were working like slaves and not getting any hours of rest, no breaks and no benefits, nothing but hard labor. Seabrook actually explains by saying “ The supposed zombies continued dumbly at work. They were plodding like brutes, like automatons. The eyes were the worst … They were in truth like the eyes of a dead man, not blind but staring, unfocused, and unseeing.” Personally this is scary to me not by the way he describes the people but just the fact that a company can treat people this way and not even care how they are changing physically, they literally were killing these people slowly. But apparently Seabrook was ignorant to this horrific act and even wrote a book by the name of The Magic Island and exposed zombies to America. The Seabrook story is how it all started but as time started to change the zombie stories started to change as well and people started to add their own modifications to make them either more terrifying or just making it more realistic to make it more of a fear for those who watch. Personally I don’t really find zombies scary but most people actually have a phobia called Kinemortophobia and is very common, honestly I’m not sure why that is but my guess is that they think that the undead comes back to life at a certain point or the people that know the background behind the voodoo and all that other nonsense actually believe and they get scared of it. I’m not saying it’s not a real thing but it’s hard to believe when their are films, games, and movies on zombies, and it’s almost like a joke now and days and we are even killing them in the games, movies and everything else. So my point is why be scared of such a thing even in movies the humans end up conquering the undead. One film that was really eye catching to me was the “World War Z”, now that one was actually more realistic and the storyline made much more sense because Gerry Lane as Brad Pitt which was a former United Nations investigator who must travel the world to find a way to stop a zombie pandemic. And has he goes on a quest to find a way to stop it, he finds a cure but the cure doesn’t kill the zombies it simply just makes the normal human being invisible to the zombies, I’m not too sure on why they choose that conclusion but it was far more interesting than the other zombie movies that had been coming out. Also this film was one of the most realistic films in 2013 and still till this day it seems like it can be a reality because the zombie crisis started because of a disease and not just out of nowhere like the rest of the films it had a meaning and went more into depth with it, not just focusing on killing them but finding a cure to stop them was much bigger than the rest. Mostly now in the modern days we live in, zombies are more thrilling rather than terrifying because the walking dead doesn’t exist, and everyone knows this, according to David Rudd, from the University of Memphis said that because they know the risk of something like a zombie attack is marginal, they experience excitement instead of fear, and I understand that because before it was a fear for many people and now they enjoy it and pay to watch gruesome bloody dead bodies chase and eat others but maybe it’s not that, that they enjoy maybe its because humans are naturally good at empathy, “empathy is restored when people discover things they share, and sometimes that’s pain and suffering”. So that means that some people might enjoy these films because they like to see the pain the blood the death of others? So really we are the monsters or are the zombies the monsters.. Joke it’s still the brain eating zombies that are. But why do we view them as monsters, well one reason being because they are different and not human and that’s not what we are used to seeing everyday, we are used to seeing familiar faces and what not but this also ties down to the monster theories. So one of the theories that can be applied to the zombies is thesis one, The monster’s body is a cultural body because like vampires they can live forever and so can zombies because they really don’t eat much but that’s not the only it’s because being a zombie they don’t know who they are or what it is, it just know how to kill and eat it is only the pure body. Another theory that really ties down to the zombies is thesis six, Fear of the monster is really a kind of desire because zombies are always in huge groups and they don’t eat each other they just attract each other and pretty in a way work together to eat also they show lots of aggression and are very violet because all they know is kill but to them it’s eating. And the last theory that I believe ties down to zombies being monsters is theory four, The monster dwells at the gates of  difference this one is the most obvious because they aren’t human and look so much different than humans but they are still in the flesh. 

In conclusion, Zombies have come a long way from being one of the scariest creatures to becoming an excitement to the people. But there is still a small possibility that the undead can be a reality but its slight to none in this case, that doesn’t mean people don’t have a fear for them after all fear is what makes us view monsters as scary and something bigger than us, the effects of fear are strong and the way we view things is the way we view our own personal reality, therefore we the people create the monsters from within our fears.  

Works Cited

Zachary Crockett, “How the Zombie Represents America’s deepest fears”. Vox.com. Oct 31, 2016. 

Kimberly Hickok, “Reasons we have an undying interest in the undead”. Live science.com. August 17 2018. 

Frank T. McAndrew, “Why we fear the zombie apocalypse”. Why do zombies occupy such a special niche in the universe of horror. Psychology today.com. Oct 11, 2018