Zombifying a Nation: Race, Gender and the Haitian Loas on Screen

The figure of the zombie that entered the popular imagination with the publication of William Seabrook’s The Magic Island (1929)—during the American occupation of Haiti—still holds cultural currency around the world. This book calls for a rethinking of zombies in a sociopolitical context through the examination of several films, including White Zombie (1932), The Love Wanga (1935), I Walked with a Zombie (1943) and The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988). A 21st-century film from Haiti, Zombi candidat à la présidence ... ou les amours d’un zombi, is also examined. A reading of Heading South (2005), a film about the female tourist industry in the Caribbean, explores zombification as a consumptive process driven by capitalism.