The movie White Zombie took place in 1932 Haiti. Within a few minutes of the movie, we see a funeral and zombies. The zombies are surprisingly both white and black. These zombies work for a white man, Murder Legendre, who is just as scary as the zombies. Zombies are one of the mythical creatures Haiti culture believes in. In the book, The Magical Land, by W.B Seabrook, it talks about Haiti’s superstitious believes. It explains that zombies were made to be a “servant or a slave, occasionally for the commission of some crime… (page 93).” Murder Legendre uses his zombies for these exact purposes. He commands them to work in his mills and to help him turn a young lady into a zombie.
Zombies were made was for the sole purpose of serving a master, which links to the memory of slavery. Slaves were forced to do harsh labor and meaningless tasks for their masters. Lengendre disturbs the dead for his own selfish needs. Back then, slaveowners would take dead slaves and display them in front of other slaves in order to show dominance and authority. Slaveowners believed that by using the dead, current slaves would fear them, therefore making slaveowners have more power and making current slaves more afraid to rebel. The concept of zombies working for a master reflects on the mistreatment of dead slaves. In The Magic Land, it uses the phrase “poor unhappy zombies” (Seabrook, 96) , more than once to describe the living dead. This phrase humanizes the zombies to show that even after death, they are still being mistreated and forced to work against their wills. This is similar to how slaves were treated in general.
Zombies were creatures used as a metaphor to show the mistreatment of slaves. It shows how slavery was unavoidable in the past. Slaves were forced to work under a master whether they were alive or dead.
I believe that Legendre does use these zombies for his own selfish needs. It was great that you mentioned about how slaveowners would display dead corpse of their slaves among their living slaves because it showed dominance. Slavery was unavoidable to both sides, blacks and whites, because the white owners wanted free labor back and the blacks didn’t want to go back to the abusive past. I agree with the fact that many slaves owners didn’t care too much of how unaware these people (zombies) working on their property were. As long as they got the job done and made them a lot of cash they never complained. Then of course until people realized how non human these slaves acted. These owners supposedly got arrested and put into jail but with how much money they had I imagined they’d just bail themselves out since slavery never really was finished and whites still had more power over blacks.