have the zombie movies you've binged lately hit too close to home when we think of the living dead we often think of a zombie apocalypse usually as a result of a disastrous global pandemic survival may speak to the human condition but largely today zombie films shows in literature are made for entertainment value which could not be further from the true agony out of which the creature was born storytellers in the u.s have been fascinated by the idea of zombies for over a century but due to appropriation and whitewashing of their lore the origin and to a degree the existential importance of the zombie was lost tales of the first zombie appeared in haiti in the 17th and 18th centuries emerging from the traditions experiences and desperations of african peoples who were stolen and enslaved to work on the island sugar plantations historians believe the word zombie is derived from west african languages which makes sense as this is the region where a majority of the enslaved people were captured in gabon the mitsog language has the word nizumbi meaning corpse and in the congo language the word zombie means spirit of a dead person researchers have also found zombie-like creatures and folklore from various cultures in west and south africa which could theoretically predate or have influenced the haitian incarnation prior to its independence haiti was known as sandomanya and was ruled by french imperialists through colonization and slave labor countries like england and france raised huge amounts of resources and profits that ensured their place as world powers africans took their culture and religions with them as they were brought in chains across the atlantic ocean but colonizers often tried to suppress enslaved people from having any connection to their heritage french rule in san domenia was known to be especially violent and brutal with many harsh punishments laid out in the code noir black code in 1724 many of the rules were based on edicts made in 1685 limiting religious freedoms for enslaved people and french colonies and by french law enslaved people were required to convert to catholicism ultimately the code war consisted of 60 articles meant to maintain order and govern haitian plantations but in practice the code was not well enforced and there were few regulations to protect enslaved people from inhumane punishment the treatment of enslaved individuals in sandomania was so cruel that about half of the enslaved people brought to the island were worked to death in a few years which cyclically led to the demand for more enslaved people what we think of as the modern zombie archetype was actually born out of enslaved people's savage and sadistic subjugation as well as their cultural beliefs about both death and magic while the enslaved people on the island came from many different religions cultures and regions in north and west africa over time they developed their own culture included in these beliefs was the notion that eventually death would release the enslaved people back to langhini guinea or africa a sort of afterlife where they would finally be free however if a person died by suicide they would not be able to return to langhini which was problematic because conditions were so unbearable it was common for enslaved people to take their own life rather than continue to suffer in bondage the enslaved individuals who died by their own hand were forced to haunt the island for eternity now as an undead being trapped in their body without a soul because of this in haitian culture zombies are regarded as pitiable victims rather than as evil creatures professor amy wilants of the university of california irvine describes the conundrum saying suicide was the slave's only way to take control over his or her own body and yet the fear of becoming a zombie might stop them from doing so this final rest in green leafy heavenly africa with no sugarcane to cut and no master to appease or serve is unavailable to the zombie to become a zombie was the slave's worst nightmare to be dead and still a slave an eternal field hand they couldn't escape bondage even as zombies in 1804 the haitian revolution brought about huge changes for black residents of the island colonial rulers were gone but hundreds of years of their influence left a mark for example the island's dominant religion was a synthesis of various african traditions as well as catholic influences from their french captors this religion is famously called voodoo zombie mythology evolved with voodoo ideology by this point haitians began to believe zombies were corpses that had been reanimated by sorcerers known as bokor a term also believed to be of west african origin the bokor were feared more than zombies themselves because they used their reanimated victims as undead minions and free labor to carry out their dark deeds time the explicit connection of zombies and slavery dissolved but it was still at the heart of the lore the bacore were in a way a reflection of the island's collective post-traumatic stress the sorcerer's unchallengeable power to re-enslave victims through necromancy terrified the newly independent nation still fighting tooth and nail to maintain their freedom to this day many haitians are fearful of bacor haiti was the world's first independent black republic their mere existence threatened imperialist powers who set themselves to demonize the nation the u.s regarded haiti with a sort of horrific fascination while the revolutions for independence happened within years of each other hades began with the successfully organized slave rebellion in 1791 a nightmare to u.s plantation owners observing just across the sea on southern shores 80 was seen by the united states as a violent superstitious dangerous and mystical place where they fearfully believed ritual human sacrifices and cannibalism occurred [Music] there are some discrepancies about the earliest reference to zombies in the u.s but some say it first appeared in a scottish short story reprinted in a newspaper in 1838 in the story titled the unknown painter a spanish painter is told by his young african slave that a zombie appeared in his studio at night to work on his paintings it became so popular several different versions were printed in newspapers throughout the us in the 1800s according to history professor and cordis by the mid-1800s the zombie was thought to be a creature of african origin that willingly performs services for whites the u.s occupied haiti in 1915 with the goal of protecting u.s interests internationally and modernizing what they believe to be a primitive island troops attempted to dismantle voodoo but their attempts proved the island's religion had roots that would not be severed instead their lord took root in the american imagination as well by the 1920s an emerging genre of literary fiction was devoted to the undead stories of vengeful rotting corpses hunting and haunting their killers replaced traditional ghost stories some credit the mainstreaming of zombies to william seabrook's travel book the magic island in 1929. seabrook was a relatively infamous writer journalist and occultist he claimed to have escaped his white southern heritage and used his privilege to travel the world he capitalized on his experiences with what white society saw as primitivism and exoticism writing books and articles for his western audience during his time in haiti seabrook claimed to have been initiated at voodoo ceremonies and possessed by their gods in a chapter titled dead men working in cane fields seabrook claimed he came face to face with a zombie at the haitian american sugar corporation plantation he described them saying 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 unseeing but ultimately he found the wretched undead to be innocent writing the creatures were nothing but poor ordinary demented human beings idiots forced to toil in the fields some film historians have said that this chapter was the inspiration for the classic horror film white zombie which premiered in 1932 in the wake of universal studios successful releases of frankenstein and dracula the film centers on a young white couple who are convinced to get married on a haitian plantation because its owner hopes to seduce the young bride giving her a potion to turn her into a zombie the film released just two years before u.s troops finally gave up on the haitian occupation after a series of strikes and uprisings on the island in 1929 forced them to begin planning to relinquish all political and economic control white audiences weren't the only ones captivated by the spirit of haiti at the time in the 1920s and 1930s many black people in america especially writers of the harlem renaissance looked to haiti as a model for black independence many of them protested against u.s occupation one of the other influential pieces of literature about the island around this time was zora neale hurston's haitian ethnography tell my horse released in 1938 hurston trained professionally as an anthropologist and had studied hudu an african-american variation of voodoo practiced around new orleans in haiti hurston trained to be a voodoo priestess and met one of the island's tortured zombies the undead form of felicia felix mentor she even managed to take her picture she said of the experience i had the rare opportunity to see and touch an authentic case i listened to the broken noises in its throat and then i did what no one else has ever done i photographed it she brought back a very sympathetic perspective on the zombie to the u.s arguing that they were a symbol of loss and dispossession for all humans the next major outbreak of zombie fever in the u.s followed the 1968 release of knight of the living dead even though the film never actually uses the word zombie rather director george a romero called his flesh-eating monsters ghouls romero also cast a black actor dwayne jones as his main protagonist at the time audiences drew parallels between his character's fight and the civil rights movement the first but not the last time the zombie genre was used as critical social commentary around this period the plight of the living dead could symbolize any number of political critiques from the hamster wheel of capitalism to the cruelty of the vietnam war to ever-present nuclear fears a decade later in 1978 romero officially used the word zombie in the sequel dawn of the dead some film historians believe this film was the turning point at which american entertainment commercialized the zombie to the point that it was completely separated from its haitian origins from there zombie fever never subsided in addition to various remakes of romero's zombie cult classics a variety of film and television shows have centered on the undead including shawn of the dead 28 days later world war z zombieland life after beth eye zombie and pride and prejudice and zombies one of the most influential examples of zombie entertainment in history is amc's the walking dead which premiered on october 31st 2010 and quickly became the highest rated scripted drama in american television history by the show's sixth season about 20 million viewers tuned in to the season premiere as of this video's release the show just aired its 10th season and is already filming its 11th in 2015 amc released a spin-off series titled fear the walking dead which broke records as the highest rated premiere in u.s cable tv history in 2011 in the wake of the walking dead television takeover the cdc released a blog post titled preparedness 101 zombie apocalypse the post went so viral it crashed the cdc website prompting the cdc to seize the moment and release a campaign about emergency preparedness with the tagline if you're ready for a zombie apocalypse then you're ready for any emergency they saw huge results their twitter went from 12 000 followers to 1.2 million followers then cdc director dr ali khan even contributed to the craze writing if you're generally well equipped to deal with the zombie apocalypse you will be prepared for a hurricane pandemic earthquake or terrorist attack so how prepared should you be for the zombie apocalypse surprisingly there was a case in the 1980s in which a haitian man named clairvius narcisse claimed to have escaped a sugar plantation where he had been forced to work for two years after being given drugs that turned him into a zombie a harvard scientist named wade davis turned to haitian book to investigate narcissa's story the books introduced davis to their zombie powder consisting of a neurotoxin found in puffer fish and when ingested it would put a person in a death-like state the bacores told davis that they then revived their victim with the second poison made from the detoura plant or zombie cucumber which animated their bodies but kept them subservient the scientific community found davis's research to be lacking they noted inconsistencies in the amount of toxins in his powder samples which in themselves did not contain enough toxins to put someone in a zombie-like state regardless davis wrote several books on his findings including the serpent and the rainbow which was made into a film by wes craven even in the case of modern day haitian zombies who are still marked by the island's history with bondage their suffering could not escape being capitalized on as entertainment for american audiences maybe next time we can worry less about zombies consuming us and worry more about what the way we are consuming them says about us you