The Legend of Legendre
Haitian belief and Christianity in White Zombie (1932)
About the Film
White Zombie (1932), directed by Victor Halperin, is the first feature length ‘zombie film,’ a subgenre of horror. In it, a young white woman named Madeline is transformed into a zombie (at the reluctant request of Beaumont) on her wedding day via the dark voodoo magic of Murder Legendre, a witch doctor. Legendre utilises ritualistic elements, including wax carvings and specific hand positions in order to turn people into “zombies” — mindless beings totally subject to the whims of their master. This film is an example of religion portrayed in American 1930s popular culture cinema, and specifically it offers a representation of a non-dominant, non-Christian religion, one distinctly othered and orientalised by Halperin.
Representation
Religious representation in White Zombie is twofold; the film simultaneously depicts Haitian and Christian religious beliefs. First, we must consider the former. Haitian voodoo practices are brandished by White Zombie as heretical and dangerous rituals, a threat to the wellbeing of ‘good’ white American Christians. In this way, the film conforms to tropes of Orientalism by negatively exoticizing Haitian culture. The Haitian practitioner of voodoo is played by Hungarian-American actor Bela Lugosi, and the presence of Lugosi in the film also plays into American cultural anxieties. According to Gary D. Rhodes in White Zombie: Anatomy of a Horror Film, Europeans were subject to hatred in the 1920s U.S. society for their perceived fault in the Great Depression (among other negative cultural events). Casting Lugosi as the villainous Legendre then has a dual purpose — he is at once the feared Haitian and the feared European, a composite of American anxiety.
As Kyle Bishop argues in “The Sub-Subaltern Monster: Imperialist Hegemony and the Cinematic Voodoo Zombie,” the film exemplifies colonial stereotypes, presenting the master narrative of Western cultural dominance as ideal. Legendre is represented through colonial stereotypes heightened by his connection to Haitian religious practices as an inherently evil other who reverses traditional roles and extends power over his colonizers, an implicit threat to Americans, and especially to American women. The complete loss of autonomy characterized by Legendre’s zombie slaves clearly taps into anxieties regarding slave ownership, especially concerning a loss of white colonial dominion — the word zombie may be interchangeable with slave in the context of the film, so the title references a ‘white slave,’ which would have been a deeply distressing prospect for white American viewers. Seventeen years prior to White Zombie, the U.S. began an occupation of Haiti, and by the early 1930s, inquests into the end of the occupation had begun. White Zombie is therefore rooted in contemporary political fears regarding the loss of U.S. occupation in Haiti and the ‘freeing’ of colonized others.
A second witch doctor, Pierre, is also present in the film, but he is stereotyped as a foil to Legendre, indicating to American audiences that he is ‘one of the good ones’. Pierre is played by a white actor in blackface, and his actor’s portrayal is explicitly racist; Pierre’s actor does a mocking impression of Haitian creole, is portrayed as dimwitted and vaguely comical, and the character’s religious beliefs are dismissed as ridiculous superstition by the two white men hoping to save Madeline.
The representation of Legendre as a Haitian witch doctor takes on even more significance when considering the film from a Christian perspective. As Rhodes determines, Legendre and Dr. Bruner represent different ends of the Christian spectrum; Legendre is a figure of Satan or Mephistopheles, and Dr. Bruner is one of Christ.
The first aspect of Legendre’s character linking him to Mephistopheles is in his appearance — note the pointed eyebrows, widow’s peak, intense eyes, and distinct facial hair of each. Furthermore, Legendre offers a temptation to Beaumont, specifically Madeline, and Beaumont succumbs to this temptation without comprehending that this deal will result in the loss of his agency and life — in this way, Beaumont sells his soul to the devil. Legendre’s home also serves to cement his connection to Mephistopheles, for it is essentially a palace grown from the fruits of forced labour — splendor achieved through sin and the eternal damnation of Legendre’s mindless slaves. It is notable that Legendre’s Haitian religious practices are explicitly associated with Satan, especially considering Christianity’s long history of demonizing heretical belief — the devil’s very trident was appropriated from the pagan Neptune as part of a Christian rejection of paganism.
Dr. Bruner, meanwhile, presents a Christlike foil to Legendre’s Satan. His appearance is of a kindly, elderly, white gentleman, and throughout the film he offers up his knowledge and speaks in parable. As a missionary in Haiti, he represents the colonization inherent to dominant white Christian belief. Dr. Bruner frequently requests light in the form of a match for his pipe, and it is significant that the final line of the film is Dr. Bruner asking, “Excuse me, have you got a match?” Symbolically, light is a core facet of Christian imagery — it is often used metaphorically in the Christian Bible to represent the spreading word of God, the very word that Dr. Bruner, the missionary, is interested in spreading to the Haitians.
“Through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us, To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace” (King James Version, Luke 1:78, 79).
It is only through Dr. Bruner’s actions that Satanic evil is overcome, for he strikes Legendre at a critical moment, rendering Legendre momentarily unconscious (Bruner’s use of physical force is also suggestive of the Christian history of physical, militarily supported conversion). However, it is Beaumont who ultimately pushes Legendre off the cliff to his death, struggling against his own zombification (brought on by temptation) while simultaneously sacrificing his own life as Jesus did, thereby atoning for his sins in a distinctly Christian fashion and overcoming heretical belief.
In terms of gender representation, the only active agents in the film are filled by male roles. The heroine of the film, Madeline, remains entirely passive, subject to the whims of the men surrounding her. The total control of Madeline by Legendre plays into American fears of a racial other gaining sexual control over a white woman. In one advertisement, the Halperin brothers play to this fear by depicting a semi-naked woman in a trance-like state with a subtitle suggesting that she is “Performing his every desire”. While the sexual consummation of the zombified Madeline and Legendre is never depicted explicitly, there is a definite suggestion of sexual control — in one scene Madeline is pictured laying on a bed in Legendre’s castle.
At Madeline’s moment of death, the lighting becomes dim. At her moment of awakening, the lighting becomes brighter. The darkness indicates her succumbing to a ‘dark’ religious force (i.e. a non-Christian religion), and to the control of a racialized other, while her return signals a return to the light of Christianity and white society.
“Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee” (King James Version, Isaiah 60:1)
Identity
Victor Halperin, the director, and his brother Edward Halperin, the producer, were born in Chicago in 1895 and 1898 respectively. Not much is known today about the life of Victor, and even his death passed in relative obscurity — according to Rhodes, he received no published obituary. The screenwriter, Garnett Weston was born in Toronto, and as an aside, attended the Toronto University (Rhodes). Regardless, none of them had any known Haitian ancestry, nor were any of them people of colour, which, when coupled with the content of the film, indicates an identity composed of dominant ideological structures.
Production
Created independently by Victor and Edward Halperin, White Zombie is an American product created explicitly to appeal to an American audience circa the early 1930s. The Halperin brothers later received additional funding sourced by Phil Goldstone. Although no concrete sum has been pinned down, the budget has been speculated to be between $50 000 and $62 500. The film was shot in a rented lot of Universal Studios and was filmed in its entirety in just eleven days (Rhodes).
Consumption
The film opened for an American audience and sold for the price of cinema admission as any other film released in the 1930s would have been. During the first weekend in Cleveland, mid-August 1932, the amount of people who saw the film at the Loew’s Stillman Theatre reached record-breaking volume — with 16 728 people in attendance (Rhodes). The critical reception of the film was quite diverse, and it was either panned or praised by many critics.
In Jennifer Fay’s article, “Dead Subjectivity: White Zombie, Black Baghdad,” she argues that the meaning of White Zombie as internalized by the audience is an erasure of Haitian voodoo practices, and even of Haiti itself. When Madeline awakens from her mindless zombie state, she cannot remember any of the film’s events, simply saying “I dreamed”. The meaning received is that the events relating to Haitian culture can be dismissed and forgotten as easily as a dream, or as simply as turning off a movie. In this way, the film acts an appropriation of Haitian culture to be commodified and marketed to an American audience for the sake of entertainment.
Regulation
The film is only vaguely subversive for a film released in the 1930s, because a racial other exerts complete control over a white woman (hence the title White Zombie), which would have been upsetting to American audiences of the era. However, this plot results in a strengthening of dominant American cultural values, and the inevitable return of the white woman to her white husband. Additionally, one scene in the film would have been considered slightly scandalous, or at least sexually adventurous for the time — prior to the wedding and while getting dressed, Madeline is depicted in her undergarments.
The early cut of White Zombie premiered in New York City, June 16, 1932, and the opening night of the film was July 29, 1932. During this time, the Halperin brothers experienced great difficulty in acquiring a distribution contract. At first, they negotiated terms with Educational Pictures, which was then refused by Phil Goldstone. Eventually the Haplerins signed a contract with United Artists for the distribution rights (Rhodes).
As with many films of the 1930s, showings of White Zombie were subject to various censorships depending on the theatre it was screened at. Additionally, the advertisements deployed were varied as well, with some theatres proclaiming the film a “horror” film, and others, a “love story,” and so the meanings internalized by viewers varied based on their expectations (Rhodes).
Interestingly, White Zombie was approved by the Nazi party, making it one of the only American horror films to have achieved such a status (Rhodes). This speaks to its racially charged themes, and perhaps its inherent white supremacist tone.
The Birth of a Genre
The secular zombies featured in contemporary films have developed based on this early depiction of zombies — the zombie is a phenomenon risen through previously existing Haitian voodoo practices. The zombie subgenre remains culturally relevant within American popular film, and White Zombie was an essential step in the development of the secular zombie media that would flourish in the late 1970s and 1980s and continue to dominate contemporary popular culture even now. Therefore, the film, quite accidentally, cemented Haitian religious practices as an integral part of Western popular culture.
The horror genre has historically been used to articulate the cultural anxieties of a society at a given point in time, and by examining artifacts of popular culture like White Zombie, we are able to observe those fears in action. While the zombies of 1932 suggest a fear of other, non-dominant religions, namely Haitian voodoo, the contemporary zombies of today more closely align with fears of terrorists, pandemics, and immigration. Zombies are unique creatures in the sense that they are neither fully dead nor fully alive, and so they allow us to explore fears related to a total loss of self and identity. Contemporary zombies are often portrayed as infectious, and their cultural relevance will continue to spread — and this is the legend of Legendre.
Works Cited
Bishop, Kyle. “The Sub-Subaltern Monster: Imperialist Hegemony and the Cinematic Voodoo Zombie.” The Journal of American Culture, vol. 31, no. 2, June 2008, pp. 141–152.
Fay, Jennifer. “Dead Subjectivity: White Zombie, Black Baghdad.” CR: The New Centennial Review, vol. 8, no. 1, 2008, pp. 81–101.
Halperin, Victor, director. White Zombie. United Artists, 1932.
“Isaiah Chapter 60.” The Holy Bible: King James Version, https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Isaiah-Chapter-60/.
“Luke Chapter 1.” The Holy Bible: King James Version,
https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Luke-Chapter-1/.
Rhodes, Gary D. White Zombie: Anatomy of a Horror Film. McFarland & Company, Inc., 2001.
