Zombie
A zombie is a mythological undead corporeal revenant created through the reanimation of a corpse. In modern popular culture, zombies appear in horror genre works. The term comes from Haitian folklore, in which a zombie is a dead body reanimated through various methods, most commonly magical practices in religions like Vodou. Modern media depictions of the reanimation of the dead often do not involve magic but rather science fictional methods such as fungi, radiation, gases, diseases, plants, bacteria, viruses, etc.
The English word zombie was first recorded in the 18th century; dictionaries trace its origins to Bantu languages, such as Kimbundu nzumbi. One of the first books to expose Western culture to the concept of the voodoo zombie was W. B. Seabrook's The Magic Island, the account of a narrator who encounters voodoo cults in Haiti and their resurrected thralls.
A new version of the zombie, distinct from that described in Haitian folklore, emerged in popular culture during the latter half of the 20th century. This interpretation of the zombie, as an undead person that attacks and eats the flesh of living people, is drawn largely from George A. Romero's film Night of the Living Dead, which was partly inspired by Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend. The word zombie is not used in Night of the Living Dead, but was applied later by fans. Following the release of such zombie films as Dawn of the Dead and The Return of the Living Dead —the latter of which introduced the concept of zombies that eat brains—as well as Michael Jackson's music video Thriller, the genre waned for some years.
The mid-1990s saw the introduction of Resident Evil and The House of the Dead, two break-out successes of video games featuring zombie enemies which would later go on to become highly influential and well-known. These games were initially followed by a wave of low-budget Asian zombie films such as the zombie comedy Bio Zombie and action film Versus, and then a new wave of popular Western zombie films in the early 2000s, the Resident Evil and House of the Dead films, the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake, and the British zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead. The "zombie apocalypse" concept, in which the civilized world is brought low by a global zombie infestation, has since become a staple of modern zombie media, seen in such media as The Walking Dead franchise.
The late 2000s and 2010s saw the humanization and romanticization of the zombie archetype, with the zombies increasingly portrayed as friends and love interests for humans. Notable examples of the latter include movies Warm Bodies and Zombies, novels American Gods by Neil Gaiman, Generation Dead by Daniel Waters, and Bone Song by John Meaney, animated movie Corpse Bride, TV series iZombie and Santa Clarita Diet, manga series Sankarea: Undying Love, and the light novel Is This a Zombie? In this context, zombies are often seen as stand-ins for discriminated groups struggling for equality, and the human–zombie romantic relationship is interpreted as a metaphor for sexual liberation and taboo breaking.
Etymology
In Haitian folklore, a zombie is an animated corpse raised by magical means, such as witchcraft.The Oxford English Dictionary derives the word from French and a French Creole language, in turn ultimately from Kimbundu nzumbi. The dictionary also names the word nzambi, and terms in the related Kongo language, as potential influences.
How the creatures in contemporary zombie films came to be called "zombies" is not fully clear. The film Night of the Living Dead made no spoken reference to its undead antagonists as "zombies", describing them instead as "ghouls". Although George A. Romero used the term "ghoul" in his original scripts, in later interviews he used the term "zombie". The word "zombie" is used exclusively by Romero in his script for his sequel Dawn of the Dead, including once in dialog. According to Romero, film critics were influential in associating the term "zombie" to his creatures, and especially the French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma. He eventually accepted this linkage, even though he remained convinced at the time that "zombies" corresponded to the undead slaves of Haitian voodoo as depicted in White Zombie with Bela Lugosi.
Folk beliefs
Haiti
Zombies are featured widely in Haitian rural folklore as dead persons physically revived by the act of necromancy of a bokor, a sorcerer or witch. The bokor is opposed by the houngan and the mambo of the formal voodoo religion. A zombie remains under the control of the bokor as a personal slave, having no will of its own.The Haitian tradition also includes an incorporeal type of zombie, the "zombie astral", which is a part of the human soul. A bokor can capture a zombie astral to enhance his spiritual power. A zombie astral can also be sealed inside a specially decorated bottle by a bokor and sold to a client to bring luck, healing, or business success. It is believed that God eventually will reclaim the zombie's soul, so the zombie is a temporary spiritual entity.
The two types of zombie reflect soul dualism, a belief of Bakongo religion and Haitian voodoo. Each type of legendary zombie is therefore missing one half of its soul.
The zombie belief has its roots in traditions brought to Haiti by enslaved Africans and their subsequent experiences in the New World. It was thought that the voodoo deity Baron Samedi would gather them from their grave to bring them to a heavenly afterlife in Africa, unless they had offended him in some way, in which case they would be forever a slave after death, as a zombie. A zombie could also be saved by feeding them salt. English professor Amy Wilentz has written that the modern concept of zombies was strongly influenced by Haitian slavery. Slave drivers on the plantations, who were usually slaves themselves and sometimes voodoo priests, used the fear of zombification to discourage slaves from committing suicide.
While most scholars have associated the Haitian zombie with African cultures, a connection has also been suggested to the island's indigenous Taíno people, partly based on an early account of native shamanist practices written by, a monk of the Hieronymite religious order and companion of Christopher Columbus.
The Haitian zombie phenomenon first attracted widespread international attention during the United States occupation of Haiti, when a number of case histories of purported "zombies" began to emerge. The first popular book covering the topic was William Seabrook's The Magic Island, which includes a purported account of zombies working on a plantation of the Haitian American Sugar Company. Seabrooke cited Article 246 of the Haitian criminal code related to poisoning, which was passed in 1864, asserting that it was an official recognition of zombies. This passage was later used in promotional materials for the 1932 film White Zombie.
In 1937, while researching folklore in Haiti, Zora Neale Hurston encountered the case of a woman who appeared in a village. A family claimed that she was Felicia Felix-Mentor, a relative, who had died and been buried in 1907 at the age of 29. The woman was examined by a doctor; X-rays indicated that she did not have a leg fracture that Felix-Mentor was known to have had. Hurston pursued rumors that affected persons were given a powerful psychoactive drug, but she was unable to locate individuals willing to offer much information. She wrote: "What is more, if science ever gets to the bottom of Vodou in Haiti and Africa, it will be found that some important medical secrets, still unknown to medical science, give it its power, rather than gestures of ceremony."
Kongo
A Central African origin for the Haitian zombie has been postulated based on two etymologies in the Kongo language, nzambi and zumbi. This root helps form the names of several deities, including the Kongo creator deity Nzambi Ampungu and the Louisiana serpent deity Li Grand Zombi, but it is in fact a generic word for a divine spirit. The common African conception of beings under these names is more similar to the incorporeal "zombie astral", a variant of the Kongo Nkisi spirits.A related, but also often incorporeal, undead being is the jumbee of the English-speaking Caribbean, considered to be of the same etymology; in the French West Indies also, local "zombies" are recognized, but these are of a more general spirit nature.
South Africa
The idea of physical zombie-like creatures is present in some South African cultures, where they are called xidachane in Sotho/Tsonga and maduxwane in Venda. In some communities, it is believed that a dead person can be zombified by a small child. It is said that the spell can be broken by a powerful enough sangoma. It is also believed in some areas of South Africa that witches can zombify a person by killing and possessing the victim's body to force it into slave labor. After rail lines were built to transport migrant workers, stories emerged about "witch trains". These trains appeared ordinary, but were staffed by zombified workers controlled by a witch. The trains would abduct a person boarding at night, and the person would then either be zombified or beaten and thrown from the train a distance away from the original location.Origin hypotheses
Chemical
Several decades after Hurston's work, Wade Davis, a Harvard ethnobotanist, presented a pharmacological case for zombies in a 1983 article in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology, and later in two popular books: The Serpent and the Rainbow and Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie.Davis traveled to Haiti in 1982 and, as a result of his investigations, claimed that a living person can be turned into a zombie by two special powders being introduced into the bloodstream. The first, , includes tetrodotoxin, a powerful and frequently fatal neurotoxin found in the flesh of the pufferfish. The second powder consists of deliriant drugs such as datura. Together these powders were said to induce a deathlike state, in which the will of the victim would be entirely subjected to that of the bokor. Davis also popularized the story of Clairvius Narcisse, who was claimed to have succumbed to this practice. The most ethically questioned and least scientifically explored ingredient of the powders is part of a recently buried child's brain.
The process described by Davis was an initial state of deathlike suspended animation, followed by re-awakening – typically after being buried – into a psychotic state. The psychosis induced by the drug and psychological trauma was hypothesised by Davis to reinforce culturally learned beliefs and to cause the individual to reconstruct their identity as that of a zombie, since they "knew" that they were dead and had no other role to play in the Haitian society. Societal reinforcement of the belief was hypothesized by Davis to confirm for the zombie individual the zombie state, and such individuals were known to hang around in graveyards, exhibiting attitudes of low affect.
Davis's claim has been criticized, particularly the suggestion that Haitian witch doctors can keep "zombies" in a state of pharmacologically induced trance for many years. Symptoms of TTX poisoning range from numbness and nausea to paralysis – particularly of the muscles of the diaphragm – unconsciousness, and death, but do not include a stiffened gait or a deathlike trance. According to psychologist Terence Hines, Davis assessment of the nature of the reports of Haitian zombies is 'overly credulous'.