色吧亚洲

In a recently published article, CU 色吧亚洲 researcher Kieran Murphy traces the concurrent paths and points of intersection between pirate and zombie lore in Haiti and popular culture

High in the rugged mountains above Saint-Marc, Haiti, is a cave that even today, some don鈥檛 dare visit. It is a legendary, almost mythical place听called Trou Forban (Pirate Cave).

it is an enchanted cave filled with coffee and sugar plantations worked by crews of the undead and ruled by the Man of Trou Forban. 鈥淲hen the master of Trou Forban walks,鈥� author Zora Neale Hurston wrote, 鈥渢he whole Earth trembles.鈥�

Notorious 20^th-century Haitian dictator Fran莽ois 鈥淧apa Doc鈥� Duvalier听is whispered to have visited Trou Forban and participated in a black magic rite that invited evil spirits to live in his presidential palace.

Despite its spooky reputation, Trou Forban and its surroundings have for centuries been a literal and spiritual meeting place for clandestine communities like buccaneers and Africans who escaped slavery, who came to be known as 鈥渕aroons.鈥� Interactions between these clandestine communities鈥攕ometimes amicable, sometimes not鈥攇ave rise to听pirate and zombie myths whose similarities and concurrent paths might surprise modern audiences.

In a tracing the origins and trajectories of interconnected pirate and zombie lore, Kieran Murphy, a University of Colorado 色吧亚洲 associate professor of who teaches a class called 鈥淭he Zombie and the Ghost of Slavery鈥� (FREN 1880), highlights how ritual piracies by both Black and White clandestine people 鈥渓eft traces of mutual recognition, traces which shed light on lesser known influences that played a role in fomenting insurrection and anti-colonial sentiment in the events leading up to the Haitian Revolution.鈥�

鈥淭he zombie is a Haitian invention that represents the nightmare of these formerly enslaved people, these maroons,鈥� Murphy says. 鈥淢eaning, they fought for their freedom, but they have this vision of a monster that comes back from the dead to be a slave again on plantations.

鈥淵ou can see why this horrific figure would emerge in Haiti for people who were finally free and trying to make a life outside the plantation system. This fear that, after death, they would come back and be forced to work the plantations again reflects the social death that was imposed on enslaved people, that they fought against, when, after defeating Napoleon鈥檚 army, they declared the abolition of slavery.鈥�

Connecting pirates and zombies

Before an invitation to a conference themed 鈥淧irates and Zombies鈥� at the International Research Center for Cultural Studies (IFK) in Vienna, Murphy viewed the two entities separately. He鈥檇 written articles and taught classes on horror films and zombies since graduate school, but it wasn鈥檛 until this conference that he thought, 鈥淗mmm, how am I going to connect these two things?鈥� he says.

He turned to colonial records, but it wasn鈥檛 until he came across a photograph by Phyllis Galembo that something clicked. In the photograph, a Vodou devotee is posing as Bawon Lakwa (Baron La Croix), one of a group of Vodou deities who rule over the dead and are collectively called Gu茅d茅 (Vodou is an Afro-Caribbean spirituality that has little in common with the portrayal of 鈥淰oodoo鈥� in Western media). The man is wearing a black top hat adorned with both the skull and crossbones of a Jolly Roger flag and the word 鈥渮onbi,鈥� the Creole spelling of 鈥渮ombie.鈥�

鈥淚n many ways, buccaneers were themselves clandestine, unauthorized communities,鈥� Murphy says. 鈥淩eading old colonial reports, I saw interactions between maroons and pirates, which makes sense because both communities were living on the margins of European empires in the Caribbean.

鈥淭hey were sometimes trading partners, and there was sometimes violence between them, but they both originated outside the plantation system of the colonies. In many pirate communities, it didn鈥檛 matter if you were White, Black, Indigenous, they were clandestine people united outside the colonial European framework.鈥�

Rebels and outcasts

Because of scant historical record, it鈥檚 difficult to find the precise moment when pirate and maroon communities began intersecting, Murphy says. However, once he saw the Jolly Roger and 鈥渮onbi鈥� on the same hat, it provided a clue that cultural exchanges and appropriations had happened among these communities.

For example, pirates and Gu茅d茅 deities have been known for their Dionysian attitudes and for mixing eroticism and death into their symbols (in 18^th century slang, the word 鈥渞oger鈥� meant 鈥減enis鈥� and 鈥渢o copulate.鈥�)

Further, there are historical records of Vodou rituals that involve drinking rum laced with gunpowder, which was also a tradition among mutineers and pirates, Murphy says. Maroon and pirate communities shared a certain rebelliousness and outcast nature.

Maroons played a central role in fomenting slave revolt in the colony, including the world-changing events now known as the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804). When they declared their independence, Haitians abolished slavery in their constitution long before France, England and the U.S. did. However, France agreed to recognize Haiti as an independent country only after Haitian leaders signed an indemnity agreement to repay France 150 million francs as restitution for lost property鈥攊ncluding lost human property.

As Haitians struggled under the almost unbearable weight of this financial burden and leaders made moves to reinstate a form of the plantation system, some maroons remained in hiding and the zombie as an embodiment of a nightmarish future grew stronger.

By the 20^th century, however, popular culture had absconded with the zombie, turning it into a symbol of Western anxieties, Murphy says. A similar cultural appropriation happened with pirates. Yet, the framework and archetypes鈥攁nd the commonalities between them鈥攈ave continued to inform their portrayals in mass media.

Murphy cites 鈥淭he Walking Dead鈥� as an example of the pirate-zombie-colonialist structure, with the protagonists sometimes claiming allegiance to imperialist groups like 鈥淭he Saviors鈥� while behaving like a clandestine pirate group and fighting flesh-eating zombies. In the TV show, zombies embody early European paranoid fantasies linking Indigenous peoples with cannibalism, Murphy says.

鈥淭hrough a story involving zombie, pirate and imperialist characters, 鈥楾he Walking Dead鈥� reenacts colonial history while relying on the trope of the undead to suggest that the present remains haunted by the violence and tragedies of the past,鈥� Murphy writes. From this perspective, 鈥淭he Walking Dead鈥� is just a reinterpretation of the Haitian legend of Trou Forban.

Top image: (left) "Three Zombies" (1956) by Haitian artist Wilson Bigaud; romanticized pirate image (iStock)

Did you enjoy this article?听听Passionate about French and Italian?听

听