Latest / Journey to the Fringe / Colonialism’s Other Monster

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Colonialism’s Other Monster · Journey to the Fringe

0:02
The unexplained to the mundane. Join us on our
0:21
journey to the fringe. Hello and welcome to Journey
0:38
to the Fringe. And although this is a Chelsea
0:40
episode, I am fairly confident in saying welcome
0:43
to the spooky season that is October. Is this
0:49
where I start? I just... Trying to interpret
0:53
that yay is me telling you that it's Halloween
0:55
or you agreeing with what I was saying. It's
0:58
all of the above. It's all of those things. It
1:00
can be all. We are your podcast hosts, Taylor
1:03
and Chelsea, and here today doing a Chelsea episode
1:06
to bring us into this fearful and different time
1:11
of the year. Different is so politically correct,
1:16
I think, is the best way that you can say it.
1:19
And I'm so excited to be, I didn't realize I
1:23
was the one bringing us into it this year. I
1:25
don't know about all the other years. That's
1:27
a lot of years that we've been doing this now.
1:29
And my pumpkin lights are lit. And to bring us
1:34
into this Halloween season, I can't believe we
1:38
haven't touched on this topic yet. I actually
1:40
tried to delve into this topic outside of Halloween
1:44
season. And I actually put it aside until a more
1:48
fitting time. And the time is now. It's a topic
1:53
in which the origin story is even more unsettling
1:57
than its transition into a horror movie superstar
2:00
devoid of humanity. Submitted for the approval
2:04
of the Midnight Society, I call this Journey
2:07
to the Fringe episode, The Origin of the Zombie.
2:11
Pending the final edit, of course. Before I get
2:14
into this, I can't stress enough that I'm barely
2:18
scratching the surface on a vast majority of
2:21
the information I will briefly touch on in this
2:25
episode that makes up the origin of the zombie.
2:28
And there is a ton more information than the
2:32
brief mentions I'm making in this episode. So
2:34
if it interests you, I highly recommend going
2:37
further down the rabbit hole. The concept of
2:40
the zombie has deep roots in Central and West
2:45
African spiritual traditions of Vodun. Would
2:48
that be the predecessor to voodoo? It has a very
2:52
similar sound. We'll go through kind of... This
2:56
stuff is so interesting. It took me very much
3:00
by surprise. Even though I had an idea of where
3:03
a zombie comes from, it's so interesting. Just
3:07
the word at this point that traces back to Central
3:11
Africa Bantu languages. So the Kimbundu has the
3:17
Nzumbi, meaning a spirit, ghost, or soul of a
3:21
dead person. I'm doing my best with the pronunciations
3:24
here. The Kigongo has the Nzambi, which is a
3:29
god or supreme deity. And they have the Zumbi,
3:33
a protective talisman or spirit fetish. Chelsea,
3:38
I do just have to ask, and I assume you don't
3:40
have an answer, but I... Don't assume. I've got
3:42
to see if you do. In the past, I've had an answer
3:44
to these, so ask away. Country name, Mozambique.
3:47
Does it have anything to do with that term? No.
3:50
I don't know. Okay. It just sounds similar, so
3:53
I thought there was a chance that it has something
3:54
to do with it. What does it sound similar to
3:57
here for you? The words for the zombie. Mzumbu?
4:02
And you know what? I can't. I do not have this.
4:06
And like I said, I didn't. After this episode,
4:10
you're going to see how much there is to this.
4:13
So I did not look into that. So in these traditions,
4:17
these terms referred to incorporal spirit souls
4:20
or spiritual energies rather than physical reanimated
4:24
corpses. Now, that's the origin of the word zombie.
4:30
Like going way, way, way back to where the word
4:33
would come from. Now we're going back over four
4:36
centuries. This is separate from the word. Just
4:39
a warning. This is some rough, atrocious shit
4:43
that humanity has done. And we're back in part
4:47
to West Africa where the Spanish ripped men,
4:51
women and children from their homes, enslaved
4:54
and shipped them to the island of Hispaniola.
4:57
which is modern -day Haiti. Is it not weird how,
5:00
like, these things come in waves, how it's like
5:02
we were just literally this week the West Saharan
5:05
episode came out. Yeah, which is a few weeks
5:07
away. And now we're talking about, like, what
5:09
Spain did in Africa again. Yeah, yeah. Yeah,
5:14
coincidences are a funny thing. So they're shipping...
5:19
These people that they've stolen into the slave
5:22
trade to Hispaniola as early as 1502. So this
5:26
is shortly after what's -his -face, Christopher
5:29
Columbus. In the 18th century, the French come
5:33
in and start establishing their colonies as well.
5:36
And by 1697, they gain control over the western
5:41
third known as Saint -Domingue, which is now
5:45
Haiti. So over the course of the 18th century,
5:49
France establishes the trade settlements of Les
5:53
Cailles and Port -au -Prince. The demand for
5:56
sugar, cacao, tobacco, spice, and coffee was
5:59
rising in France, so many of the enslaved ended
6:03
up on these plantations where the crops could
6:06
grow in abundance, bolstering France's economy
6:09
and securing its success as a world power. By
6:13
the late 1780s, Saint -Domingue was home to a
6:17
third of the Atlantic slave trade and 90 % of
6:23
the island's population was enslaved, which is
6:26
fucking mind -blowing. This is just some heinous
6:30
shit here. That's in Haiti, right? Yes. Yeah.
6:33
We do know about Haiti. We have covered that
6:35
before. It's going to come up. Oh, okay. The
6:39
enslaved Africans on Saint -Domingue were taken
6:42
from different places in Africa and therefore
6:44
from vastly different cultures. They're being
6:48
stolen from different geographic locations, different
6:51
spiritual backgrounds, and forced together under
6:54
terrifying circumstances. And the enslavers wanted
6:58
to wipe them of that culture and religion so
7:01
as to avoid any uprisings. The enslavers being
7:05
predominantly Catholic and forcing that religion
7:09
on them as well. Oh yeah, that's where Santeria
7:11
comes from. I did not know that. It's a merging
7:14
of voodoo and Christianity. With that too, and
7:17
I didn't know that. I'm surprised it didn't come
7:19
up in all of the things that I was looking into
7:22
with this. It's here that a new religion is born,
7:26
which is voodoo. Not to be confused with voodoo.
7:32
Voodoo? draws on the Bakongo religion and a number
7:37
of other factors. It is essentially a creation
7:40
out of slavery in the area with all of these
7:43
different backgrounds going on, different religions,
7:47
and the fact that they're forcing Catholic religions
7:50
onto them as well. And in Vodou, there is a belief
7:53
that the human body is nearly flesh manipulated
7:57
by two spiritual elements that make up the soul.
8:02
There is the tibonege, able to connect spirits
8:05
called laos, and it controls memory, authority,
8:10
consciousness. Essentially, it's your personality
8:14
and your uniqueness. And then there's the grobonage,
8:19
which controls the motor functions of the body.
8:22
And each of these elements is able to be stolen
8:26
from you. So for practitioners of voodoo, Death
8:31
is a process that takes time. It can take days
8:35
for the soul to move on. And it's in this time
8:38
frame that both parts of the soul are at risk
8:41
of wandering or capture. And in here lies the
8:46
zombie. It's missing half of its soul and therefore
8:51
robbed of its humanity. Now, most practitioners
8:57
would use this knowledge in a positive way. A
9:00
practitioner that uses their practices for malicious
9:03
intent would often be called a bokor. Asterix
9:08
in this, this word can be seen with prejudice.
9:11
So use it with care. And that's when you start
9:14
getting into voodoo and stuff like that. This
9:18
bokor -type evil voodoo priest or priestess,
9:22
they want to trap the soul that houses free will,
9:25
the tibonaj, in a bottle, and whoever possesses
9:29
that bottle controlled the body of the tibonaj.
9:32
So, a zombie was a corpse reanimated by a malevolent
9:38
sorcerer, which is the bokor, through magic,
9:42
poison, or soul theft to work as an unpaid laborer.
9:47
and that Bokor could sell the bottle that possessed
9:52
that person's soul to the highest bidder for,
9:55
you know, various reasons. There are those that
9:58
do believe that these zombies do still exist,
10:02
and they look nothing, obviously, like today's
10:05
zombies, just so you're aware. Vodou zombies
10:08
are shells of humans, mindless workers that have
10:12
no emotions. No ability to feel pain. They're
10:16
not going for brains. No, they look much different.
10:19
No, they're just going to do the things that
10:20
you want them to do, basically. I find that really
10:24
interesting that this developed in a culture
10:26
of slavery, where it's basically that has been
10:30
taken from you. It's a very tough topic, and
10:34
this has been... such a crazy thing to research
10:37
it's actually one of my favorite as hard as it
10:41
is to look at because it's just looking at some
10:43
of the worst of humanity um oh yeah this is all
10:47
happening while slavery is happening it's all
10:49
a result of slavery yeah and we're gonna touch
10:52
on a lot of things that i think you're gonna
10:54
find and really yeah and the weird thing is what
10:56
are zombies but slaves like they are They exactly
10:59
are. So these zombies, they have no ability to
11:03
feel pain. They're completely subservient to
11:06
the whims of their master. They can be brought
11:10
to this form by administering a poison, causing
11:13
them to enter a coma -like state in which they're
11:16
alive but appear dead, exploiting the deep cultural
11:19
fear of being denied a heavenly afternight in
11:23
Guinea. Here, they're presumed dead. Buried and
11:27
then exhumed from the grave and rise as a zombie.
11:31
A zombie is a fate far worse than death. It takes
11:35
root as an allegory for colonialism, imperialism,
11:40
and oppression. The enslavers were in the physical
11:43
world and voodoo was the spiritual world. The
11:47
ultimate terror wasn't being bitten by a zombie
11:50
but becoming one. Dying only to be trapped in
11:54
eternal forced servitude without will or identity.
11:58
Which is what you were forced to suffer in your
12:00
actual life. Exactly. A fate worse than death
12:04
that they take your soul. That is wild. So I
12:10
don't even know. It makes a lot of sense when
12:12
you start to actually realize where this comes
12:14
from. Yeah. It's not something you've thought
12:16
of before. Yeah. Like I knew the idea behind
12:19
the Haitian zombie, but there's so much in it.
12:24
And the story goes on. From 1791 to 1804, there's
12:30
a violent uprising that leads to Haiti's independence
12:33
and slavery is abolished in 1805. And that's
12:37
where Taylor said that we did an episode on it.
12:40
Can't remember which one. It was on violence.
12:43
It was one of the genocide episodes. It was one
12:45
of the genocide episodes, yes. And it was one
12:48
where we were rooting for them. And in the end,
12:50
we were like, hooray, they did it. But they got
12:53
really fucked over by it. Well, it abolished
12:57
slavery in the end. It did, but they had to pay
13:00
for themselves as slaves because technically
13:03
they took property of somebody in France. I can't
13:06
remember the episode, so that is really depressing.
13:10
At least they abolished slavery at this point.
13:13
That episode must have been four or five years
13:17
ago at this point. Yeah, it was a long time.
13:19
We haven't done a genocide episode in a while,
13:21
now that I'm thinking about it. yeah the sad
13:25
thing is they did that and then like it was a
13:28
cup not that long ago like within the last 20
13:30
years they finally paid off the reparations to
13:33
france for the genocide or sorry really property
13:36
rights to themselves wow i really do not remember
13:40
this episode that is sad oh you know what no
13:44
never mind it was 1947 they finally uh paid it
13:47
off there's a 2022 article yeah Okay so then
13:51
voodoo makes its way to the U .S. and from there
13:55
it evolves into voodoo. Keep in mind there's
13:59
a lot of depth here and what I'm talking about
14:03
that I'm simply not able to cover. This is a
14:06
hugely complicated and complex subject. It has
14:11
to do with slavery. It has to do with religion.
14:14
It's just not something that I'm going to cover
14:16
here. I'm strictly keeping it to origins of the
14:19
zombie. So at this time, the zombie is still
14:24
unknown for the most part in America. That is
14:28
until 1915 when American military occupied Haiti.
14:33
Upon their return, they brought stories with
14:36
them that included stories of the living dead,
14:39
including very exaggerated stories of the Haitian
14:44
zombies, an outsider's perspective. And William
14:48
Seabrook first introduces voodoo zombie accounts
14:52
of Haitian zombies to American audience in the
14:55
1920s with his book, The Magic Island. which
15:00
includes a purported account of zombies working
15:02
on a plantation of a Haitian -American sugar
15:05
company. He cited dead men working as expressionless
15:09
with blank eyes like that of a corpse. Seabrook
15:13
cited article 246 of the Haitian criminal code
15:16
related to poisoning which was passed in 1864
15:20
asserting that it was an official recognition
15:23
of zombies. Here is the cited article quote also
15:28
shall be qualified as attempted murder to the
15:31
employment which may be made by any person of
15:34
substances which without causing actual death
15:38
produce a lethargic coma more or less prolonged.
15:41
If after the administering of such substances
15:44
the person has been buried, the act shall be
15:48
considered murder no matter what result follows.
15:51
And Seabrook kind of brings forth this notion
15:55
of voodoo. And he kind of expands on what was
16:00
already there in the idea of the zombie and puts
16:04
forth a more elaborated version. I do want to
16:09
explicitly state that he is a white man interpreting
16:13
this from a white man perspective. Yeah. And
16:17
of course, like fully understanding it because
16:19
he is a cultured European. Exactly. He doesn't
16:21
need to understand other inferior groups. Yeah.
16:26
So from this, Haiti comes to be seen as a place
16:30
for black magic, and we start to see very different
16:34
ideas start to emerge about Haiti and voodoo,
16:39
voodoo, and zombies. There are still people who
16:44
practice voodoo in New Orleans who say they're
16:47
specifically not tied to, and that's where I
16:50
get people saying, use it with caution, or they
16:56
want nothing to do with Haitian voodoo. So it
16:59
kind of brings up a lot of stuff like that as
17:02
well that I'm not apt to speak on. I don't have
17:05
enough knowledge about it, but these interrelations
17:09
exist between these different things. And the
17:15
passage of the Haitian criminal code used in
17:18
The Magic Island was later used in promotional
17:22
materials for the 1932 film White Zombie with
17:26
Bela Lugosi. A lovesick man obtains the object
17:30
of his affections by poisoning her and bringing
17:34
her back to life as a mindless zombie and is
17:37
also the first instance of a white body being
17:40
subjected to zombification. Okay, that is why
17:43
it's called White Zombie. I don't know if it
17:45
is. It might be. It might be because she's a
17:48
bride. I don't know. I have seen it a long time.
17:52
It's a super old movie. This is all so very interesting,
17:57
though, and such a reflection of cultural turmoil
18:01
that is going on at the time. I've never seen
18:05
this with anything else, and it's so interesting.
18:08
White Zombie comes out the same year that Strange
18:11
Tales, a cult magazine, almost like a comic book
18:15
style, comes out publishing the first zombie
18:17
narrative set in the United States. It's called
18:20
House of the Magnolias by August Derlith. and
18:23
it's set on a plantation just outside of new
18:26
orleans he also wrote some stuff with hp lovecraft
18:30
with like cthulhu and stuff like that not only
18:33
does this work demonize people from haiti it
18:37
shows lingering fears in america but by further
18:40
emphasizing the horrors of slavery as well as
18:43
equating black bodies with monstrosity. Basically,
18:46
what happens is a story is a painter is in town
18:49
from Chicago visiting New Orleans and discovers
18:52
an old plantation house. Quote, Upon knocking
18:56
on the door, he is confronted with a black woman
18:59
with a gray cast to her skin and eyes like deep
19:02
black pools, bottomless, inscrutable, and at
19:05
the same time oddly dull. End quote. She remains
19:09
mute despite his questions, staring at him and
19:12
moving. A Creole woman interrupts and states
19:15
that she's the niece of the plantation owner,
19:18
Abby, who she describes as Haitian, who left
19:22
the island some years ago. She grants him permission
19:25
to paint the house, but on the conditions that
19:28
he never bring anyone else to the plantation.
19:31
never tells anyone he's there, and never gives
19:35
Aunt Abby any indication that he's on the property.
19:38
He's forbidden from going anywhere inside the
19:41
house besides the ground floor, but his curiosity
19:43
gets the best of him, and under the cover of
19:46
darkness, he finds black people working in the
19:49
fields in utter silence. He learns from Abby's
19:53
niece that in Haiti, there are many strange beliefs
19:56
like the zombie, a dead man who has been brought
19:59
out of his grave and is made to live again and
20:02
to work. And Abby knows how to create these zombies
20:06
and keeps the zombies in the cellars during the
20:08
day. The niece says if they give them some salt,
20:12
they will know they are dead and will find their
20:14
way back to their graves. So that's why salt
20:18
works against them. I don't, and I didn't have
20:21
enough time to look into that. It never came
20:23
up in all the research. This is the first place
20:26
it comes up, actually. But that's like such a
20:29
common thing is that like salt can stop them.
20:31
It used to be a very common thing. You don't
20:33
see it anymore. When's the last time? I don't
20:36
know how much you're watching zombies. In recent
20:38
movies? No, I don't think it comes up at all.
20:40
I've watched quite a few zombie movies. But like
20:40
in the old stuff, yeah, it was always salt is
20:42
what you do. When I was a kid. And you could
20:44
use it in different ways, but it was always salt
20:47
is the thing. Yeah, even... Kolchak. Kolchak,
20:52
that's how you got a zombie. The zombie boyfriend
20:56
in... What's the one with the three witches?
20:59
Oh, not Bewitched. Hocus Pocus. Hocus Pocus.
21:02
The boyfriend, remember in the grave where you
21:05
put salt around the grave? He had salt sewn in
21:08
his mouth. That's another place. Although it
21:10
didn't seem to work in that one. No. But it was
21:14
like referenced at least. So you used to always
21:16
see salt to do with zombies and now you don't
21:18
see it anymore. So it came, I don't know if this
21:22
is the first mention to be honest. I didn't look
21:24
into that because there's... This is such a deep
21:27
topic. I was trying to fit so much into this
21:30
episode. So they resolve to free these people
21:34
and they feed the zombies some candy with salt
21:36
one by one. And they wail terribly and run off
21:40
into the night. The next day they find the house
21:43
burned to the ground with Aunt Abby inside and
21:45
the newspapers report the discovery of half -open
21:48
graves of purified remains, quote, whose bodies
21:52
had been stolen years ago and a curious detail
21:55
that the graves had been half -dug by bare fingers
21:58
as if dead hands seek the empty coffins below,
22:01
end quote. So there is a clear -cut line where
22:06
white Americans thrust their own anxieties into
22:10
the zombie, which is unsettling in its own right,
22:14
given where the zombie came from. And given the
22:17
time that this is coming about, There are theories
22:21
that suggest that it justifies segregation that
22:24
was happening at the time with all the racial
22:27
play that's being put into this. Keeping black
22:30
people in the position they wanted them to be
22:34
in. These are coming out when segregation is
22:37
still very much a thing in the United States.
22:41
1932? It's playing to this as well. Decades later,
22:47
director George A. Romero used the Haitian zombie
22:51
name with European ghoul and vampire tropes in
22:55
Night of the Living Dead. This is 1968. So this
22:58
is a lot longer. That's still like just after
23:01
segregation. Yep. And there's huge cultural implications
23:05
in this one as well. It creates the modern apocalypse
23:09
style zombie. That was a whole new other zombie
23:12
era coming from George A. Romero. It's so interesting.
23:17
Night of the Living Dead, one of the very first
23:20
modern day zombie movies, features a black lead,
23:24
given the cultural tensions at the time. Yeah,
23:28
makes sense. It had huge implications. And George
23:31
A. Romero said that he was never aware of that,
23:34
that he hired this guy just based strictly on
23:37
his talents. Which is a super weird thing to
23:40
say, doesn't it? And the movie itself has huge
23:45
cultural implications when viewed this way. There's
23:49
no denying it when you're looking at it in the
23:53
grand scheme of things. when you're looking at
23:55
a zombie. And he just kind of denies that it
23:59
was ever intended that way. Yeah, what? I had
24:01
never heard of this thing before. So if you're
24:04
in Night of the Living Dead, it's where they're
24:06
all in the farmhouse, black and white. At the
24:09
end of the movie, spoiler alert from a movie
24:12
in 1968, the rescuers come in at the end of the
24:16
movie. It's a gaggle of white men coming to rescue
24:19
these people in the farmhouse. They come in.
24:22
Everyone else in the farmhouse is dead from these
24:26
zombies and what have you ensues throughout the
24:29
whole movie. The black lead, he's the lone survivor
24:32
in the farmhouse. And from afar, this white gaggle
24:35
of men is coming to rescue him. And they shoot
24:39
the black man dead, assuming he was infected.
24:44
But this has so much larger implications outwardly.
24:49
And like I said, George A. Romero said that any
24:52
implications were totally unintentional as he
24:55
was hired based on the fact that he was the best
24:57
actor. But knowing the cultural shifts at the
25:01
time happening make you look at that scene in
25:05
a totally different light. And honestly, not
25:08
only is it a huge nod to the Haitian zombie,
25:10
but also what's going on at the time. Totally.
25:15
unintentional apparently there's no way he couldn't
25:18
have known like that is just ridiculous it's
25:20
just all these white men coming in this guy survives
25:22
shoots them dead crazy and also it's based entirely
25:25
on his lore like his background too yeah like
25:29
it's just i know there is a whole lot more to
25:33
this i just kind of wanted to touch on it i'm
25:36
not gonna touch a whole lot more on the modern
25:38
zombie much as 1968 zombie is not modern no the
25:42
modern zombie is a lot more media driven than
25:45
actual but it's not there's so much more to this
25:48
that's so i had no idea okay so here's another
25:52
in away from that another important thing we
25:55
need to talk about here comes up in the 1980s
25:58
wade davis i watched a vice video about this
26:01
and not only did the author of these videos speech
26:05
like right i don't know not sit right with me
26:09
but this man was also barefoot and it bothered
26:13
me i could how does that come up in an interview
26:15
why would you sit barefoot with your leg crossed
26:19
in an interview i guess to be fair it came up
26:22
with steven greer way more than it should that
26:24
he was wearing flip -flops in an interview so
26:26
i had to look into it separately from this i'm
26:28
gonna link it up in the show notes have a look
26:32
There's good information in this. I just couldn't
26:34
get past his rate of speech and then the barefootedness.
26:37
He was a Harvard ethnobotanist and he presented
26:42
a pharmacological case for zombies in a 1983
26:46
article in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology and
26:50
later in two popular books, The Serpent and the
26:53
Rainbow and Passage of Darkness, the Ethnobiology
26:57
of the Haitian Zombie. You've heard the notion
27:00
that zombies were poisoned to the brink of death
27:03
and then brought back. I briefly mentioned it,
27:07
but this is the guy who really pushes this idea
27:11
into the forefront. It's not really like a huge
27:15
thing. It's more of like a spiritual thing up
27:19
until this point. It's mentioned here and there,
27:21
but this guy really like does it. And this is
27:25
in the 80s. Davis traveled to Haiti in 1982 and
27:30
as a result of his investigations claimed that
27:33
a living person can be turned into a zombie by
27:36
two special powders being introduced into the
27:39
bloodstream usually through a wound. The first
27:42
French coup de poudre powder strike includes
27:52
tetrodotoxin, sorry I don't speak science either,
27:55
a powerful and frequently fatal neurotoxin found
27:58
in the flesh of pufferfish. The second powder
28:02
consists of deliriant drugs such as detoura.
28:06
Together these powders were said to induce a
28:09
death -like state in which the will of the victim
28:12
would be entirely subjected to that of the becour.
28:15
The process described by Davis was an initial
28:19
state of death -like suspended animation followed
28:22
by reawakening. typically after being buried
28:26
into a psychotic state. The psychosis induced
28:29
by the drug of psychological trauma was hypothesized
28:34
by Davis to reinforce culturally learned beliefs
28:37
and to cause the individual to reconstruct their
28:40
identity as that of a zombie, since they knew
28:43
that they were dead and had no other role to
28:46
play in the Haitian society. Societal reinforcement
28:50
of the belief was hypothesized by Davis to confirm
28:53
for the zombie individual the zombie state, and
28:56
such individuals were known to hang around in
28:59
graveyards exhibiting attitudes of low effect.
29:03
Davis also popularized the story of Clairvius
29:06
Narcissus, who was claimed to have succumbed
29:10
to this practice. In May 1962, Clairvius Narcissus
29:15
checked into the albert schweitzer hospital in
29:18
haiti suffering from fever body aches and respiratory
29:22
issues his condition deteriorated rapidly and
29:26
he was pronounced dead by two american doctors
29:29
his sister angelina identified the body and he
29:32
was buried the next day 18 years later, in 1980,
29:37
Angelina was approached in a marketplace by a
29:39
man who introduced himself by a childhood nickname
29:42
only close friends knew. It was Clairvius. He
29:46
claimed that a bokor had hired men to dig him
29:49
up shortly after burial. He stated he had been
29:52
beaten, tied up, and forced to work as a slave
29:55
on a sugar plantation in a trance -like state
29:57
until the plantation owner died. The regular
30:01
doses of hallucinogens stopped. Narcisse eventually
30:05
regained his sanity and wandered away, though
30:08
he stayed away from his hometown for 16 years
30:11
out of fear of his brother. That's a lot to take
30:14
in. There are skepticisms about Larbius Narcisse,
30:18
obviously. Yeah, I would assume so. He is renownly
30:23
revered as the first provable zombie. I know
30:28
this seems abrupt, but that is my episode. I
30:32
had a lot to cover in this episode and I could
30:35
have covered more. I used a couple of really
30:38
good sources for research on this episode. A
30:40
couple YouTube videos I'm going to link up. One
30:43
was the Vice video I mentioned. The other was
30:45
PBS. I found this topic to be super interesting,
30:49
not just the Haitian zombie part of the research,
30:52
but I didn't expect the cultural aspects surrounding
30:56
zombies and how they evolved culturally. I highly
31:01
recommend checking out these links. There is
31:05
a big part. People study this. People have doctorates
31:09
in this. Like I was saying to you earlier a little
31:13
bit, Taylor, I'm going to link back to when I
31:15
was talking about Night of the Living Dead. You
31:18
can see where it was reflecting back maybe the...
31:22
The history of it and the cultural implications
31:25
of everything. Yeah, exactly. In like Night of
31:28
the Living Dead and stuff like that. But even
31:30
if you take a look back at 23 days later, is
31:34
that it? 28 days later. 28 days later. I was
31:37
off by five days. That one was released very
31:41
shortly after 9 -11. And there's people that
31:45
kind of study this, that it's a reflection of,
31:48
you know, what the culture is going through on
31:50
at the time. And they talk about the video games
31:53
and what's going on in culture where we first
31:56
start seeing zombies and stuff like that. And
31:59
how we're seeing culture reflected back with
32:03
the anxieties that we're experiencing at the
32:06
time. That is super interesting. No matter the
32:09
age, zombies reflect the cultural zeitgeist or
32:13
the worries within it. So I don't touch on it
32:16
that much other than what I'm saying right now.
32:18
That makes a lot of sense with the follow -up
32:20
of Night of the Dead. Yeah. Or Night of the Living
32:23
Dead with Day of the Dead. Not Day of the Dead.
32:26
What's the one right after it, Chelsea, where
32:28
they're in the mall? Dawn of the Dead. Yeah.
32:30
Where they're in a mall and they're talking about
32:32
consumerism. Yeah. And then they talk about it
32:35
28 days later. And, you know, the scenes of them
32:38
walking through an empty London. Yeah. Well,
32:42
it's not only that. It's the idea of a pathogen,
32:45
which was the worry of the day with anthrax.
32:47
And also the rage that was built up with the
32:50
pathogen. That was talked about a lot in it as
32:52
well. Yeah. And so with that. Something I'd like
32:57
to leave you with as a thought that I was pondering
33:00
during the process in taking in all of this information,
33:04
it really surprised me. Zombies come in all shapes
33:09
and forms now, but to classify something as a
33:12
zombie, it is a human that is devoid of its humanity.
33:16
You get ones that move fast now, slow now, sometimes
33:20
they're not. dead even in some of these movies
33:24
that you're watching but to classify it as a
33:26
zombie is something that's devoid of its humanity
33:29
its free will its personality but it still has
33:33
its motor function yes which is the the two parts
33:36
talked about with the Haitian yes yeah and the
33:39
popular culture zombies have reflected in recent
33:43
history those anxieties that are facing culture
33:45
at the time that we just talked about one person
33:48
I watched in this there It's so funny. There's
33:51
all these people with doctorates on this that
33:54
we're talking in these videos that study this
33:57
and how... Man, I feel like we would have taken
33:59
our education further if you realized you could
34:02
have gotten it in zombie biology or something
34:04
like that. Crazy, right? So she was wondering
34:07
when she's going to see zombies with guns reflecting
34:10
all the school shootings that America's going
34:13
through currently. And it occurs to me how fast
34:17
AI is growing. And the humanity that it's taking
34:21
away from us, our art, our storytelling, our
34:25
thought process, the threat that which AI has
34:28
to humanity right now. And perhaps it's turning
34:32
us into real life zombies. Do you think that's
34:34
the next one that it's going to be targeting
34:37
perhaps in the next zombie? Perhaps it's... No,
34:40
yeah, that AI just took our humanity. Yeah, yeah.
34:43
I could fully see that. There was just an article,
34:45
people enraged on Reddit. posting on a CBC Reddit
34:50
that CBC just awarded in a short story competition
34:54
that the story was written by AI. Anyhow, this
34:58
episode has left my mind reeling. I have so many
35:02
thoughts on this research that I did. And in
35:05
my reflection of my research, voodoo, voodoo,
35:08
voodun, zombies that we know have all been essentially
35:12
crafted. by white men to be seen in a certain
35:17
light in a way that takes even more of the humanity
35:20
away from its origins. While I'm always here
35:25
for the spooks, as I'm sure most of you are.
35:28
Particularly this time of year, yeah. Yeah, I've
35:32
learned that the importance of this topic lies
35:35
in the humanity. The origins of the zombie and
35:39
the reality of how our modern zombie came to
35:42
be is even more scary than surviving a zombie
35:45
apocalypse. And the twisting of the loss of humanity
35:49
seems like a cruel twist in the end of it. And
35:54
yeah, that's all I have to say. No, that's really
36:01
interesting. And I'd also wonder, too, if the
36:04
next exploration, too, might be focusing on debt
36:07
as the thing that removes, like makes you a zombie.
36:10
Is the fact that you can't function outside of
36:13
society because you owe something to somebody
36:15
else. So you are required to abandon your humanity.
36:19
There's a lot of implications to be said when
36:23
you start looking at society, when you look at
36:25
the modern twist of the zombie. What is taking
36:31
your soul away. But not your function, yes. But
36:35
not your function. It's your instinctual needs
36:38
in which you would function is essentially what
36:42
it's brought to. This probably is our most philosophical
36:46
Halloween episode. Isn't it? I think ever, ever
36:49
in the history of Journey to the Fringe, since
36:52
I've been looking into this fully. Obviously,
36:55
I was looking to do this episode for a long time.
36:58
I had no idea the implications that it had in
37:01
a cultural aspect, and it just left me reeling,
37:05
thinking of its beginnings, how it got here,
37:10
everything it went through. It's just crazy.
37:13
I barely touched on anything that had to do with
37:18
anything important that touches the zombie. I
37:21
just kind of... told you the gist of everything
37:23
that you needed to get where you were going there's
37:26
still a lot like it's an iceberg of information
37:29
to look at and it's just i'm just like i i don't
37:37
know yeah i think the only thing left to say
37:41
is i have been taylor here with chelsea we are
37:43
journey to the fringe thank you all for listening
37:45
we'll see you next week bye Thank you for listening
37:50
to Journey to the Fringe. If you have liked what
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38:25
For now, I'll see you in the next episode.