Workings of the Spirit: The Goddess Ezili in The Love Wanga (1935)

Abstract

This article privileges the Vodou goddess Ezili in a reading of the 1935 film The Love Wanga part of the genre of zombie movies that emerged during the US marine occupation of the Caribbean country of Haiti. It argues that despite the film director, George Terwilliger’s desire to objectify and other Cleeli, the mulatto antagonist, Ezili acts on and subverts the white male gaze. The perspective from which this article is written shifts the locus of power from the filmmaker, and by extension, the white American public, who sought to appropriate and interpret the Haitian female experience to the Haitian cultural worldview in which visible and invisible worlds are in constant communication and impact one another.