Africa Speaks ? : Black Monsters and Revisionary History in Horror Films

I the Western eye, Africa is more an idea than a physical location. Discussion about the continent is riddled with historically mediated tropes, stereotypes, and misrepresentations. Cultural products, like fashion trends and literature, perpetuate the imagination of an Africa that does not truly exist. In Western culture of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, film plays a crucial role in shaping people’s understanding of Africa. This paper analyzes three films set apart by at least a decade: The Night of the Sorcerers (1973), Panga (1991), and Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist (2005). Each film includes motifs of possession, curses, magic, and monsters. Moreover, each film is shaped by colonialism, for the terror stems from historical fears associated with expansion and an entrance into African spaces. My analysis follows a multi-layered structure. I begin with a discussion of the tropes that dominate the narratives and how each one is influenced by a colonial history. Afterward, I examine how the tropes interact with the genre of horror to create an essentialist “African” entity that is equated with ideas of darkness and monstrosity. Ultimately, this paper argues that the threat in these films is not the mere existence of darkness, but rather the possibility of contracting darkness. By virtue of engaging with the horror genre, these films other black bodies to the extremes of monstrosity. Accordingly, the films center ABSTRACT This paper analyzes three films, The Night of the Sorcerers (1973), Panga (1991), and Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist (2005), within the context of postcolonial theory. I examine how the films interweave themes of possession, magic, and monsters with a legacy of colonialism, constructing terror interactions with raced bodies. This paper argues that the threat in these films is not the mere existence of blackness, but rather the possibility of contracting blackness. Moreover, these narratives affect a new reality, practicing a form of revisionary history that provides the other with a form (or at least the opportunity) of agency. Arlette Hernandez, Washington and Lee University