Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T00:12:16.243Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - “Every Imaginable Invention of the Devil”: Summoning the Monstrous in Eurocentric Conceptions of Voodoo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2024

Jessica Balanzategui
Affiliation:
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
Allison Craven
Affiliation:
James Cook University, North Queensland
Get access

Summary

Abstract

This chapter considers the conflation of the Eurocentric conceptualisation of the devil with the African figure Papa Legba in an analysis of how the crossroads manifest as a key locus of cultural and ideological exchange in North American screen and popular culture. The focus is particularly the Southern Gothic genre – spanning film, television, music, and literature – and its constructions of “Voodoo,” which highlight how the Southern Gothic assimilates and reflects upon the otherness of the American South. Underpinning this otherness is the intermediate space of the crossroads, where the boundaries between life and death, good and evil, and Black and white break down to reveal some of the socio-historical tensions that have informed the construct of the Gothic South.

Keywords: Voodoo, Papa Legba, Southern Gothic, Crossroads, Folkloresque

You sprinkled hot foot powder, mmm, mmm, around my door, all around my door.

Robert Johnson Hellhound on my Trail

The legend of US blues musician Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil at the crossroads in return for success has, for decades, shrouded Johnson's life and career in a mythic discourse, with proponents of the legend claiming that the proof of the story's veracity is in the lyrics. With references to hot foot powder, hellhounds, and walking side by side with the devil, the imagery evoked in Johnson's songs is more likely to evidence not a Faustian pact but the culturally specific folk beliefs and superstitions that circulated through the African American population in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, where Johnson grew up. As Barry Lee Pearson and Bill Mc-Culloch (2003), researchers into Johnson mythology, argue, the legend was constructed “well after Johnson's lifetime to support a romanticized image of an American musical icon and make Johnson more appealing to people who were unfamiliar with his culture” (102). The “culture” Pearson and McCulloch refer to is the culture of the South: specifically, the culture of Black people of the South, whose links to their African roots and identity have historically manifested in spiritual practices that were imported with slavery and became enmeshed with Christianity, through both forced and voluntary conversion.

Type
Chapter
Information
Monstrous Beings and Media Cultures
Folk Monsters, Im/materiality, Regionality
, pp. 63 - 80
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×