Christian Remse (Bowling Green State University)
Hollywood productions such as Skeleton Key (2005) and Angel Heart (1987) encompass black magic and spiritual ceremonies as highly popularized narrative and aesthetic components. The use of these and other elements, however, problematizes the broader notion of “being Caribbean” within the transboundary and comparative discourse between Haiti and the United States. These visual art forms de-contextualize the ideological function of Vodou and stigmatize its practitioners’ socio-religious identity. The emerging loss leads to a distorted perception of Haiti’s well-respected peasant religion. Gazing through a postmodern lens and drawing from an array of theories such as Fredric Jameson’s essay “Postmodernism, Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” as well as Jean
Baudrillard’s neo-Marxist critique “The Precession of Simulacra,” I propose contemporary cinematic representation of Vodou causes cultural fragmentation within the religion’s diasporic context. Fredric Jameson’s concept of postmodernism focuses on cultural expressions and aesthetics with an emphasis on fragmentation. Fragmentation, as Jameson criticizes its prolonging effect, causes “an emergence of a new kind of flatness or depthlessness, a new kind of superficiality.” Based on the lack of substance, the subject loses its capacity to unify elements within the signifying chain that results in isolated signifiers. Also distinctive to the logic of late capitalism is its fetishization of the human body or what Jameson refers to as simulacrum, a notion that is encapsulated in Baudrillard’s neo-Marxist approach. Baudrillard claims that a simulation precedes the original and creates a real without origin or substance, a hyperreal. Such hyperreality transforms physical human beings such as
Vodou practitioners into what Jameson calls “flesh coloured simulacra” surrounded by a depthless world of “stereoscopic illusions.” In sum, this essay analyzes how visual representation skews the imagination of Vodou beyond Haiti’s national boundaries.
