Zombies and the Post-colonial Italian Unconscious

This article analyses the relationship between the horror genre and colonialism by focusing on Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2 (1979) and discusses how and to what extent the colonial overtones of this film provide a fictional representation of the Italian collective unconscious fear of African immigration, w...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Simone Brioni
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: University of Bologna 2013-11-01
Series:Cinergie
Subjects:
Online Access:https://cinergie.unibo.it/article/view/7377
Description
Summary:This article analyses the relationship between the horror genre and colonialism by focusing on Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2 (1979) and discusses how and to what extent the colonial overtones of this film provide a fictional representation of the Italian collective unconscious fear of African immigration, which resurrected the memory of forgotten colonial crimes in Africa. Drawing on postcolonial theory and psychoanalysis, this article also underlines how xenophobe political propaganda has employed horror imagery – and especially that provided by zombie movies – in order to discriminate against immigrants.
ISSN:2280-9481