Not unlike the bigger-budgeted The Skeleton Key (2005), Jessabelle (2014) is the type of plot twist-centered movie that needs a second viewing. Both voodoo-driven films frame a white woman’s experience as the means through which black/mixed-race suffering is disclosed and manifested through supernatural vengeance. But this narrative perspective problematically transforms historically-marginalized groups from relatable human victims into dangerous, unnatural oppressors that need re-oppressing. Even though Jessabelle’s aggression originates from legitimate sites of intersectional trauma (which should arguably position Leon Laurent as the film’s true antagonist), by having Jessabelle and her community target Jessie, the filmmakers continue the American horror tradition of vilifying Otherness through voodoo narratives. In this presentation, I will challenge the problematic development of Jessabelle’s character as a reflection of how American society is conditioned to categorize victimization and suffering with politicized scales; based on the threads of one’s identity politics, we are driven to judge the merits of one’s oppression (via racism, sexism, disability obstacles) in order to determine who deserves justice more, and whether that justice reinforces ideologies or dismantles the systemic discriminations that caused suffering in the first place.
Scholarship on voodoo in American popular texts will emphasize the embedded discriminatory practices that often induce discomfort and anxiety through color-coded savagery, eroticism, exoticism, and racial vengeance against whiteness. Thus Jessabelle’s embodiment seems reductively-rendered as tricky, sexualized (evoking the “jezebel” stereotype in essence and the homophonic play on words), and demonic, which also reinforces historical trends of inferiorizing women of color. Critical Mixed Race Studies will provide a framework for analyzing Jessabelle’s revealed identity. The violence surrounding her death speaks to scholarly debates of American racial anxieties and the differing approaches to antiracist social justice that can challenge the myth of the millennial post-racial society.
About the presenterTiffany A. Bryant
Tiffany A. Bryant graduated from William & Mary with a B.A. in Literary/Cultural Studies and from James Madison University with a M.A. in Literature. Her academic interests incorporate analyses of intersectionality and identity politics in popular culture, be that film, TV, literature, games, or interactive events. Horror narratives (especially with zombies and ghosts) are her favorite means for deconstructing internalized anxieties embedded in American society. In 2017, Tiffany was appointed PCA/ACA Horror Area Co-Chair.