“Every Imaginable Invention of the Devil”

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.