Actually King Kong is about the Black Man. And how much better than he is compared to lowly Whitey.
Let’s start with the Skull Island society. When the first settlers arrived, life must have been pretty tough with all the attacks from giant spiders and dinosaurs etc., but they struggled through. Not only did they survive, but they had the resources to build wall two hundred feet high. A further example of their advanced technology is the giant gong used to summon Kong. They still faced a problem with Kong, though. I theorize that he was able to scale the wall in search of love. The Black Men (being peaceful animal activists) didn’t want to harm Kong, but were fed up with being stomped on by his clumsy feet, so they set up a dating service for the big ape. To our untrained eyes, it might look like a human sacrifice, but the restraints are there to stop ladies running off into the jungle and being eaten by spiders.
Now let’s look at Whitey. He gets hold of one creature from Skull Island and, in typical imperialist fashion, tries to exploit it for profit. The capture itself involves dozens of deaths. Once they get Kong back to New York, the folly of Whitey’s capitalist ideology became clear. Motivated by greed, Whitey attempts to restrain Kong using technology that is obviously inferior the the Black Man’s back on Skull Island.
BrotherC, I did think of that Vogue cover actually…but when that issue came up I couldn’t help kind of eye rolling. It just seems like kind of a far reach to me, though…Giselle didn’t look scared or freaked out. She looked pretty happy to be there.
Well I’ll have to give you some background.
America was very different. At the time “Jim Crow” laws governed everything that blacks did. Work , travel etc. A black man could legaly be put to death for strikeing a white or even looking at a white or not getting off the sidewalk when a white was walking on the same side of the street.
Black men were considered animals. They were there just to work. Cocaine was often given to them to get them to work more. The worst fear was hordes of drug/sex crazed black men would wander the streets look for white women to rape. This was frequently presented in movies like “The Birth Of A Nation”. This brought about the first “controled substance laws”
About this time there was a great man named Jack Johnson. He was the first black HWT Boxing Champion. He enjoyed his life in a time when blacks were barely tolerated. He lived out in the open. He liked his clothes, fast cars and women. Any color didn’t matter to him. This was very dangerous because it was against the law in many states for black men to even be seen with a white woman. Being champ, meant that he would beat-down whites on a regular basis in the ring. The white hated him for that, and then to flaunt his white conqubines in their faces made it all the worse. He stayed champion of the world for many years, fighting all over the US and other countries. The whites looked for and found all kinds of white fighters, but none could beat him. The even dug up Jim Jefferies but he got dropped like all the rest.
Well, eventually, Jack got too old to stay on top. he lost a contruversial fight loseing his title. He fought for a while longer, but the fast cars finally claimed his life. He had a fatal crash while racing down a country road in GA.
So what does all this mean? He was the impetus for King Kong.
The message in the movie is this “Any time one of those big, black gorillas lays a hand on one of our fair, blue-eyed, models of white femeninity, we wil go to any lengths, and use the most modern technology, to bring him down and kill him!”
Kong had complete run of the island as they were building the wall. Without the door he would have been tearing up the wall to get to the other side. Once the wall and door were completed, and he was on the far side, they shut the door and locked him out. That’s my take on it, which doesn’t explain why they didn’t include a human sized access door rather than opening the big one when it came time for the sacrifices.
The wall is described as ancient, and it’s claimed the natives were no longer at the high level of civilization needed to build the wall. (How the sailors who drew the map knew this isn’t stated). Presumably it predated Kong (although possibly not his ancestors), so he never had “the run of the island”. The dinosaurs running amok are enough to explain the wall (In the 2005 remake, in fact, it’s claimed that the city was inside the wall, and the place the natives are now living was originally the outside).
By the way, if it’s not clear, I don’t agree with rabrooks’ “Great White Hope” theory of King Kong. I articulated my views upthread. But his last line inspired my response immediately below.
Has anyone brought up the fact that gorillas were seen very differently in the past, like when the original movie was made? You can find references to the belief at the time that a male gorilla would be aroused by the smell of human menstruation and would then attack and rape the woman.
I don’t know about the “black man” theory, but the portrayal of the natives on Skull Island is hilarious-dialog consists of mostly mumbo jumbo (“oogga-boogga”) type nonsense.
Even 1930s audiences must have laughed at this.
Acually, as observed in Goldner and Turner’s book the Making of King Kong, the language is really based on Southeast Asian dialects, and they apparently had to provide copies of the dialog to show they weren’t sneaking in profanity.
They don’t say “Okga Booga”. If you put subtites on your DVD (or on TV when it’s running) you get transcription:
“Malam Ma Pekeno. Pekeno para Kong
O tara ve Rama Kong!”
actually, this site has it:
I am as far from an afrocentrist as a guy can get, middle aged white guy from the suburbs, but I’ve heard that theory and I think it works. I guess I kind of write off almost all movies from the 20s and 30s as pretty racist.
And let us not forget that the ape held his victim in the palm of his hand, obviously representing masturbation. This is The Black Man using a white woman for his own gratification, having no use for her beyond his animal sexuality . . . then discarding her when his needs are met.
The problem with the “Kong represents the black man” is that Kong is clearly portrayed as the victim in the movie - right down to the final line where they acknowledge that beauty killed the beast.
And while it’s true that white American society has treated black people pretty poorly, it would have taken a really progressive white-run film studio to have made a movie with this message in 1933.
