Peter Jackson has proved that he can make movies other than about trolls and munchkins and Dorothy's attempts to collect her valuable jewelry and head home. King Kong, making its premiere on Tuesday at midnight, seems to be drawing positive crowds and reviews alike. I would like to see it, it's playing in my hometown theater, but whether or not I do, I already know what it's "about" and I don't like it.
The original Kong film debuted in 1933, a difficult time in American race relations. While Klan membership was on the decline in the South and midwest, lynchings were still at an all-time high and white racial superiority was still en vogue. It wouldn't be that much longer that Jesse Owens would stun the Olympic audiences in Berlin (three more years) and cause Adolf Hitler to storm out of the stadium and for Joe Louis to pummel Max Schmelling (five to go) and show to western nations that African Americans were talented athletes that could perform at the same level as whites. W.E.B. DuBois at this point had just about had it and was ready for his ex-patriotic move to Africa and former Garveyites were still writing, evangelizing and hoping for their own chances to pull their own economic strings. The Duke was making a killing in Harlem and Langston Hughes and Billie Holliday were contemplating dreams deferred. Kong, therefore, must have been an exercise in anxiety-wrestling, as white audiences poured into theaters that year to watch Faye Ray be seized, threatened and ultimately loved by the giant gorilla. I believe the film is truly a statement, albeit unconscious, of the white race stating its superiority (albeit anxiously) over the African/African-American race.
The film starts off with the depiction of native islanders (which, paradoxically, are black, yet, in my years of education, I've never come across an island in the remotest oceans that aren't inhabited by people of Asiatic instead of African descent. These islanders appease their god, a giant gorilla, by sacrificing Judeo-centric animals; a goat is the first animal sacrificed (let's give to our god the anthropomorphic symbol of the devil, right? - so voodoo!). The ape is seen as a possible test subject/circus act by the whites but not before the natives with portable weapons (does that make them "spear-chuckers"?) kidnap the white, blonde, virginal American girl. After a liberating decade such as the 1920s, I'd go on the record that the Faye Ray character qualified for two of her descriptors but possibly and most likely not the third. The natives believe that the gorilla-god would love some tasty Faye Ray (and hell, who wouldn't eh? we're all beasts here) and tie her up. Instead, Kong goes ape but in the process, gets captured and eventually fed-exed off the island to that center of capitalist hope, the Big Apple. We know what happens from here but what so many people miss is not just just the outsider-freak-who-loves-the-girl-but-who-is-just-so-misunderstood-away-from-home story is the underlying visual statements the film makes. Kong is the biggest threat to whites: a HUGE black man that not only loves but desires a pure, virginal white woman. While my brother is by now probably swearing at this inane thesis, he can tell you in his vast amount of reading (what are you up to now, Eric, a thousand books this year?) that the fear of black-on-white control terrified whites, especially in the South for at least a century prior to this film's release. Not only does Kong pose the physical threat towards the white woman's purity, we see that ultimately she comes to love the ape. Spike Lee movie titles aside, what else wouldn't terrify white audiences more in the early 1930s? Hell, they were terrified enough hearing the news less than ten years ago that John Scopes was teaching to his high school biology students in Dayton, Ohio, that man and ape shared a common ancestor. Not to fear, the giant black man is no match for modern white civilization; New York, of all places, was the mecca of WASP domination: Wall Street, 5th Avenue, the home of Carnegie and Rockefeller, Vanderbuilt and the ideas of social darwinism. New York had the money, the fashion, the wealth, the power, the architecture, a truly segregated black and white population (Kong would have to squint to see anyone black living in Manhattan as blacks were basically pressed north of 115th avenue into Harlem) and the world's tallest building. I am not the only one (and thank you, Ana as well as Georgia O'Keefe) to see that the Empire State Building, completed just two years before the movie, serves as the largest, whitest phallic symbol in all of western civilization. In what ends up being just a giant pissing contest, Kong climbs the building, Faye in hand, with the goal of surmounting the giant phallus. Here and only here, is this the straw that breaks the camel's back: destroying the subway, trampling through the streets and wrecking havoc on the people of the city, including the wits of Faye is reason to go after him; it's only after Kong attempts to seize control of Al Smith's big boner that Kong has to die. In the final scene, Kong v. Dong, white pilots have no problem destroying the giant ape. Kong's death serves as the ultimate irony as while the credits role, as Faye Ray mourns his death and the audience is left with the star-crossed lovers plotline, in reality, no one at all questions the real premise of the film: even the greatest of black men can not compare nor compete with white culture. Secondly, the most just and honorable way of handling him is by killing him. I'm just glad they didn't push Kong off the Brooklyn Bridge only to see him tangle in the cables and lynch himself above the East River. Crimony, how'd that be for strange fruit?
I may be off my rocker, I may be telegraphing my own angst and anger into an era that honestly and genuinely made nothing more than a monster movie. Maybe Freud's right about the cigar. However, the more I contemplate the moral of the film and not its story (since all truly worthy stories must have morals), I see one of true tragedy and shame, that being the value system of a society not at all comfortable with the changing status of blacks in this country.
So, why the hell did Peter Jackson make this movie? Where is the subtext of fear in this film? What's the social context in which this film sees the light of day? Here I'm at the mercy of only those who have seen it. Now, I'm off to read the New Yorker's review of the film. I wonder if David Denby's going to find a gay subtext in counting the number of times Kong climbs up and then slides down between the 90th and 60th floors only to see the building's cell phone antennae shoot off into space... :)
please excuse any and all bad grammar, syntax and punctation. All on the fly, you know.
