monkey business

Any movie that features white people sailing off to the Third World to capture a giant ape and carry it back to the West for exploitation is going to be seen as a metaphor for colonialism and racism.

Or so says Newsday columnist James P. Pinkerton in his recent piece which tries to thoughtfully wrestle with the question: Is King Kong racist? (With a discussion of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness to boot). Haroon at Avari/Nameh deals with similar issues in his timely post: the martyrdom of king kong

For my part, I agree whole-heartedly with Pinkerton's comment above and I don't think anyone should have to work very hard to view King Kong through a racial/political lens. Shoot, I have a friend who reads Curious George in the same way! Both are stories of apes taken out of Africa to the West. In the case of King Kong, the strong giant ape is blatantly exploited and when he rebels the story has to end violently and tragically. On the other hand, the Curious George stories are meant for young children so George is allowed to survive and is treated paternalistically, rather than harshly, by the Man in the Yellow Hat. (is there a "field ape" / "house ape" issue here?)

But to be honest, I never really got into Curious George or King Kong. I'm more a Planet of the Apes fan (And I'm only talking about Pierre Boule's original novel and the first 5-film cycle, not the television series or Tim Burton's remade pile of monkey s---)

In fact, one of my favorite all-time movies is Conquest of the Plant of the Apes largely because of the more interesting political content and the non-tragic ending where the apes (i.e. slaves) rebel and take over. Here the racial symbolism is perhaps too blatant for some tastes. The human characters who are most sympathetic to the ape cause are clearly Armando (played by Ricardo Montalban, a Hispanic) and Macdonald (played by Hari Rhoades, an African-American). And in the early 70's when the film came out, in the wake of the Watts riots, it would be hard to miss the connection between the political events of the day and the final climactic scene of the film when the apes have started to violently rise up against their human (i.e. white) oppressors, and Macdonald (the Black man) is arguing about revolutionary principles with Caesar, the ape leader:

MacDonald: Caesar... Caesar! This is not how it was meant to be.

Caesar: In your view or mine?

MacDonald: Violence prolongs hate, hate prolongs violence. By what right are you spilling blood?

Caesar: By the slave's right to punish his persecutor.

MacDonald: I, a decedent of slaves am asking you to show humanity.

Caesar: But, I was not born human

MacDonald: I know. The child of the evolved apes.

Caesar: Whose children shall rule the earth.

MacDonald: For better or for worse?

Caesar: Do you think it could be worse?

MacDonald: Do you think this riot will win freedom for all your people? By tomorrow...

Caesar: By tomorrow it will be too late. Why a tiny, mindless insect like the emperor moth can communicate with another over a distance of 80 miles..

MacDonald: An emperor ape might do slightly better?

Caesar: Slightly? What you have seen here today, apes on the 5 continents will be imitating tomorrow.

MacDonald: With knives against guns? With kerosene cans against flamethrowers?

Caesar: Where there is fire, there is smoke. And in that smoke, from this day forward, my people will crouch and conspire and plot and plan for the inevitable day of Man's downfall--the day when he finally and self-destructively turns his weapons against his own kind. The day of the writing in the sky, when your cities lie buried under radioactive rubble! When the sea is a dead sea, and the land is a wasteland out of which I will lead my people from their captivity! And we will build our own cities in which there will be no place for humans except to serve our ends! And we shall found our own armies, our own religion, our own dynasty! And that day is upon you... NOW!

(This is how the movie ends in the original script, but it was a bit too militant for some folks... go figure... so the content was later toned down when the film was released)

But to go back to the original question, I'm not sure how interesting it is to ask "Is King Kong a racist film?". Even if the title figure may be a stand-in for Black or Third World humanity (which is likely) the film's content is relatively easy to unpack and analyze and we can decide for ourselves who the heroes and villans are, and whether the ending is comic or tragic. The real question isn't whether the film is racist or not, the real question is who will we be rooting for?

Planet of the Apes (scripts for films and series)
Those Damn Dirty Apes! by Anthony Leong
Slate: The Apes of Wrath: The radical political history of Planet of the Apes.