Letters to the Editor
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Movie-Palace Granduer and myth and perception
I'm sorry that Tim Gallagher has never experienced movie-palace granduer it is still possible despite the plague of multiplex covering the industrialised world. Perhaps he should make an effort to seek it out and at the same time form an appreciation for methaphor,simile and the use of poetic, evocative language. King Kong is set when? The golden age of the great movie palaces was when?
As for ABB, clinging to old resentments, hatreds and explanations might be comfortable but until we let go and attempt to look with new vision at the world we never get to see when changes do occur, and what still needs to be done.
I don't always agree with Stephanie Zacharek's reviews but I always enjoy reading them, for their thoughts and their use of language
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ABB...whatta card!
ABB rants about Hollywood's supposed "portrayal of racial minorities" in a monster movie.
Hey, Bitch, get a clue: this is Hollywood's portrayal of a giant gorilla. Would it have satisfied you if he have been stripped of his color, like a monster Michael Jackson?
There's an idea! Next remake, use a giant orangutan (red hair, white(!!!) face) as Kong and cast (black!!!) Halle Berry--no, wait, she's too "Nordic," better go with Naomi Campbell--as the damsel in distress. And instead of black native islanders, maybe they could be descendants of, oh, stranded Portuguese explorers or Dutch pirates or some such.
Then, just to make sure we all get the message, once they reach New York and Kong escapes, Campbell could try to evade him by donning a (white!!!) Latitia Casta disguise--only to have Kong strip the orangutan mask from his face, revealing a (black!!!) gorilla underneath--snatch Casta/Campbell, climb the ACLU headquarters, and fall to his death after becoming disoriented when he looks out into the audience and sees that nobody is watching any more.
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Kong
having followd Stephanie's movie columns since her youthful days with the Pacific Sun--i can hardly remember another unmitigatedly positive review of a movie in those three decades. i have to assume it must be a good movie...
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The Lesson of Kong- Don't Fool With Established Sacrificial Protocol
Hmmmmm... someone with the name angryblackbitch is angry at something... I am not shocked.
But I am a little curious if I'm the only person who remembers that the natives were going to sacrafice one of their own women to Kong until the movie crew showed up on their island.
...I'm not sure if it was the 1930s version or the 1970s, but I distinctly remember a young native girl dressed in bone and shell finery, getting snatched up by someone when Kong breaks through the wall.
It was always my assumption that they were sacrificing women on a fairly regular basis, and Faye was a nice substitute for one of their own.
As to Kong's behavior once he has the white woman, well, we have have no idea what he did with the native girls. Probably carried them around for a while until the other denizens of the island got them, or else he got tired of them. Could have eaten them, too, I guess.
However, what I think can be safely assumed, is that none of the other sacrifices were as badly botched as this very last one- people with guns and whatnot chasing Kong in the jungle and trying to get the girl back.
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King Kong review
Stephanie Zacharek's reviews have won me over since her eloquent writing about Buffy the Vampire slayer. She has a wonderful way of teasing out the poetry of seemingly silly shows and movies. If Tim Gallagher wants to complain about pretentious, pompous writing, he should start with his incredibly long winded epic saga about why he hates a frickin' hyphenated word.
As far as racial subtext in Kong, sure, it's there if you want to look for it. It was made in the '30's, for God's sake, and built out of Victorian era Great White Explorer stories. That's the price Peter Jackson pays for making movies out of pre-cultural studies era sources, and staying true to the spirit of those works.
BUT, subtext is not substance. Look, it's more Nature vs. Civilization than whites vs. blacks, more about the metaphorical inner beasts we carry within ourselves than miscegenation. Please stop being so literal--if it were about interracial sex, Kong would have pulled his Kong weenie out at some point. Did that happen? That would be a big no.
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reading modern concerns back into the past
It's interesting to read the people here who have complained about the way some critics have interpreted Kong as an allegory of white fear of black men, especially since my boyfriend and I had the same discussion at dinner right after seeing the film. He thinks the racial interpretation is an example of us reading modern concerns back into a period that didn't think along those same lines--an anachronistic viewpoint, if you will.
I have no problem with the racial interpretation of the general story, since it's not so much a criticism of the original movie as it is a criticism of the whole era in which the movie was made. On the other hand, I do think there is an anachronistic viewpoint within Jackson's film itself: the conceit that Ann Darrow would have sympathized with Kong and tried to communicate with him. In Jackson's film, it's a wonderful and touching story, and Watts and Serkis make it work. But my academic mind kept telling me that in no way could that perspective have been given in the original movie--our culture was still immersed in the distinction between civilized and savage, and any real Ann would have been too strongly conditioned by her culture to fear the savage ever to sympathize with it.
And before you counter that the Ann-Kong relationship has always been part of the story, check out Meghan O'Rourke's essay on Kong in Slate--she reminds us that the original Ann never warmed to Kong the way most of us think she did....
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King Kong and race
Am I the only one who noticed that when Kong is in Times Square there is a large Pepsodent ad behind him and below it is the notice: now airing Amos and Andy.