King Kong of the Tower
A group of white men, accompanied by a beautiful woman, travel to an uncharted island inhabited by savages, who worship a giant black beast called Kong. The men capture the beast and bring him to America, in chains [to be made a spectacle]. The beast escape his captures and, motivated by love, steals the woman. She is saved by an heroic white man and reunited the woman with his intended partner. [The beast is killed by war planes and his fall from the Empire State Building is that of a tragic hero]
Zeba Blay recently penned an article for the Huffington Post detailing the racial undertones of ‘King Kong’ by exposing some parallelisms between the movie franchise and the transatlantic slave trade. The article is titled “This Video Breaks Down The Racist History Of ‘King Kong’”.
I liked the video, but it was not until I stumbled upon a re-blog of it on a notorious Alt-right exponent’s website that I really started thinking about what I saw. I will not link to the blog and I’d prefer you trust me on its account here and not look for it; they are already making too much money on ads. Let’s call that person ‘Q’.
Q’s take on Blay’s article is titled: “HUFFPO: KING KONG IS RACIST, BECAUSE THE APE OBVIOUSLY REPRESENTS BLACK PEOPLE”. This is where things get really interesting. Z’s post is transparent, the language is neutral: it is just a summary of Blay’s main points together with tweets and other reactions from the media. The only markers of the Alt-right environment are the use of the acronym SJW, which however many SJWs (Social Justice Warriors) are starting to embrace, and the title, which is a piece of art in its capacity to be, together with the video, an allegory of half of all race discussions of the twenty-first century.
It finally motivated me to make precise some vague feelings I was left with after watching the video and which I was lazingly going to snooze, even though I was planing to share the video (share first, think…maybe later).
Q’s message (which is made explicit in the numerous comments) is a common one, Blay sees racism in ‘King Kong’ because *she* believes Kong represents Black People, not Q, or the far right. In their world view, Blay created the problem (racism in King Kong) and is now fighting it, to Q’s amusement.
My gut reaction was “this is obviously wrong”, followed by “why?”, “What exactly did Blay say? What does it mean for a movie to be racist and did she claim King Kong was racist?”.
Re-watching the article and reading a longer elaboration of the topic (on which the video is partially based on) helped me clarify. Blay’s claim is not a generic “king Kong is racist”, which was not substantiated, but rather that “King Kong story has been rooted in a racially charged narrative”, it is a competent, but by any means not complete, analysis of the racial analogies (or allegories) one can find in King Kong. Blay’s objective was to remind us that critics in the past have viewed the plot as an allegory of the “story of the black man in America” (hence the “racist history”) and to show us the key identifiers behind this interpretation. I am not sure how close or how far is this from the claim “King Kong is racist”, but they are two different theses. To clarify, imagine a different movie, where Kong is actually substituted by a black man.
A group of white men, accompanied by a white woman, travel to an uncharted island inhabited by savages, who worship a black man, regarded as a mighty king by the natives. The white men capture the black man and bring him to America in chains solely to be made a spectacle in New York. The black man escapes and steals the white woman, because of love, only to be shot down from the top of the Empire State Building.
Assume, as most instalments of the Kong franchise have done, that the fall of the black man is presented as that of a tragic hero and that the public is guided into sympathizing with him rather than with his captures and killers.
Would this be a racist movie? Would it matter who directed it and what the intention was? Would it matter if the movie was directed in 1933, when Black people were institutionally regarded as savages and the predatory instinct of black men towards white women was alleged as a reason for segregation, or today? Can we consider such a movie a megaphone of racists traits of society or a denounce of the racist society? Both? Neither? Finally, is there a difference in the lead actor being an Ape or a black man? If there is a connection, who made the connection, and to what effect? Did the (original instalment of the) movie make it? Are the spectators making it? Are the critics making it? Again, does it matter who makes it?
I am still pondering on some of these questions. There are, however, some elements in the first few iterations of the franchise that guide us into excluding some possible arguments. Even if King Kong is not racist (which I would argue), it plays on racist stereotypes and structures the movie is not aware of. Being structures it is not aware of, the movie cannot be in any way a critic, or unbiased representation of them. I would be surprised if any movie came out of Hollywood in 1933 without racist stereotypes.
There is the imagery of King Kong protecting the blonde and the implicit assumption that white blonde women are so beautiful that even a beast would want to protect it. There is the representation of “undiscovered” islands as lands of savages. There is the exoctization of humanity from far away. These were not themes that King Kong introduced, but integral part of the Western imagery. The movie serves to reinforce them.
Then there is the closing remark: gazing upon Kong’s corpse, director, adventurer, and showman Carl Denham, a character of the movie and the man who ultimately caused this terrible end, quips:
“Oh no, it wasn’t the air planes. It was Beauty that killed the Beast”
These words were deemed worthy by the director to be the closing remark and cannot be interpreted as anything else other than the director’s interpretation of the events, or one interpretation he believed useful to understand the representation. The capture, the prison, the mockery were relegated to the background in order to bring the Beast’s “dangerous” subjugation to the beautiful woman forefront. To him (both the character and the director), it was not the white men cruelty that led to Kong’s demise, but his desire for something out of his reach. This allegory cannot be part of any movie that would call itself a critique, or representation, of a racist system; it is a product of it.
This brings me back to Q’s allegorical title.
The first level of the allegory is in semantics: the Alt-right and us (let’s say SJWs) mostly speak two different languages using the same words. Q is able to give a different meaning to Blay’s own words just by repeating them. Q’s commentator are clear about the meaning of Blay’s message just as Blay’s commentator are clear. Their clarity just so happens to produce two radically different interpretation of the article. Words that cause indignation on one side will cause amusement on the other.
The second level is in intention: Q misunderstood, or misrepresented Blay’s message just by adding the key “because the ape obviously represents black people”. These is a common phenomenon for most of you and an operation the Alt-right routinely engages in: first, there is a misrepresentation of some anti-racist intent or initiative, then there is a eruption of hatred above the deformed version of it based on its ridiculousness or madness (“Ok now King Kong is racist, everything is racist”).
The third level is in the subtext: Again, they key is “because the ape obviously represents black people”. Q took Blay’s message, turned it on its head and made Blay the problem, because “racism is in the eye of the beholder” and “ racism is alive because the left talks about it”. The Alt-right has edified an alternative world were racism is a thing of the past. Q’s thesis is everything is fine and, if not, it is not racist, and if it is, you should just get tougher and acquire a sense of humour.
