King Kong: The Sum of Its Ideological Failings or Grist Your Mill Can't Refine?

Peter Jackson's King Kong will cause your average academic to explode in hyperventalitory fits about evils like crass capitalism, American imperialism and racialized sexualities.  These predictable complaints predate the viewing of the film because they are staples of American academic culture.  No left-thinking scholar would dare utter a word in favor of Jackson's film for fear of being shot down by his or her peers as supporting capitalism, imperialism, racism and heteronormative gender roles . . .  across species.  But can you imagine a more boring reaction to a work which somehow manages to offend so many sensitivities?  To assume that it can be no more than the sum of its ideological failings entails another assumption: that Peter Jackson is unaware of the historical context not only of his film but the original. 

One more thing: to focus on what the film captures about its historical moment and 1) not acknowledge that there is a significant difference between a work produced in a given historical moment and one which reproduces that moment 70 years later and 2) plain lazy thinking.  I'll deal with the latter first:

LOOK AT EVERYTHING JACKSON CRITIQUES!  LOOK HOW DAMNING HIS CONDEMNATION OF COLONIAL EXPLOITATION, CAPITALIST HUBRIS, STEREOTYPICAL MASCULINITY AND HOLLYWOOD VALUES IS!  LOOK AT VALORIZATION OF THE CLIFFORD ODETS-LIKE DRAMATIST, THE AFRICAN AMERICAN CREW CHIEF AND THE INDEPENDENT WOMAN IS!  LOOK!  SEE?

The knee-jerk academic criticism of the film would miss the subtle way in which Jackson's film fights the stereotypes of the people populating it.  He and his co-writers scripted narrative that invalidates the stereotypes to which an academic who hasn't seen the film but "knows" what it's about would object.   No one who left that movie would think the spirit of American ingenuity—valorized in Act One but vilified in Act Three—such a wonderful thing.  Unless academics are so hardened that they don't empathize with Kong, there is simply no way that they leave the film thinking anything other than:

1. Racism is bad.
2. Sexism is bad.
3. Capitalism is bad.
4. Hollywood is bad.
5. Platonic love is super.
6. Animal rights are awesome.

The means by which those thoughts are achieved are suspect . . . as they should be, given that Jackson remained faithful to the film he had adapted.  The only way this strawman would be satisfied would be for Jackson's film to resemble the original in name alone.  But isn't what he's done more subversive?  Isn't sneaking sound left-thinking morality into an otherwise morally reprehensible film a good thing?  Isn't that the sort of counter-propaganda the academic left should support?  I think it is . . .

. . . but I should add that I have no proof anyone, academic or otherwise, actually thinks these things about the film.  I thought them as I watched it because I couldn't deny that some of the representations—esp. of the "race" of "natives" who "worshipped" Kong and looked suspiciously like the Uruk-hai from The Lord of the Rings— had me squirming.  Then I asked myself the difficult questions those who will condemn the film outright will never ask:

What else could he have done?  Created an ostensibly uninhabited island actually peopled by a race of "white" "natives"?  How would they have gotten there?  Proto-European imperialism anyone?  If you don't count the Vikings, the European peoples were land-locked for far longer than any other ethnic group.  The Polynesians populated thousands of tiny islands from New Zealand to that rock out there in the middle of the Pacific Ocean which no one even knew was there before the advent of satellite technology. 

If you follow Jackson's racial logic, what you have is a highly-specialized society which has 1) impressively come to inhabit this island from whereabouts unknown, 2) built tremendous walls to protect the rest of the world from the island's occupants and 3) descended into a state of mere substinence because their duty as stewards has prevented their culture from evolving.  Maybe I'm not the one to comment on the representation of an evolutionary arms race, since I'm inclined to strip it of its cultural implications and say "that's what happens in an evolutionary arms race," but the fact that I'm already churning this information through such lofty cognitive devices indicates that the film does what any respectable film should:

It presents you with grist your mill can't easily refine.

UPDATE: I have created another comment thread since this one seems to be intimidating people.

Comments

[MT]

Don't even get me started about the whole "woman-will-be-the-death-of-you,-sonny" closing moral, or the "a good/beautiful woman can tame anyone or anything, no matter how violently inclined" subtext.

O.K., I'll start this line of reasoning myself. It suggests the movie ought to have King Kong kill the woman--either quickly and physically by say biting off her head or slowly and emotionally by intimidating her away from her true interests and ambitions and meanwhile spending nights out boozing with others. Which of these two do you like better? Which do like better than Jackson's choice? Note also Jackson did very explicitly allude to the alternate story lines that would kill the maiden with all those skeletons and necklaces in the pit. So not only did he cover that base, rather than suggesting good, beautiful babes can tame anything always, it suggests they can roughly once in the entire history of a culture. At least to me.

[MT]

Also, regarding the demographics of male-killing damsel power, note how many NYC look alikes Kong manifestly felt no affinty for.

[MT]

The inadequacy of surrogates shows love killed the beast, not beauty, despite the closing line.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

And I'm back.

I can't understand the references in this post and the comments to the idea of depicting the natives as light-skinned at all. Has anyone seriously suggested that as an alternative? And even if they have, that's surely neither the only nor the best way Jackson and the other writers could have chosen to add more nuance to the depiction of these people?

I posited the idea of lighter- and/or white-skinned natives because I was trying to think of an alternative to depicting Polynesian and/or South East Asian natives and neither alternative struck me as satisfactory. On the one hand, I study evolutionary theory, so I'm of the opinion that race is entirely a social fiction. (I know I'm not in the majority of Americans here, so any criticism of my position on this count is entirely legitimate.) On the other, I'm enough of a student of history to know that 9 times out of 10 it was the imperially ambitious European countries which first encountered African, Southeast Asian, &c. people and not the other way around. That narrative, while often put to unwholesome purposes, can't really be put another way. There's an historical necessity to that encounter that would render any alteration of it unconvincing.

And given the context of both films--dinosaurs, great apes and humans continued to evolve in geographic isolation a la Darwin's finches--I don't know how it would be possible to depict the inhabitants of that island as anything other than a frightened, violent animistic people. In short, either that entire encounter has to be ripped from the film or it has to remain as is. (Full disclosure: I haven't seen the original in more than a decade, so I didn't realize the original had them cooperate with the crew.) But again, I'm not here to defend this aspect of the film, since it's the one that most bothered me. Now, here's my larger point:

Per above on the benefit of the doubt, I don't think we have to see these people as savages in any essential sense, just as I don't think we have to see the murderous lesbians in HC as essentially murderers; in both cases I think we see people twisted by environmental factors beyond their control, and I think that this is clearly the case in both films. The lesbians become murderers after they're forced to consider their love for each other a mental defect; the inhabitants of the island become savages because they're forced to live in an environment no modern human has ever lived in (dinosaurs, giant apes, &c.).

This may seem overly generous, but consider the kind of amoral utilitarianism the crew adopts when they hit the island: they leave some behind, sacrifice one to save another, abandon each other in a time of need, continue to shoot film, &c. We see a process of social atomization, of individuation that only a few of the characters (really only Hayes and Driscoll) attempt to check. Dismissing the film on account of the earlier racist implications forecloses the possibility of other, less commonplace debates it could inspire.

Or it could turn into Crash...which is my nightmare scenario for the film industry, and what many complaints about contemporary films inclines me to think people want to see. What do I mean?

Film as Ideological Hammer.

Do I really need to watch a movie that yells "RACISM IS BAD!" for three hours? Sure, it's an ideologically pure film (not in the propagandistic but in the "nothing for anyone to complain about" sense) but why would anyone want to watch that? Why not watch a film that challenges you to think through these issues in the way that we're doing here? Why not watch a film that sparks debate instead of just assent?

Now, I have a lot more to say about feminist interpretations of the Watts character, but I want to incorporate that into a longer post about Jaussian "horizons of expectations" and why I think the context of the film, complicated as it is by being a 2005-period-piece based on a 1930-contemporary film with serious racialist overtones. I think there's something complex happening there...and I think the first act of the film, in which the Depression loomed large, thereby forcing the audience to consider the historical moment in which they film took occurred, goes a long way towards doing this. Not that I'm defending the representations, mind you, since I think there's an intentionality there (though whose it is complicated by it being remade thrice over), but I think the context of the contemporary film entails a different set of logical consequences, and I'm more interested in those (and the extent to which they can be controlled and/or predicted) than in the representations themselves. But this'll take me a few days to work out to my own satisfaction.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

The inadequacy of surrogates shows love killed the beast, not beauty, despite the closing line.

Nice. And I'd agree with that, in part because it answers AW's remark:

But, honestly, folks: juggling and pratfalls as a mode of self-preservation, along with a bit of hitting and kicking, doesn't come close to winning my feminist heart over.

Turns out "juggling and pratfalls" are "a mode of self-preservation" in Jackson's version. It isn't beauty ... and now that I think about that scene, it's the social interaction that drives it. Kong has been alone for, well, we don't know how many years, but Watts brings a skill set that the indigineous people lacked: the universal wonder that is vaudville, i.e. physical comedy.

Not that I think the film a marvel of feminist cinema, mind you, but it does emphasize her talent over her beauty (and in doing so implicitly critiques Denham's choice of her for her beauty) and, above all else, her capacity for sympathetic identification.

[R.L.]

Ah,but what can we tell from the fact that Jackson lost 70 lbs. making Kong?

[Alpha Male]

Fascinating reading this fractally evolving blog thread...

Seems a great way for prime procrastination from what-ever it is yoo do, or should be doing...

Anyway, some comments...

"There is a weird way where the film implicates us in justifying or excusing Jackson's use of the Kong story. Why this story now? Are there racial anxieties in Australia and New Zealand that make the Kong story somehow relevant or pressing?"

Short & long answer - No.
Peter is a pretty straight up & straight forward guy - this was his childhood dream - to make this film. 1930's Kong got him motivated to get into film as a youth. So you can mona lisa expression this one to death and create all sorts of speculative diatribe about the where to's and the what for's - but the simple answer is unfortunately ( for academics) very benign and disapointingly innocent.

It bothers the shit out of me watching the energy and furor going into manipulation of film media by political & especially religious groups - throwing their spin on films like Narnia and Harry Potter to either condemn or create a feeble renaissance connection to their seemingly own insecurity around their beliefs.

As for the depiction of natives, indigineous, what-ever label you want to use... .... which initiated a volley of responses... what's the issue again?
Having lived in New Guinea I have seen tribes that resemble the ones on screen - there's still 800 separate and distinct languages from clan warfare, anti-assimilation and geography that have kept these peoples apart and they are quite happy to carry on their existence without being dragged forcibly into the 21st century by relgion or the west thankyou very much... so let them be natives.. they are not competing for your resources...

And finally on the subject of stereotypes...would be keen for a show of hands how many of you have travelled to the 3rd world / or beyond, to qualify your views and oppinions... I find myself silent when I am unable to contribute something I can put hand on heart about - without corroborating my topic with both research with the practical experience supporting it.

That aside... mild enjoyment and amusement with the way these topics evolve, cheers...

[Ancrene Wiseass]

Okay, well, there's a lot to respond to here, and I'm working on borrowed computer time, so I probably won't be able to address it all.

MT, I think you may be misunderstanding me: I don't think it's the responsibility of Jackson and Co. to represent the world (imaginary or otherwise) either (1) in a fashion which I personally approve of on all points or (2) as a means to educate the masses. That's not how I think about art in any form. I'd have a damn hard time studying medieval literature for a living if I thought that.

But that doesn't mean I can't find the way in which an artist chooses to depict that world disturbing and somewhat distasteful. And, at any rate, I didn't make my comment in order to hold Jackson to account for disappointing me. I made it in response to Scott's post, which (I felt) implied that the movie was far less problematic than it is, and which also seemed to imply that academics who approximated the views he was arguing against were overlooking complexities.

No, clearly, I wouldn't have preferred that the Naomi Watts character had been killed by Kong or that she had been convinced to stay with Kong in the wilderness. The first alternative would be sadly anticlimactic; the second would just be waaay too cheeseball. There are no easy choices in depicting what happens to her if you want to make her more independent, and I realize that. I just don't think the mode he chose was the one I'd most prefer. Which is, y'know, the kind of thing that sometimes happens when you didn't write it yourself. This I can understand and deal with.

What is harder for me to avoid feeling disappointed by is that the film seemed to make a lot of promises it didn't keep.

For example: Yes, Scott, I'll concede that the film--at least momentarily--privileges Ann Darrow's talent over her beauty (although I suppose I can't help feeling that the "pratfalls and juggling" trivialize even that a bit). But, as to the argument that the look-alikes don't divert Kong, well, folks, didn't you notice that they generally weren't (ahem) quite on a par with Naomi Watts in terms of conventional beauty? And Jackson leaves Denham's "it was beauty killed the beast" line as the film's "last word" in spite of both that initial potential and his own portrayal of Denham as the one who "kills everything he loves" and the true murderer of Kong. As A.R. Yngve noted in his blog's review, it just doesn't make sense. The result is that, despite some initial gestures toward a revised message, the emphasis on beauty as a woman's major means of survival (and as Man's downfall) does indeed remain intact.

Similarly, feeling that the film made false initial promises about portraying a more complex racial dynamic is at the root of my disappointment in that arena. The references to *Heart of Darkness* and the presence of Hayes had me hopeful. But the Conrad references weren't terrifically substantive, and Hayes got killed off in Act Two or Three (depending upon how you're counting). And the portrayal of the natives was intensely disappointing precisely because it lacked the kind of nuance the film seemed to promise earlier.

And, yeah, okay, ya'll can talk about "primitive" societies as being diferent from racial categories. But I think using that as Jackson's out overlooks two things: (1) he elides that line himself by making the natives *by far* the darkest people in the movie, and (2) so-called "primitive" cultures are generally far more complex than you're acknowledging.

This last issue--and scenes like the cooperative gate-closing from the original mentioned by A.R. Yngve--is what led me to make the remark that there are ways apart from depicting these people as white-skinned to make a more complex portrayal than Jackson chose.

I'd like to give Jackson the benefit of the doubt, Scott. And I do with "Beautiful Creatures." But I give him the benefit of the doubt because he gives me good reason to with that film (which, by the way, I think is fascinating). He does not portray the islanders in a way that is anywhere near as complex as his portrayal of Juliet and Pauline in that film. And, in fact, I gave him the benefit of the doubt with the Uruk-hai in LOTR (though the light-skinned vs. dark-skinned imagery there bothered me, too). That's both because the Uruk-hai are explicitly not human and because Jackson was working off Tolkien's hierarchies.

But when he made a revision of Kong that portrayed the natives as more violent, irrational, and generally nasty than the original with no exposition or back-story whatsoever? That makes it hard to give him the benefit of the doubt. One argument being made here is that these folks are supposed to represent some sort of evolutionary "missing link" or as folks who lost an evolutionary battle in trying to keep the prehistoric nasties appeased. Well, okey-dokey, but why didn't we get more explicit hints about this, when plenty of other subtexts practically grabbed us by the lapels? And, uh, folks, don't portrayals of the darkest-skinned people as the ones who missed out on the evolutionary lottery have a rather unpleasant pedigree?

AlphaMale, I'll admit that I've never been to the Third World. But if I'm reading your response correctly and it actually does imply that people in the Third World act in accordance with Jackson's portrayal of the islanders, well, then. Folks told me a lot of things about what people in the big city would be like, what people in the inner city would be like, what day laborers would be like, what homeless people would be like, and what it would be like to teach gangbangers. In every case, I found those statements to be both unfair and far less complex than the reality. So I tend to doubt such stereotypes not solely by inclination, but also on the basis of the empirical evidence I've gathered so far, even if that evidence doesn't include extensive experience with people in the Third World.

[MT]

(1) he elides that line himself by making the natives *by far* the darkest people in the movie,

This sounds more hair-trigger than knee-jerk academic. I'm reminded of Woodie Allen's intro to (was it?) Annie Hall, in which the character rants about subtle anti-Semitic bating he gets subjected to for example when someone said "Did you...", which he distorts "D-jew...Jew" to prove it to us. We all have our neuroses and allergies, and that's fine, but let's not blame the stimulus.

(2) so-called "primitive" cultures are generally far more complex than you're acknowledging.

I haven't meant to imply anything about the complexity of hunter-gatherer societies, but I think I know what aspect of the movie you're objecting to: Where did all those savages go? Is all they do hide underground and pop up to poke intruders and ritually sacrifice maidens? I think of that as 2-dimensionality or thin-ness of backstory, not racism. I jus't don't see how get to racism from here.

[MT]

"Having lived in New Guinea I have seen tribes that resemble the ones on screen"

Having met kiwi and aussie and POM expats in Southeast Asia I see a similarity in your syle of opining with theirs. Nice enough, but they generally struck me as blowhards with chips on their shoulders. No disrespect to the NGOs.

[Matt]

MT, I am curious whether you would dispute the general claim that in this world today, there is no such thing as a non-racist. Everyone is racist.

This film would seem to shamelessly, kitschily revel and excuse itself at once. But undoubtedly that is reading too much into it, insofar as it is resisting the patly moralizing ending and reading beyond cliche at all, and we should just let it be what it is, inherently. A film, no less.

Which is what exactly?, because I have this funny problem where I sometimes (in my helpless old age confusion) do forget.

[MT]

I will go you one further than disputing the claim and designate it steaming pile of pernicious baloney. Unless you define "racist" in some kooky and more or less useless way.

[Matt]

Huh. How would you usefully define it, then.

[Matt]

Huh. How would you usefully define it, then.

And how do you so cleanly extract yourself from the entire great mass of racist discourses, some more subtle than others, that shape and guide our contemporary society...is it with one of those space-age suits? Are you by any chance a chosen one?

[MT]

how do you so cleanly extract yourself from the entire great mass of racist discourses

Like so:

[Matt]

Behold, the pure silence. Let us bow down.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Matt, I wonder whether the term "racism" properly applies to the structural deformities in American democracy you describe. I think the more conventional academic term "racialism" far more appropriate, since you're not describing a conscious acceptance of and action based upon what's been conventionally considered "racist." The depiction of the natives in the film? Racist. Structural inequalities at odds with stated goals of liberal democracy? Racialist. Of course pitfalls abound in discussions of these sorts, and the more I think about the problem the more I think that phantasm that is "race" should play second-fiddle to the reality that is class. In part because race is a social fiction, i.e. doesn't really exist, whereas class isn't and does ... or maybe I spent too much time around Michaels and Ken Warren at the MLA. Who knows.

[Adam Roberts]

An interesting discussion. I wonder if it gets a little skewed via a sort of elision of the 1933 King Kong and the Jackson 05? (Nothing racist about that reference ...)

What I mean is: the 1933 film is much more thoroughly implicated in racism: not just the skull island natives but Kong himself -- indeed, especially Kong himself: a fifty foot racist libel upon black manhood from a period when America was still segregated, when a majority of white people reacted with disgust at the very idea of a black man and a white woman together, and when black men were routinely and offensively caricatured as bestial, violent, lustfully obsessed with innocent blondes and so on. Clearly racism has not magically disappeared, but I hope it's not utopian of me to say that by and large our culture doesn't hold those views any more, thank God: that we see nothing wrong with black and white men and women together if they want to be together (the fuss about that kiss between Kirk and Uhura! You wouldn't get that fuss today). We don't automatically think of black men as bestial etc ('we' of course includes many black men, as well as lots of other sorts of people).

This changes the whole dynamic of the film: in 33 Kong is mostly negatively portrayed, with a dollop of sentimentality at the end. In 05 Kong is positively portrayed almost the whole way through: at least after wossername has done her juggling act and tamed him. Kong is the hero now when he wasn't before. He no longer represents a racist stereotype, and the film is therefore (insofar as it's about him) much less racist. No?

The problem is that Jackson's remake exists in a very tight intertextual relationship with the 1933 film in lots of ways, so we read the one via the other, and it maybe appears more racist for that reason.

[Matt]

There may be some truth to that, Adam (not having seen the film, I couldn't possibly comment):-) (hope that's how the emoticon thing works, apologies if I've unwittingly given you the bitten thumb or stg)

"Racialist," sure, I guess. If you must water the word down beyond all point of everyday recognition. But then maybe there is the possibility, very real you know, that liberal democracy itself is also racist. Er, ratialist. As any psychoanalyst--I mean, post-'age of psychoanalysis' philosopher--knows, delineating conscious intent is indeed a slippery task. So, false dichotomy from you, Scott. Your move.:)

Maybe we can call some people and arrange a blog debate between WBM and Spike Lee, Mumia or Cornel West on "the phantasm of race" sometime. Don't these problems, as must their necessary critiques, still move together?

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Adam,

Nicely put. It dovetails nicely with my (soon-to-be articulated) point that in our current historical moment, we cannot help but sympathize with Kong. More on this later (though not later today).

Matt,

I prefer "racialist" over "racist" for the obverse reason: as someone raised in the South, I can't help but think supremely significant the difference between a Good 'Ol Racist and an unwitting bureaucrat in the employ of a structure which preserves and/or exacerbates historical inequalities based on race. To consider these two people equivalent is to strip from the former of the race-based hatred which motivates his actions (and which should be considered in, say, trials in which race-hatred is a motivating factor) and the attribute to the latter motivations which he can legitimately deny. Better to bring to the bureaucrat's attention the unintentional consequences of his action than to paint him a racist.