I never need an excuse to talk about King Kong, but the release of a new film seems
as good as any!
With total monster-movie saturation on the horizon, I've turned my focus back to the
birth of cinema's greatest beastie:
My love for the 1933 films knows no bounds, and I've been fascinated by the enduring
power of this character, and how he has manifested throughout the past eight decades.
His first appearance was so undeniably perfect, the ripples of its influence continue to this day.
And yet, each reimagining chose to focus on a different facet of this endlessly appealing character.
The Toho films of the 1960s, along with no less than three animated series over the years,
lean heavily on the base appeal of a giant ape named Kong set against the fun and games
of that era's monster craze.
The Dino De Laurentiis 1976 remake and its 1986 sequel attempted to preserve the original
story's major beats, while populating it with updated characters and situations.
In terms of far-reaching interpretations, there was even a 1998 straight-to-video animated
musical adaptation featuring songs written by the Sherman Brothers, which chose amplify
the show-business framing of the original film.
(This inexplicable gem is rare piece of little-known Kong history, and deserves its own episode.)
Peter Jackson's 2005 film may be one of the only remakes in the history of film that
can be described as loving its source material too deeply.
Yet even in the most faithful of adaptations, something of his soul seems to have been left
in 1933.
Even its own sequel, the magnificent SON OF KONG, released the same year from the same
artists, knew it couldn't hold a candle to their original achievement, wisely choosing
to explore the ramifications of that story, from the regrettable to the intentionally
humorous.
Beyond the variances in historical specificity, there must be more universal qualities that
made him so immediately an icon of our culture.
This question has stuck with me:
What, exactly, is the timeless essence of Kong?
Pragmatically, looking at the raw contents of his various appearances throughout the
years, one could cynically argue that it's simply that base, animalistic boyhood appeal
of a giant beast wreaking havoc.
(Which may be the only observable family value between the films in his canon.)
Combine that value with an otherwise exemplary production, and it might account for a film
of above-average performance ... but that doesn't feel right.
Kong is another beast entirely.
As I've discussed in a few of my previous pieces of cinematic analysis, I believe that,
in the absence of bygone mythologies, we've all become collectors of functioning mythological
fragments from our popular culture.
And for me, Kong is no exception.
At the time of its release, critics were apparently too distracted by the technical wizardry on
display to give these themes any consideration.
Variety called it "purely an exhibition of studio and camera technology – and it
isn't much more than that."
The slightly more generous New York Times titled their review "A Fantastic Film in
Which a Monstrous Ape Uses Automobiles for Missiles and Climbs a Skyscraper."
That was the title.
It would be be several decades in the wake of the film's colossal success before the
deeper virtues of the film would be mined:
In 1972, French philosopher and critic Roger Dadoun observed the physical gigantism of
Kong, contrasted against the socially small position of Ann Darrow, writing, "King Kong
is presented there, in a luminous poster, like The Eighth Wonder of the World.
Faced with such a prodigy, who would wonder about the furtive gesture of an unemployed
woman stealing a fruit?"
In 1974, American film critic Gerald Peary considered the film a "Political Fantasy,"
drawing parallels between the Carl Denham character and President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
I find little to agree with in his interpretation, which plays almost entirely on the first and
final acts of the film to the exclusion of its dynamic centerpiece.
It's an amusing read that is a testament to just how unique our individual views can
be on the same work of art.
In 1975, in response to Peary's analysis, David N. Rosen interpreted Kong, the character,
as a reflection of the Depression era in which it is set.
In his words, "Kong symbolizes this possibility, the threat of the masses 'losing their chains'
in a revolutionary upheaval."
His broad analysis also touched upon the imagery of scaling the Empire State Building, which
I dare not repeat here.
You've got to read that one for yourself.
In 1984, American Philosopher Noël Carroll examined Kong through the lens of Social Darwinism:
"The prehistoric imagery and the condensation of the jungle and the city draft the Darwinian
metaphor of the struggle for existence as the sign of modern, competitive, urban life."
In 1988, Author J.P. Telotte proffered a Freudian reading of Kong as a representation of "culturally
prohibited ... urges" against the open love of Jack and Anne.
He further applies the film to his theory of the "imperative of seeing -- our desire
to see things we are not supposed to."
He writes, "Kong suggests the danger in this insistent seeing, a possibility that
we might 'spoil' or violate the world in trying to look beyond our normal boundaries."
I particularly admire this reading for the degree to which it incorporates the film's
self-referential frame of show-business as a core element, which most other interpretations
have discarded entirely.
In modern analysis, the film has been popularly accepted as a refutation of Colonial Values,
with a variety of possible racial and historical interpretations therein.
These range from the revelatory to the critical, and largely ring true when considering the
classically tragic trajectory of the title character and overall structure of the film.
It is, undeniably, a cautionary tale.
But even a good-faith subtextual reading of the film that codes Kong as a symbol for black
men through the eyes of white America, feels like a reduction of the film's timeless
interpretive potential.
Any work of art can sustain multitudes of interpretations, but the undeniable transcendence
of certain works into our shared pop-culture mythology, in my mind, requires a resonance
with primal themes that run deeper than historical allegory.
Unique to the original version, and of central importance in my eyes: until the final moments
of the film, the only person to understand Kong through any lens of empathy is ... the
audience.
What begins as a pompous adventure gradually reveals itself as a fable representing the
perennial tragedy of the human ego.
The feeling of not being understood is a touchstone of the human experience.
Deliciously, the humans in this story are merely supporting players for us to experience
this truth through a beast who proves himself to exhibit more humanity than they do.
On his island he is King.
Man rips him from his Eden, from the ancient wisdom of the undisrupted, into the grid-divided
realm of a man-made city.
Climbing in vein to reclaim his lost status, he is shot down as all souls are snuffed out
in the uncaring systems of mechanical progress over nature.
In our lives, we all face this crisis of spirit.
The mythological imagery and externalized actions associated with the fall of Kong harmonize
with that internal experience.
What do you think?
What has sustained the echo of Kong's roar so very loudly since 1933?
More importantly, what does the King of Skull Island mean to you?
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