>Newsday ran some crap about the racist imagery in the movie yesterday.
>
>WTF is wrong with our society that they take a story about a giant ape and
>turn it into a race issue?
>
>We have enough jackass WP and NOI fools in this country without getting
>people worked up over nothing.
Actually what was interesting was how the racial images were conveyed. There
were two distinct "versions" of the islanders. The first ("real") version was
desperately dark and violent. They were the result of their harsh environment
fear. Perhaps a degeneration from the prior culture who built the (massive,
mostly stone) wall or a marooned culture who came to be stranded later.
Although very dark skinned these people struck me as an amalgam, perhaps more
polynesian than african. Jackson clearly wanted people that "looked diffent" -
as if they had been isolated for many, many generations.
The second version, that which was presented by Carl Denim in Kong's broadway
debut, mirrored almost exactly the islanders as portrayed in the 1933 film.
This view, with wild choreographed "ape dances", outlandishly feathered
costumes and huge, make-up-accentuated lips and eyes may indeed be racist...
but it's also clearly appropriate for the time being presented.
In this film however that view is presented only as the packaged, generated
perspective of the "civilized people" rather than as the reality. (In the 1933
original this view was the "reality" of the situation).
One interesting addition to the film was the character of the tramp-steamer's
first mate (played by Evan Parke) who was a very strong, very capable black man
in a position of relative power (perhaps one of the only positions of power
open to him in the US at that time).
This character was a worthy addition regardless of race but may have indeed
been added as a balance to the imagery later in the film. Who knows?
In any case the actual representation of race in the film seemed balanced and,
if anything, liberally minded while the represention of racial views in 1933
was painfully, but accurately (and only very briefly) portrayed.
Jim Davis
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