Three Kongs: Race, Gender, and Fear in Hollywood Ape Films

• In Event: 322 - Regular Session. Identity, Diversity, and Inequality: The Work and Politics of Popular Culture

Abstract

My argument in this paper is that through an analysis of the three main King Kong films (1933, 1976, and 2005) we will better understand the cultural roots of racism and the ways in which cultural products like film can contribute to a disruption of those roots. The 1933 version of King Kong was a product of an explicitly racist period of American history and supported the cultural understanding shared widely by white Americans of the danger posed by African American men. The 1976 remake of King Kong was a commercial success although a film that most critics dismiss as clearly inferior to the original. I will argue that the 1976 film is far more racist and sexist than the earlier film and should be understood as part of the cultural resistance to the civil rights advances of the 1960s. The third of these three films, released in 2005, returns to the narrative of the 1933 film although with crucial changes: it desexualizes the relationship between Kong and Ann Darrow and, by so doing, seriously attenuates any implicit association of Kong with African American men. However, by so clearly erasing any connection between the fictional Kong and real African American males, this version of King Kong cannot then serve as a positive depiction of the character and qualities of African American men as they are in reality. What is still missing in American cinema, then, is such a film.

Author

• James J. Dowd, University of Georgia