Gold in the Jungle: White Heroes and Mining Adventures, from 19th Century Fiction to 21st Century Reality TV

• In Event: Adventurous Nature: Environmental Heroes and Villains on Screen

Abstract

Dangerous dense jungles, frightening indigenous peoples, and dashing white heroes. One popular type of narrative in the nineteenth-century U.S. should probably be labeled “extractive colonial adventures.” Based on European and American reports on the search for mineral wealth, such narratives found their way into fiction by the end of the nineteenth century in the iconic novel King Solomon’s Mines and in subsequent dime-store novels. These Gilded Age stories proved resonant enough that they became repeated in prominent mid-20th century movies like King Solomon’s Mines (1950), The African Queen (1951), and Green Fire (1954), and then again in post/neo-colonial reality television shows like Gold Rush: The Jungle (2012), Gold Rush: South America (2013) and Jungle Gold (2012-2013). These stories feature heroic Euro-American adventurers seeking minerals in foreboding lands, with nature serving multiple roles: as the exoticized setting for the story, as the source of wealth that is the heroes’ goal, and—in the guise of steamy weather and dangerous animals—as the villain that interferes with the heroes’ journey. Even non-white residents of the jungles are often treated as part of the wilderness and hence as obstacles to the white heroes’ resource colonialism. This paper will argue that recent versions of these adventure narratives continue to be used to justify extraction in and the exoticization of far-away lands.

Author

• Brian Leech, Augustana College