King Kong and the White Woman
King Kong and the White Woman: Hustler Magazine and the Demonization of Black Masculinity
Published in Journal of Violence Against Women, 1998, Vol. 4 No 3, (291-307)
by Gail Dines
From the box office success of The Birth of a Nation in 1915 to the national obsession with O.J. Simpson, the image of the black male as the spoiler of white womanhood has been a staple of media representation in this country. The demonization by the media of black men as rapists and murderers has been well documented by scholars interested in film (Carby, 1993; Guerrero, 1993; Mercer, 1994; Snead, 1994; Wiegman, 1993; Winston, 1982), news (Entman, 1990; Gray, 1989) and rap music (Dyson, 1993; Rose, 1994). While this image stands in sharp contrast to the feminized “Uncle Tom” which was popular in early Hollywood films, both images serve to define black men as outside the “normal” realm of (white) masculinity by constructing them as “other” (Wiegman, 1993). Although both the “Uncle Tom” and the sexual monster continue to define the limits of black male representation in mainstream media, it is the latter image which dominates, and, according to Mercer (1994), serves to legitimize racist practices such as mass incarceration of black men, police brutality and right-wing government policy.
Recently, scholars have turned their attention to pornography (Cowan & Campbell, 1994; Forna, 1992; Mayall amd Russell, 1993; Mercer, 1994) and specifically how the codes and conventions of this genre (re)construct the black male body, especially the penis, as dangerous and a threat to white male power. The focus of this research tends to be poorly produced, hard-core pornography movies which are relegated to the shelves of “adult-only” stores because of their close-up shots of erect penises, ejaculation and vaginal, anal and oral penetration. What tends to be ignored in these studies is the content of the mass-produced, mass-circulated pornography magazines which, because they can be purchased in bookstores, news stands and airport terminals, have a much larger circulation.
Of the hundreds of mass-produced, mass-distributed pornography magazines the three best sellers are Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler (Osanka, 1989). While these three magazines are often lumped together they differ markedly in the type of world they construct. Playboy and Penthouse, in their pictorials, cartoons, advertisements and editorials depict a “whites-only” world, a world so affluent and privileged that blacks are excluded by invisible market forces. Indeed, even the white working-class is invisible in the Playboy world of expensive clothes, gourmet restaurants and well appointed homes. Hustler however, in its pictorials, beaver hunts (explicit snapshots of readers’ wives and girlfriends), advertisements and editorials, constructs a world populated by working-class whites who live in trailer homes, eat in fast-food restaurants and wear ill-fitting clothes. While blacks are absent from most sections of the magazine, they appear regularly in caricatured form in the cartoons where they are depicted as competing with white men for the few sexually available white women. Hustler cartoons depict a world filled with seething racial tensions brought about by the black male’s alleged insatiable appetite for white women. The competition between black and white men and the ultimate victory of the black male is the source of much “humor” in Hustler cartoons and serves to visually illustrate to the mainly white, working-class male readership, what happens if black masculinity is allowed to go uncontained. Hustler is by no means the first mass-distributed media to visually depict the ultimate white fear; indeed, The Birth of A Nation and King Kong (1933) played similar roles only this time in Hustler, it is the white man who loses, as evidenced in his failure to win back the “girl.” This article will examine how Hustler draws from past regimes of racial representation and articulates a more contemporary myth where black masculinity, having been allowed to run amok because of liberal policies, has finally rendered white men impotent, both sexually and economically.
From “The Birth of A Nation” to “Black Studs”
Theorists such as Wiegman (1993) and Snead (1994) have traced the beginnings of the image of the black man as sexual monster back to the late nineteenth century, as the product of a white supremacist ideology which saw the end of slavery as bringing about an unleashing of animalistic, brute violence inherent in African-American men. D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915), was, without question, the first major mass circulation of this image in film and was to become the blueprint for how contemporary mass media depicts black males.
The notion of the black male as sexual monster has been linked to the economic vulnerability that white working-class men feel in the face of a capitalist economy over which they have little power. Guerrero (1993), in his discussion of the emergence of this new stereotype in the novels of Thomas Dixon, suggests that the economic turmoil of the postbellum South served to undermine the white southern male’s role as provider for his family; thus he sought to inflate his depreciated sense of manhood by taking up the honorific task of protecting White Womanhood against the newly constructed specter of the “brute Negro” (p. 12).
This encoding of the economic threat within a sexual context, is, according to Snead (1994), the principal mechanism of cinematic racism and is one of the subplots of the enormously successful King Kong movie (re-named King Kong and the White Women in Germany). Arguing that “in all Hollywood film portrayals of blacks … the political is never far from the sexual” Snead links the image of King-Kong rampaging through the streets of Manhattan with a defenseless white woman clutched to his body to the increasing economic emasculation of white men in the Depression years and the growing fear that black migration from the South had reduced the number of jobs available to working-class whites. King Kong’s death at the end of the movie remasculinizes the white man, not only by his conquering of the black menace but also by regaining the woman. In this way, representations of black men and white men are not isolated images working independently but rather “correlate … in a larger scheme of semiotic valuation” (Snead, 1994: 4). Thus, the image of the black male as sexual savage serves to construct white male sexuality as the protector of white womanhood, as contained and, importantly, as capable of intimacy and humanity.
In her analysis of black and white masculinity in Hollywood movies, Jones (1993), argues that although black and white actors are increasingly portrayed in terms of a violent masculinity, for white actors this violence is tempered by his sexually intimate scenes with a white woman. These scenes assures the audience that for all his violence, the white male is still capable of bonding with another human being and of forming relationships. For black actors, however, this humanizing quality is absent and thus he can only be defined in terms of his violence. The problem with these types of representations is that, according to Jones, “they suggest that there are fundamental differences in the sexual behavior of black males and white males and are ultimately indicative of the psychic inferiority of the black male” (1993: 250), and the superiority of white masculinity.
Hard-core pornography similarly depicts black men as more sexually dehumanized than white men. This would seem surprising since in pornography all participants, men and women, are reduced to a series of body parts and orifices. However, studies that compare the representation of white men and black men in pornography (Cowan & Campbell, 1994; Mayall amd Russell, 1993), have found that it is black male characters who are granted the least humanity and are most lacking in ability to be intimate. Moreover, in movies and magazines which feature black men, the focus of the camera and plot is often the size of his penis and his alleged insatiable sexual appetite for white women. Movies with titles such as Big Bad Black Dicks, Black Stallions on Top, Black PricksWhite Pussy, and Black Studs, draw attention to the black male body and in particular the penis, a rare occurrence in pornography targeted at heterosexual men. Movies such as The Adventures of Mr. Tootsie Pole (Bo Entertainment Groups) feature a black male and white female on the cover. The text beneath the picture says “he’s puttin his prodigious pole to the test in tight white pussy.” In Black Studs (Glitz Entertainment), three white women are shown having sex with three Black men. Above the pictures, the text reads, “These girls can’t get enough of that long black dick.” The penis becomes the defining feature of the black man and his wholeness as a human being is thus rendered invisible.
The image of the black male as sexually aggressive is a regular cartoon feature in Hustler, one of the best-selling hard-core porn magazines in the world (Osanka, 1989). Cartoons which have as their theme the sexual abuse of white women by black men began appearing in the late 1970s and by the mid-1980s, Hustler was running an average of 2-3 such cartoons an issue. Hustler was by no means the first to produce such as image but it is probably the first mass-distributed cultural product (albeit in caricatured form) to visually depict an enormous black penis actually doing severe physical damage to the vagina of a small white women.
That these types of images have been marginalized in the debate on pornography is problematic, especially in light of the international success of Hustler magazine. Much of the analysis of pornography has focused on the ways in which the text works as a regime of representation to construct femininity and masculinity as binary opposites. This type of theorizing assumes a gender system which is race-neutral, an assumption which cannot be sustained in a country where “gender has proven to be a powerful means through which racial difference has historically been defined and coded” (Wiegman, 1993: 170). From the image of the black woman as Jezebel, to the black male as savage, mainstream white representations of blacks have coded black sexuality as deviant, excessive and a threat to the white social order. In Hustler sex cartoons, this threat is articulated par excellence in caricatured form and serves to reaffirm the racist myth that failure to contain black masculinity results in a breakdown of the economic and social fabric of white society.
“Fuck You if you can’t take a Joke”: Marketing the Hustler Cartoon
In the history of American mass media, cartoons have been a major form for the production and reproduction of racist myths. From the prestigious Harper’s Weekly of the late 1900s to contemporary Disney cartoons, blacks have been caricatured as savages, animals and lazy servants. Cartoons, with their claim to humor, have been especially useful vehicles for the expression of racist sentiments which might otherwise be considered unacceptable in a more serious form. Indeed, in his award-winning documentary, Ethnic Notions (1987), Marlon Riggs shows how the cartoon image of blacks has changed little from the beginning of the century to more contemporary versions while other media forms were forced, in the post-civil rights era, to encode the racist myths in a more subtle manner.
The Hustler cartoons, which have as their theme the black male as spoiler of white womanhood, is an outgrowth of the portrait caricature which originated in Italy at the end of the sixteenth century. These portrait caricatures with their distinctive technique of “the deliberate distortion of the features of a person for the purpose of mockery” (Gombrich, 1963: 189), became very popular across Europe and were adapted in the middle of the nineteenth century by cartoonists who used similar methods of distortion against anonymous members of recognizable social groups rather than well known individuals. Gombrich (1963), in his celebrated essay on caricatures, argues that the power of this visual technique is that the distorted features come to stand as symbols of the group and are thought to say something about the “essential nature” of the group as a whole. The black male cartoon character in Hustler is caricatured to the point that his penis becomes the symbol of black masculinity and his body the carrier of the essential nature of black inferiority.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the only place where blacks appear with any regularity in Hustler is the cartoon. To depict black men as reducible to their penis in the more “serious” sections of the magazine might open Hustler up to charges of racism as well as the regular criticisms it receives from women’s groups regarding the openly misogynist content. Indeed, the cartoon has become the only place where Hustler’s claim to being the most “outrageous and provocative” (Hustler, July, 1984: 9) sex and satire magazine on the shelves is realized. Although Larry Flynt (publisher and editor of Hustler) regularly criticizes Playboy and Penthouse for being too “soft” and for “masquerading the pornography as art ….” (Flynt, November, 1983: 5), Hustler’s own pictorials tend to adopt the more soft-core codes and conventions (young, big breasted women bending over to give the presumed male spectator a clear view of her genitals and breasts), than the hard-core ones which specialize in rape, torture, bondage, bestiality, defecation and incest.However, in the cartoons these hard-core themes appear regularly, together with cartoons which focus on leaking and bad-smelling vaginas, exploding penises, impotent penises, disembodied corpses, bloody body parts being used as masturbation tools, and depictions of black men raping, mutilating and pimping white women.
One of the main reasons for the hard-core content of the cartoons is that Hustler has to be careful not to alienate its mainstream distributors with pictorials or articles that might be classed as too hard-core and thus relegated to the porn-shops, a move which would severely limit its sales (Hustler’s success is mainly due to its ability to gain access to mass distribution outlets in the states and Europe). On the other hand, Hustler also has to keep its promise to its readers to be more hard-core or else it would lose its readership to the more glossy, expensively produced soft-core Playboy and Penthouse. Toward this end, Hustler relies on its cartoons to make good on its promise to its readers to be “bolder in every direction than other publications” (Flynt, July 1988: 7), while keeping the pictorials within the limits of the soft-core genre.
Flynt regularly stresses that the cartoons’ boldness is not limited to sexual themes but rather also to their political content. Indeed in his editorials, Flynt regularly stresses that, “We are a political journal as well as a sex publication” (Flynt, 1983: 5). In an editorial responding to critics of Hustler cartoons — titled, “Fuck You if You Can’t Take a Joke ” Ã Flynt tells his readers that his critics are not upset with the sexual content of the magazine but rather with his satire which carries “the sting of truth itself” (Flynt, July 1988: 7). Flynt continues by arguing that he will not allow his critics to censor what is in effect the political content of his magazine since “satire, both written and visual, has … been the only alternative to express political dissent” (ibid).
A strategy that Flynt has used to promote the cartoons to the readers is the elevation of the long-standing cartoon editor of Hustler, Dwaine Tinsley, to a major satirist of our day. The creator of the “Chester the Molester cartoon” (a white, middle aged pedophile who appeared monthly until Tinsley was arrested on child sexual abuse charges in 1989) and some of the most racist cartoons, Tinesley is described by Hustler editors as producing “… some of the most controversial and thought-provoking humor to appear in any magazine” (Hustler, November 1983: 7), and in some cases cartoons that are “so tasteless that even Larry Flynt has had to think twice before running them” (Hustler, November 1983: 65). We are, however, reassured by Hustler that the “tastelessness” will continue since “Larry is determined not to sell out and censor his creative artists” (Hustler, November 1983: 65) because satire “is a necessary tool in an uptight world where people are afraid to discuss their prejudices ….” (Hustler, July, 1994: 108).
Thus Hustler does not position itself simply as a sex magazine but rather also as a magazine which is not afraid to tell the truth about politics. This linking of the sexual with the political makes Hustler cartoons a particularly powerful cultural product for the production and reproduction of racist ideology for, as Snead argues, “it is both as a political and as a sexual threat that black skin appears on screen” (Snead, 1994: 8 ). On the surface, these cartoons would seem to be one more example of Hustler’s outrageous” sexual humor, the black male with the huge penis being equivalent to the other sexually deviant (white) cartoon characters. However, Hustler’s depictions of black men are actually part of a much larger regime of racial representation which, beginning with The Birth of a Nation, and continuing with Willie Horton, makes the black male’s supposed sexual misconduct a metaphor for the inferior nature of the black “race” as a whole.
Black Men and White Women: The White Man Under Siege
During the 1980s, Hustler featured the work of four cartoonists, Collins, Decetin, Tinsley and Trosley. What is surprising is that while these cartoonists had very distinct styles, they all used a similar caricatured image of a black male with an enormous muscular body, undersized head (signifying retardation), very dark skin and caricatured lips. The striking feature of this caricature is that the “man” is drawn to resemble an ape, an image which, according to Snead (1994), has historical and literary currency in this country. Pointing to King Kong as a prime example of this representation, Snead argued that “a willed misreading of Linnaean classification and Darwinian evolution helped buttress an older European conception … that blacks and apes, kindred denizens of the ‘jungle,’ are phylogenetically closer and sexually more compatible than blacks and whites” …
[Read this complete essay at Hustling the Left.
Elliott Cheifetz:
I always thought that King Kong was portrayed as an ultimately sympathetic character who is a victim of civilization. Kong does not kidnap Fay Wray, he was given her as a sacrifice by the natives of the island (if you want to talk about stereotypes in the film, well there you go). Kong acts as a masculine protector of his bride, fending off the prehistoric denizens of the island. Then Kong is kidnapped and brought to America IN CHAINS where he is exploited for profit. He then breaks free in the belief that his “bride” is being accosted. Kong goes on a rampage against the civilization that imprisoned and exploited him. Kong then climbs empire state in an attempt to reclaim HIS masculinity (which during the period the film was made would be seen as a legitimate and justified act) and role as protector and patriarch. As Kong once again attempts to defend Fay Wray, this time against man’s machines, he carefully puts her down and is only then gunned down by the planes. The idea that man regains his masculinity in this climax is ridiculous and refuted by the often quoted line recited almost remorsefully in the film; “It wasn’t those planes that killed Kong…It was beauty that killed the beast.” Fay Wray was a femme fatale, not simply a helpless white woman, and it was Kong’s humanity which led to his undoing, which mean’s that man’s triumph is not righteous but bittersweet. If anything the film made use of the stereotype of the black man as inhuman gorilla/beast in order to pull a switch on the audience and perhaps even make a small point about such injustice (though in a typically Hollywood and distasteful way) by lending humanity Kong.
2 September 2005, 3:01 amfred lap:
Bravo to the poster above! I have heard any number of blacks stating that Kong the ape is meant to represent them and their lust for white babes. No. we see things not as they are but as we are…for the cuties on the far left, anything done by whites in film etc must perforce be anti-minority etc etc
18 September 2005, 11:12 amBut the post above makes it clear that rapacious capitalism, advertising, commercialism, etc was responsible for the havoic wroght by their abduction of a animal from Nature.
Ellen Franklin:
I’ve had the misfortune of living though Kong in the ’50’s, watching angry family members be hurt and frustrated behind this film.
For the life of me, I can’t understand 1) “why” is Hollywood remaking this movies and 2) why aren’t any organizations speaking out about the remake?
Do you have a pulse on this?
30 November 2005, 1:20 pmMary:
I agree with the first post (I’m white) but I just did a search on King Kong & race (where I found this essay) after seeing still pics from the new Peter Jackson “King Kong”.
In his version it looks like black villagers are blacker than black by white racist movie lore standards. There wasn’t anything very dignified about the representation of black residents of Skull Is. in the original Kong but the Skull Island people in the newest Kong look a lot like Killingons in Star Trek. Otherworldly - and not in a Gilnda the Good Witch way!
5 December 2005, 12:17 amMiike Takashi:
I’ve had this discussion recently. A friend was discussing a persuasive article she’d read, which places KING KONG under the heading of “racist cinema.” I told her that it is indeed an interesting read on the film, and it’s not very difficult to see those symbols and codes (as are being discussed in “King Kong and the White Woman”). I also told her that there can be and are other readings, as well. And that is one reason–but only one–that KING KONG is classic cinema. You may read KONG as escapism, as an adventure tale and love story; you may read it as a representation of the black man as “sexual monster.” And if it’s the latter, you too can contribute to the wealth of literature KONG has inspired.
14 December 2005, 11:50 amMiike Takashi:
Why is Hollywood remaking KONG? Because it’s the film that made a young Peter Jackson want to get into movies; because after the RINGS trilogy, the studios will give Jackson his every wish; and because millions of filmgoers want to see KONG remade.
Why aren’t organizations speaking out about the remake? Because they’ve got bigger fish to fry.
That’s the pulse I’m feeling.
14 December 2005, 9:39 pmJ:
Good lord, it’s just like a horoscope you can read ANYTHING into it. Get over it, it’s a film.
15 December 2005, 1:17 amStan:
Yeah, so was Birth of a Nation. So was Man on Fire. Films are not content-neutral. They are cultural productions; and films — even “just entertainment” films — reproduce dominant ideology… whether the producers or consumers realize it or not.
15 December 2005, 9:49 amGodAshe7:
The 1st post has an interesting viewpoint with specs of validity. However, King Kong is undoubtedly a laden with racist ideologies. Most whites cannot escape this it is engrained into the very fabric of all of our (sub) consciouses. Kong stands for Congo an african region exploited by white colonialists much like the main characters in the film Danner and Co. Secondly, sacrifices to kings are cultural rituals unique to native cultures. We impose our standards of values when we still execute people and glamorize sex and violence. You white mfkas may not see it as explicitly racist, but racism is so much a part of you alls culture and way of life that it becomes a given that sinks into the background and becomes an un-noticed pervasive factor in the environment, much like the sky or the very ground we walk on. You rarely even think about it because it has always been a fixture in the order of things. King Kong uses assumptions, representations, old psychologies and symbols of the racist eurocentric past and rekindles and repackages them for consumption to an audience so unawares of the historical, ideological and socio-economic context that the sybolic representations that contributed to the imaginations of the creators of KING KONG and the work they produced out of those racist laden imaginations. There were in-fact powerful Kings in the Congo (actually used to be spelled with a K much like the word Africa/Afrika) But white men’s imaginations of a savagely racist colonialist 18th, 19th and 20th century cannot accurately or adequately tell those stories in truthful manner using their racist mindsets of the time. I’m an African Filmmaker in America, from a cinematic standpoint much like birth of a nation, king kong (especially the new one) is ground breaking, however, as a student of the art of filmmaking I undertand how to critically analyze the narrative structure and components of a film and break it down on many levels. The average movie goer does not. They are usually passive recipients of the content. So I understand the white ignorance. The Black ingnorance as well for that matter.
A BLACK MAN who likes white women so call ME King Kong.
15 December 2005, 2:00 pmWatch out White boys
Stan:
GodAshe7’s points well taken, but with one criticism of my own here… especially here, where the intersection of race and gender is where we are standing.
I understand the attempt at humor in the last two lines… there’s even a smiley-face to reinforce it. But what about the gendered content of THAT… both the reference to generic “white women,” and the macho challenge of Black Manhood vs White Manhood.
Women, Black and white here, are again just (mutually possessd) bystanders in a fight between the guyz.
This provokes exactly the white male sexual insecurity (about “our” white women’s sexuality, among other things) that was mobilized to whip up lynchings (I think perhaps here intentionally); but it devalues the sisters. The most courageous anti-lynching campaigner out there at one time was Ida B. Wells-Barnett, after all.
15 December 2005, 2:42 pmDonnel:
And good lord, horoscopes do not caricaturize human bodies through narratives. Movies do. And narratives/myths/stories are laden with meanings of how the world or society works.
The scenes of Skull Island in Jackson’s King Kong reminded me of cartoons of natives that Americans had to civilize in the turn of the century–specifically Filipinos in the tropical islands (which was inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden” in 1899. In these cartoons the Filipino natives are identical with the “barbaric savages”–native Americans and African-Americans.
Speaking of Peter Jackson, Lord of the Rings and King Kong are narratives that emerged out of the turn of the turn of the century. Higher beings in Jackon’s Lord of the Rings are light skinned versus the dark-skinned villains that came out from the ground/earth.
15 December 2005, 2:46 pmElliott Cheifetz:
Perhaps I should have prefaced my original comment explaining I was raised in a cultural environment that condemned racism and its demonization of any peoples (or at least tried to). The interpretation that I posted was the impression I came away with as a child from the film. The struggle of Industrial Man v the Natural World (which we all came from after all). What is interesting though is how I’d forgotten how terrified Fay Wray is through the whole film. Since I personally liked Kong my memory of the film covered up the fact that Fay Wray didn’t. Interestingly in this new Kong (I’ve only seen previews) the Woman character actually becomes emotionally attached to Kong (as she did in the earlier 70’s remake I think) making the story more akin to Mighty Joe Young (another big gorrilla movie).
On the topic of Peter Jackson and the racism inherent both in King Kong and Lord of the Rings: Holy shit man. A creepy pattern begins to emerge of “classic epic tales” retold with their racist connitations entirely entact. In Lord of the Rings Orcs are portrayed as tribal creatures with many different tongues, and in the movies they are seens with dreadlocks. There are messages of “racial harmony” in the film, but only for those of different white races uniting against Saurons corrupted hoards. My friends who are die hard Lord of the Rings fans insist that racial talk of the blood line of kings is merely meant to give an authentic mythological feel…but hey, it’s just fiction right?
15 December 2005, 7:11 pmElliott Cheifetz:
Also:
The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lion King. Both of these films heavily romanticize Monarchist values and invite the audience to emotionally identify with a Lionized (literally) King/God/Father character. In Narnia the boys are called “Sons of Adam” while the girls are called “Daughters of Eve” reinforcing a mythological (and absurd) divide between the sexes. Also in both films the child characters are destined to become royalty themselves. How many childrens stories and films contain these encoded values? Do you all consider it a worthwhile effort to encourage the production films containing “new mythologies” that don’t repeat the prejudices of the past?
15 December 2005, 7:36 pmDeAnander:
want to mention the good documentary ‘Classified X’ by van Peebles which explores the history of Black actors and images of Black people in American film, both animated and live action.
also want to note that in traditional N European antiSemitism of late C19 and early C20 (before the Unfortunate Incidents that gave Aryanism such a bad name), the ’sexual monster’ was the Jewish male. why? because people of African descent were hardly present im the social life of the polity, whereas Jews were increasingly present in finance, business, and even (gasp) politics and academia. we don’t bother hating with real vitriol those people or forces from whom we feel entirely safe.
both low and high brow literature of the time offers us the stereotype of the “swarthy, sensual Jew,” who (guess what?) has “thick lips” and “oily black hair,” and is referred to euphemistically as “Oriental” or “Levantine” (with all the undertones of non-AngloSaxon decadence, possibly harems and dancing girls, etc.). this demonised Jewish male is simultaneously cast as effete, perfumed, wallowing in luxury (hence unmanly), and as a super-seducer.
the stereotypical supervillainous whoremaster in yellow fiction of the time would be either Chinese or Jewish. I suggest that this demonisation (and its replication in US culture directed at Black men) is indeed what Dines fingers it as: a response to perceived competition and threat. Jewish families were moving into British upper- and middle-class social life, competing for the first time on a relatively even basis with Christian/Anglo merchants and traders outside ghettos, and men resenting the unaccustomed competition responded with the classic meme warfare.
I will also note that among the English upper crust even earlier (early to mid C19 and before), these same “brute male” stereotypes were applied to the Welsh and Irish, whose menfolk were said to be hypersexual and aggressive, to have poor impulse control, to be drunkards and adulterers — who should not be trusted in polite society as they might undermine moral standards and seduce nice wives and daughters. the thread of masculine hostility, turf competition and xenophobia reformulated as sexual anxiety and “circle the wagons, protect the womenfolk” is continuous.
one reason for this of course is the complementary tradition (demonstrated for us above) of “we’re gonna steal your women nyah nyah nyah” as a threat or taunt between sparring males. in cases of extreme hostility this may become literal (kidnappings, rape camps, or marriage-through-abduction as in the Pashtun tradition and other tribal/warlord cultures where women=cattle and both are the targets of theft for status and practical gain). Stan may get slightly annoyed if I point out that this co-optation of “the other tribe’s genetic legacy” supplanting it with one’s own is also found in gorillas (otherwise lovable critters for the most part), among whom dominant males may kill the offspring of defeated male rivals and work quickly to impregnate the female members of the band, thus erasing one round of genetic legacy and overwriting it. “we’re gonna git your women” is a threat with very ancient and visceral echoes.
now add to this the male fascination, under patriarchy, with the humiliation and punishment of women — what could be more humiliating in the racist mind than submitting to the sexual domination of a racial inferior? thus the perennial popularity of bestiality porn (women coerced into sex with animals), and the bizarre taste which racist white male consumers show for endless images of Black men vigorously or violently penetrating white women. you would think such men would hate such images — loathe them, tear them up, demand that they be suppressed — because of their offence against race and caste tabu. but no, they are purchased and consumed (e.g. Hustler and sources lower on the porn food chain) en masse. imho the reason is that the images offer a satisfactory dose of humiliation and punishment of females, a consolatory fantasy of “she’s better off with me” (no matter what an abject failure the consumer may be as breadwinner, lover, father or companion), and a quick dose of rage and hatred… yes, people — mostly men — do seem to enjoy the experience of a good hate or a hit of rage, finding it empowering or perhaps the only permissible katharsis for denied and suppressed fears, anxieties, or griefs. the racist/sexxxist cartoons, videos and photos work like a hate rally, a pep talk, and voyeuristic eye candy all in one. Triumph of the Will has nothing on Flynt other than elegance of production values.
which is why, returning to vintage antiSemitism, the Hitler propaganda machine used similar “dirty joke” cartoons in its gutter-press paper “Der Stuermer”, featuring of course the “amimalistic/oversexed Jew” as King Kong, and idealised Aryan maidens as Fay Wraye. people like to look at what they hate and despise and fear, so long as the way it is presented to them encourages that hate and despite and fear rather than challenging them.
15 December 2005, 10:28 pmOpenmind:
Many interesting comments that lead one to think of the many interesting possibilities for all filmmakers. Even if we go back in history for all the racist crap that has been produced it still only has an effect if we allow it to have the effect. Did Godzilla represent an over zealous USA or was he just a monster created by an atomic bomb. To much rhetoric over a non-winnable subject. King kong is a monkey! lets leave it at that.
OPENMIND
16 December 2005, 4:35 pmGodAshe7:
Back again, Upon re-reading the initial posting I find it a unique and brilliant take on king kong. On the subject of the factors contributing to the racism and sexism the movie and in society, I think that in a man’s world a woman is the object to be possessed. In a white man’s
world everything in it is an object, including black males. This is my opinion, but true Black males ain’t really trying to have that shit. From a Black man’s point of view, that of a former king reduced to a slave, and then to guised second class citizenship, his and his own very existence is a constant reminder of the past from which he has emerged. A part of that past are the misdeeds of the white man’s world and its imposition into his world. The same can be said of all of the colonized races of the planet earth. The white man believe it or not is human also. However, he is different. And like all of us he likes to embrace his unique qualities, and strives to think and use all of them as characteristics to help him excel above and beyond the rest of his competition… for survival. To be the ALPHA MALE. Nature designed this human tendency. It just so happens that he is doing what all men have done throughout history. Migrate, Conquer, Exploit, Strengthen. He inherited this from his forebearers (Black People). It has come full circle. He has conquered black and other native women all across the globe. He has infiltrated and conquered many races of men across the globe. This is the precursor to conquering the women. So that last object for him to conquer lies just beyond the reaches of his known world. (on skull island.) It is a man (beast) like nothing he has ever incountered. A force in nature, the last of it’s kind with the potential to take posses HIS woman/object thus threatening his ultimate existence(genetic). This is his greatest fear. After all, the white woman is the gatekeeper of his very existence, so quite naturally it is in his vested interest to securely possess her. When the beast/human breaks away from the capativity of his exploitation, and out a combination of magnetic humanity, sheer power of will and the white woman’s own unrelenting attraction, he ascends the the apex of the white man’s so-called civilized world to rival it’s power.(symbolically the empire state building) Much like the real world and history confirms, the only thing preventing his greatest fear from coming to fruition is military might (specifically air superiority). And who would know better the truth of this natural law than man, white and black (and native american); for all these men have witnessed war. The black man knows most intimately the rape and forced savage nature the white man has exibited all over the globe in the last 500 years because to a great degree he has lost his racial genetic exclusivity under the throes of colonialism, chattel slavery and jim crow TERRORISM. How ironic but poetic that in the white collective imagination is this everpresent, guilty conscience unconciously incriminating itself by disclosing its deepest fears in its artistic expressions. But it has always been as such. As the old african proverb stated: “All that is within, must come out. It is the nature of things.” So it is not surprising that things have been reveal From the King of Kong.
As far as the women talking about the sexism.
16 December 2005, 4:40 pmHey, at base, that’s why men fight wars; to pre serve ourselves and you. The objective nature that men typically view women with is a part of a man’s self preservation because on at that genetic level there is no “I only We” (another african proverb). The urge to fight, risk death and even kill for the preservation of yourself and your people is something lost to the masses of people insulated by the comforts and ideological trappings of a post-modern, industrialized world. But the primal nature in men still comes out, though tapered by the idosyncracies of culture. The fundamental rules still apply.
“The Jungle Creed - The Strong must feed, on any prey at hand. I sat at the feast, was branded a beast, before I became a Man.” -Unknown
Stan:
You are reversing cause and effect. War is anything but “natural,” and the anthropological evidence for this is overwhelming. This is phallocentric mythology you are spouting. You have mixed some history in, with no account of the systems that were in development with slavery and Jim Crow (like capitalism), fluffed it up with a heaping helping of racial essentialism, and then told a man-the-hunter-fighter-fucker story. Warfighting is no more genetic than shopping at Wal-Mart.
Sorry, but this is just run-of-the-mill macho nonsense.
16 December 2005, 6:48 pmFilm Prinze:
A very intelligent discussion going on. Bravo! My perspective is from a black male POV. As a college film instructor I believe Peter Jackson to be one of the most dangerously racist filmmakers in motion picture history. The question is how did a man, who had a virtually unknown career in film, get the oppportunity to direct a franchise series? Might it be that he was selected because someone knew he had a predeliction for racist filmmaking?
What is clear about Jackson is that his product so far perpetrates a racist agenda for the Hollywood oligarchy. At a time when America is waging war against yet another nation inhabited by people of color, films like the Rings triology and Kong offer palatable ways for American consumers to:
1. engage in racist fantasies at the most primordal psychosexual level (Kong)
2. have the dominant white male patriarchal society reinforced and (LOR and Kong)
3. as exampled by the white Messiah theme of LOR III, provide a religious based rationale for imperialism.
Do not underestimate the serious psychological reconstruction work that films like King Kong perform on the American filmgoers’ psyche.
The person who posted the information that Kong is a stand in for the Kongo is right on the mark. Jackson’s racism also is a stand in: for greater forces which seek to further the domination of the white male hegemony while simultaneously soothing post 9/11 American anxieties during this national “state of emergency.” Racism is like opium, once you get a taste, you can never get enough. What better way to dull the senses, desensitize our feelings to allow the war slaughter to continue, than by reverting to an old stand by, old fashioned pre-WW II racist movie making?
RP
17 December 2005, 9:57 pmGodAshe7:
Rebuttal to Stan. I am not reversing cause and effect dude. War is as natural as sex. As a matter of fact all anthropological evidence and the vast majority of theorhetical approaches to sociology support my proposition that the phenomenon known as “war” transcends culture, even species. So dude, you need to get off of that idealistic default, anti-male stance made popular by the extremists of the feminist movements. I for one will not be ashamed to have a DICK and a nice sized one at that. If that is being phallocentric, then so be it. Hell if anyone needs to be a bit more phallocentric it is Black Men. We of all people should know the import of preserving and promoting our phallus in a society that makes it a priority to emasculate us. You wanna talk mythology, the volumes upon volumes of twisted and blatantly false mythologies, theologies and ideologies purported by the white male phallocentric SYSTEMS of this world have historically been the primary contributing factors at work in the development of The Crusades, Colonialism, slavery, jim crow, the trail of tears, the tuskeegee experiments, the berlin conference, The Third Reich, hiroshima, nagasaki, cointelpro, and the INVASION & MILITARY OCCUPATION of Iraq. And true enough Capitalism is in fact a central factor of the aforementioned developments. However, when Capitalism is at the service of white male patriarchal hegemony and is enforced by ruthless military conquest the primary factor at heart is the Ideologies fostering the mindsets of those in that hegemony. It just so happens that exactly like the ideologies in the King Kong film, those of the white male patriarchal power structure are riddled with, (how’d you put it?) “fluffed up racial essentialism”. Who knows better the historical credence and the anthropological validity of “man-the-hunter-fighter-fucker” story and Warfighting than white “motherfuckers”. YouknowadImSayin.
P.S. Warfighting is just as much in yalls nature as shopping at Wal-Mart in the sense that yall see it as the most quick and convienient way to get what you want. Just Check yall history boi.
Holla Back.
19 December 2005, 11:00 amStan:
Here is the holla back. There is not a shred of eivdence to support you claims. But we could give that more time were it not for the way you are posting. There are rules on this blog about how we communicate.
This is an antiracist blog. The critique of white supremacy is not merley tolerated, it is strongly encouraged and permeates the whole space. The blog author has raised three black children in the American south, belongs to a minority-white political formation, and counts revoltuionary Black nationalists among his very closest comrades and mentors.
And I have never expelled anyone for disagreeing with me. Cripes, Ed Haywood is still sending me his silliness from Iraq! And I still post it.
But sexist bullshit and name-calling, especially in the provocative style of blog-troll flamethrowers, is only tolerated once per person. That means this is your last post.
Bye.
19 December 2005, 12:36 pmCarl:
Too bad there are those who cannot see the intersections of race and gender. [Stan, I’m just blowing some steam…feel free to delete any or all of this. Thanks].
You (sexist males) may not see it as explicitly (sexist), but (sexism) is so much a part of you alls culture and way of life that it becomes a given that sinks into the background and becomes an un-noticed pervasive factor in the environment, much like the sky or the very ground we walk on. You rarely even think about it because it has always been a fixture in the order of things (for instance, this sort of crap: “warfighting is natural and transcends culture”).
22 December 2005, 2:06 pmMike:
Corected version:
Huh? Although I do not argue the whole historical and still present division between blacks and whites (read William Faulkner “Light in August,” which is eerily parallel to the O.J. trial), this most recent version of King Kong has more to do with the legacy of one white woman - Diane Fossey. Thanks to Andy Serkis’ research, we had a very realistic portrayal of a Silver-back Mountain Gorilla male (Gorilla gorilla), and not a black man or human of any kind (Homo sapiens). Kong was not a vicious blood-thirst beast, but a misunderstood intelligent animal.
I was relieved that the entire sexual interest of Kong for Darrow was removed. Kong carried Darrow around like a boy with a Spiderman action figure, and did not “rape” her, as in previous versions. Why would this giant gorilla have any interest in mating with this miniature human female? Jane Goodall cited one inter-species relationship in her studies, between young baboons and gorillas, which were female. I suggest going back and picking up “Koko’s Kitten.”
Eventually Ann Darrow, as portrayed by Niomi Watts, connects with Kong is Diane Fossey fashion. This intelligent young woman, who has survived the great depression with her compassion still intact, realizes that Kong is an intelligent animal, very much alone. And that sets in deeper with the audience, as the humans slip by the skeleton of Kong’s dead companion. Kong was the last of his kind, which was the over-riding tragedy of the movie. “T’was beauty that killed the beast,” only rang farcically at the end, which I think was Jackson’s intent.
There does remain the issue of the brutality of the black pacific islanders. Some tribal peoples are, and many are not. Read up on the Yanamano of the Amazon, and for a balance, the Arapesh of New Guinea. Tribal peoples are not a monolith, but as diverse as state society people (North and South Korea). I think Jackson did make it clear that the whites (men) did match their brutality bullet per spearhead, and further. These men took what they wanted because they could, regardless of the consequences. This was a theme in all three versions.
The one remaining issue to me, is why did it take a blond Germanic woman to “tame” Kong, when all those black women proceeded her? Jackson does not present enough information to pass judgment, but simply replicates the original movie here. So the issue still remains, as to how Hollywood views the difference between whites and blacks…or Arabs…or Mediterraneans. Maybe if Jackson had renamed it “My Big Fat Greek Gorilla,” people would have found it more amusing. What an idea for a sequel?
22 January 2006, 7:27 amJames:
The fact that you perpetuate the correlation between gorillas and black males only speaks to your personal issues. NOONE I know who saw this movie saw that. Sometimes a giant gorilla is just a giant gorilla.
24 January 2006, 2:05 pmRichard Hamilton:
I read these articles while doing a sociology paper on racism. Know I realize why you poor Americans are so messed up.
Clean up your own backyard first.
11 July 2006, 9:49 amSusan:
I too had an inkling and wondered about Jackson’s inclinations - cite not only King Kong but also his portrayal of the “invaders” in LOTR - I couldn’t believe how it so openly referenced the “yellow hordes” and referenced African physical characteristics … it would be very interesting to track Jackson’s inclinations
26 September 2006, 7:24 amPuntos:
I think Stan needs to look up Peter Jackson’s work some more, just because he was mainly unknown within mainstream American media doesn’t mean that he hasn’t done some great things in movies in the past.
Wikipedia is your friend, unlike paranoia. Anyone with paranoia can come up with theories about what a movie is really about from their POV, go cry yourself to sleep IMO.
31 January 2007, 9:07 pmHooper:
The, presumably white, posters above are in engaging in an uniquely American form of intellectual dishonesty wherein anti-black-male racism, a defining characteristic of the United States’ (past and present) is the elephant in the living room whose existence is conspicuously denied… even as they wade around neck-deep in dung.
REPLY: This site and its most frequent commenters have consistently acknowledged and critiqued the intersection of white supremacy and patriarchy, calling both organizing principles of American society. We have also pointed to the contradictions, ie, the need to validate women’s experience of rape as a mechanism of social control at the sametime we note how often the lurid image of the hypersexual black male operates to conjoin rape with black men in the imaginations of white people. It strikes us as odd that this comment defines American white supremacy as “anti-black-MALE racism,” as if Black women somehow escape the vagaries of white supremacy.
8 April 2007, 10:03 pm