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.

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.

Clean up your own backyard first.

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?

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”).

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.

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.

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