Is King Kong Racist?
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- Опубликовано: 1 мар 2023
- A fun, lighthearted, totally uncontroversial subject to celebrate the 90th anniversary of King Kong's New York premiere on March 2, 1933.
Disclaimer: this video deals with subjects of race, racism, and violence against women.
#kingkong #godzillavskong 
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I don't think king kong is racist or represents slavery or black people. I think king kong represents the exploitation of untamed wild nature, and what happens to us when it fights back.
Although I do really like how 2005 King Kong and the Monsterverse incarnation made him out as very majestic, benevolent and powerful, so at least if you see the human traits the modern depictions have solidified him as a noble heroic character eitherway.
KING KONG is racist only to those who are insecure enough to perceive it as such.😊
You genuinely believe that's what they were thinking in 1930s when they craft this concept?
During the black face era
You can think what you want. But King Kong is definitely racist.
Great video debunking those "theories". You've done a much better job addressing those claims than most, so I appreciate you making this.
Happy 90th, Kong!
Man thank you SO MUCH for this video. It sucks that it needed to be said, but these are the times we live in. I swear it's so annoying seeing all the people who will try and find a single reason to hate on Kong. Mfs will look at Kong in chains and go "racism!" "Slavery!" as if that was the intent with the creation and not just a racist connection made by the person themselves. It's been confirmed so many times that Merian C Cooper wanted to make a film about a giant ape. Fans of King Kong know this, but then these "film scholars" come in and bust out their scarfs and smoke pipes and act as if every single one of these connections they made in their heads were intentional. It's like how english teachers will read into such small details that never actually mattered. Like "Why did the author clarify the door was red? Was it to highlight his anger and reflect the parallels between his mood and the story?" and it turns out the author is like "the door was red because I thought it was cool".
I especially despise the people who act like the 2005 King Kong is also racist for the portrayal of the natives being savages. Despite the fact that it was confirmed that this is NOT the case and that it was due to the harsh conditions of the island that forced humanity to regress back into that savage primitive state it was once in within the past. Peter Jackson and Richard Taylor have both clarified this. But sadly that's something these Twitter stans would probably just ignore.
It's okay to make a connection to another event in history (as long as it isn't as racist as saying a giant gorilla in chains = a black man that was enslaved), but CLARIFY that it's a connection YOU inferred! That dude who makes a shitty Kong article every year or two acts as if this was some mind-blowing reveal that years of research brought up, not just one of his ass opinions.
Great video man. It needed to be said and you came out the gates swinging! Looking forward to more Kong-tent!!!
"That dude who makes a shitty Kong article every year or two acts as if this was some mind-blowing reveal that years of research brought up, not just one of his ass opinions."
I want to frame this quote 😆
I don’t understand why RUclips’s algorithm is randomly pumping endless King Kong videos to me but I’m glad I came across this one. Very interesting discussion!
You must have accidentally paused for a second while one autoplayed as you were scrolling 😆
That part where Kong is smiling while grinding the big black guy into the ground was kind of.
He killed everyone, even a white woman he gleefully dropped from a great height in the most cruel manner.
No
Racists see race
They're the most prejudiced and discrimination based people
No. I feel like this subject around this film has been discussed at length from every possible angle for almost a century. There’s nothing really new that can be added.
I believe that is the best I have ever heard this argument stated!
Great video and while said debunking those therories.
Amazing video, I love it.
A hearty here here , as the saying goes you killed two birds with one stone with your on point analysis
F... Yeah 👊 great video 🥊
Do you have a link to any of the books you have cited?
If you create an account with archive.org, you can virtually borrow "The Girl in the Hairy Paw" (from which the Belmer quotes are taken) at archive.org/details/girlinhairypawki0000unse, and Cynthia Erb's "Tracking King Kong" (which I reference quotes from in the reception theory section) at archive.org/details/trackingkingkong0000erbc
@@MonsterKidCory Appreciate it. Thank you very much
Excellent analysis! Anyone who harbors such feelings about "King Kong" should watch this video. And I agree with what others have stated that this is more about man exploiting nature and nature hitting back with deadly consequences. We would see those similar themes in other monster features, such as "The Creature from the Black Lagoon", "Gorgo" & Toho's "Mothra".
As Ryan George Collins (a.k.a. OmniViewer) has said, even though Kong being an allegory for black people is a valid interpretation, it is still not racist, because Kong was meant to be a sympathetic character.
Actually this was very interesting to watch,and thank you. Never went beyond my undergraduate in lit, but I saw two different sides with aspects of what you're talking about. One strain of professors always warned us against reading our ideas into the text. The more postmodern educated professors had more room for that reasoning. Reception theory is a new term to me, but it fits the strains of the more emotivist thinking of the postmodern views. And adjacent to that was always the moralizing based upon the presentist thinking. Yes there's a kind of racist representation of the islander, but it is a product of a time that fits that era's thinking. I always try to warn about reading into the times content to people, but it seems to have poor reception. Hence at times the divide between my horror tastes, and some friends. And silly as it sounds, I always took the Kong tale as more of a riff upon Beauty and the Beast as Denham said at the end. But that's just me. Again thank you for this,and if you read my rambling thank you for that.
It's great rambling! Thank you!
To me, the saddest indictment of postmodern presentism was not Kong as a giant black penis, but that one quote I slipped in during the part on presentism, at 13:57 ... I read that quote out to my wife, who has an undergraduate degree in archaeology, and she just blinked at me and said "ya' think?" Like, ya' think a work should be assessed in historical terms, according to local and contextual forms of knowledge possessed by spectators within a given period? That has to be SAID?!? Like it's some great, radical, innovative, original thought?! Like, what even is the alternative?!
to me King Kong has always been about men exploiting nature for their own benefit. Even though that probably wasnt the (full) intention of the original creators, the allegory is absolutely there. Its why both, the 1933 and PJs 2005 (even more so) are still very relevant movies in our times and I love that the current Monsterverse is building up on that idea.
Everyone thinks is racist just because carries old tropes from media like The Lost World, just that. Thanks for the video, amazing explanation! I also realized that you dislike the Peter Jackson´s version, why? I would like to know.
The short answer is that Jackson's version just piles unnecessary padding onto an already perfect story, and has too many juvenile cinematic cliches.
@@MonsterKidCory thanks for the answer!!! Have a good night. Glad to find another pasionate Kong fan
@@MonsterKidCory
I keep trying to type a response but I can’t come up with anything that doesn’t make me look like an asshole who can’t handle other people’s opinions
Best I can come up with is that both of those supposed flaws are completely meaningless to me
I don’t know what that statement says about me but it’s the only thing I had that wasn’t mean
I was just researching ideas for a kong fan film I’ll never actually make I don’t know how I got here
@@s.nifrum4580 lol, I can't even imagine anyone loving Peter Jackson's film well enough to fly into such a rage, but I'm glad that you enjoy it 😆
This is a pretty interesting topic, I was expressing my complicated feeling about the portrayal of island natives in King Kong vs Godzilla just the other day. I take some issues with your strong stance on the value of authorial intent and the assumed media literacy of devout fans (may I introduce you to the Star Wars fandom?), but what I appreciate about your analysis is that you highly value engaging a film on its terms. While movies like King Kong are unavoidably products of a more racist time and contain some pretty poorly dated caricatures, engaging with the movie on its own terms wouldn't necessarily entail a narrative that's about race at all, at least not by intent. It's totally valid if those dated aspects hurt someone's the present day viewing experience, but that's quite different from ascribing racism to the film itself. I find this lens of analysis interesting because I consider the natives in King Kong vs Godzilla to be much more detrimental to that film, and I believe my critique holds far more water.
I think those scenes are booooooring.
The racist caricatures in KKvsG and many other Showa era Kaiju films are not meant to push racist philosophy, but are simply included for spectacle and excitement, relying on exoticism to mystify the creatures and their habitats - and that's where I actually take issue. Aside from how obviously dated those scenes are, I find they don't work not because of moralized judgement, but simply because I believe exoticism to be a fairly lazy shorthand for a storyteller to fall back on to create a compelling fiction - and interestingly, the very same filmmakers would go on to improve upon this issue with the Shobjin from Mothra. In fact, while the Shobjin/Cosmos always seem to accompany Mothra, the natives of Infant Island stop appearing after the Showa era - *and nothing is lost.* I believe this change goes beyond Toho simply keeping with the times, for it is also exposing of how little those natives ever added at all. The Shobjin are clearly the more compelling concept; they build mystique and intrigue by being more fully thought out works of fiction, unique to that fiction, with their own aesthetic and music and charm. Of course, that's not to say the Shobjin are entirely original, obviously they're inspired by other older works of fiction and mythology, but the main point is that they rely on much more than exoticism to engage the audience, resulting in a more fully thought out and interesting vehicle for storytelling. While it is perhaps not the fault of 60s filmmakers for either not recognizing exoticism in their works, or not predicting how it would make their films less timeless, I think it's at least fair to point out that, even for the times, there were still more creative and interesting ways to build the worlds for their monsters to inhabit - and I think it's both interesting and valuable to observe filmmakers like Ishiro Honda flip flop between arguably generic exoticized tribes that all start to blend together, and more unique, memorable, and often FAR more charming and hilarious characters like the Xiliens. This was basically a long form way of saying that, in the midst of all the discourse about how racist the islanders in all these old movies are and yadda yadda, I think it's weird no one points out that they're just kind of boring, and yes, especially to a modern audience that no longer resonates with the exoticism - because there's little else those scenes have to offer.
Thank you for the interesting and thoughtful comment! I appreciate the perspective.
KING KONG (1933) is my favourite film of all time and has been for longer than I remember. I first saw it in 1971 when it was rereleased in theatres in its original uncensored form. I was seven years old. I’ve studied and researched the film my entire life and have written about it extensively for Scary Monsters magazine.
I’m well aware of the racist perspective of the film, from everything from the slave-trade analogy to the inappropriate costumes worn by the natives of Skull Island (the island wasn’t located near Africa). Noble Johnson’s native Chief (as written subtextually by Ruth Rose) was not a savage brute, but a wise, experienced, diplomatic leader who had clearly met strangers (perhaps even white men) before. This is made evident by 1)- his not ordering Denham and is landing party killed at first sight, especially after spoiling their religious ceremony and 2)- his willingness to barter for the “golden woman.” Economic trade was part of his past experience and vocabulary, as he knew that his tribe could benefit from trade with strangers who have previously visited the island. The Chief understands diplomacy enough to allow Denham and his crew to leave the island peaceably, only to later confer with the Witch Doctor and plan the strategy that would ultimately put Ann Darrow on the sacrificial altar. The viewer of the film can easily determine this by simply reading between the lines of Ruth Rose’s script and recognizing the subtext. Unfortunately, many modern critics fail to recognize this and condemn all of the natives as pre-Hayes Code “ungawa” racism.
What Rose was trying to get across in her script back in 1933 was that the natives weren’t generic savages, but the last of a civilization who did everything in their knowledge and past experiences to survive. Yes, the costumes were all wrong, but that’s the fault of RKO’s costume department’s limited 1933 mindset and budget, not the fault of the script or native characters.
Much ado has been made of the scene where Kong strips the clothes from an unconscious Ann Darrow. It’s been interpreted (mostly by white critics) as the rape of the white woman by the black man, the ultimate victory. She is at the time, as previously mentioned, unconscious as he begins to tear away her garments. She awakes half-way through the act and reacts in subjugated violation and horror. When I first saw the film as a young child, that interpretation never crossed my mind. I saw an innocent and curious Kong, playing with his new doll during the first moment of the story that he could actually sit down and relax. He sniffed at the torn garments not as a rapist or a pervert, but as any curious animal with heightened olfactory senses would.
The film is an epical work of art and can be interpreted from every perspective. I can easily finagle KING KONG into any conversation about any subject. I, personally, have never walked in Cooper and Shoedsack’s stylish-but-comfortable 1933 shoes, so I can’t speak for their intentions, deliberate or not. We all have our own subjective interpretations of the film, and that’s cool, it’s what keeps us talking about the film currently in 2024. That’s art, folks!
Thank you for your commentary!
You get it.
43 minutes, this should be good.
I really don't get the issue some people have voiced about the islanders being animalistic in Peter Jackson's version. Humans are animals and we are shaped by our environments. Skull Island is an isolated and incredibly hostile environment, so it makes sense that the humans on Skull Island who've adapted to it probably over centuries or more are very animalistic.
It seemed to me that he tried to strike a balance of having "savage" islanders who were "savage" because of the hostile environment they live in, not because they happened to be non-white.
my white bath tub is racist
Then again that's unfortunately the problem, even with the evidence to show that this whole thing is at most a misunderstanding or misconception, but it doesn't help how unfortunately there is that paranoia of how certain nutcases would turn a piece of entertainment into a piece of propaganda. While it is true that sadly we can't predict the outcome of a piece by audience reception or even can't pick your audience as much as we wish we could. And even if there is points to show why this is ridiculous, sadly most people won't listen since they don't like being talked down to or told they're wrong due to our own rebellious egos.
well why you at it, the sun is racist , looks blonde and golden to me
Kong is portrayed in a very sympathetic way. He is being exploited and taken somewhere he has never been before (and doesn't belong) without a clue what is happening. Whereas Carl Denham is a white man who is very greedy and only cares about his own selfish ambition. So even if it IS a commentary on slavery and interracial relationships (which I don't believe it is), the one bringing Kong to America in chains and putting an end to the relationship is the bad guy and Kong is the victim. In my opinion that would be portraying slavery and people who oppose interracial relationships in a pretty negative light. If anything, it is actually pretty progressive and ahead of its time.
What was the purpose of making this video???
To scratch a burr in my saddle.
titanic white star line was racist , it said white star
snow is racist
water is racist
I blame much of this on King Kong for not beating Godzilla to a standstill when he had the chance. That would have ended all debate as to which one of them is the true king of all monsters.
Uuhhh .....nope
Yeah
And what's funnier is even after the modern rematch, the debate didn't stop. It's basically a war that will never end (much more believable than the one in the movie I'd say😂)
This is a very well researched and entertaining video, but as someone who does believe King Kong is a racist movie because I subscribe to death of the author and reception analysis, you didn't really debunk my thoughts like I was hoping. You just sort of pointed out the different interpretations and went "yeah but I don't like that."
Movies are art, the relationship with the film and its audience is important, the "feelings" are something film analysis should consider. Calling that "narcissistic" because it doesn't absolutely prioritize authorial intent isn't an argument against it, it's just... an opinion. Your own feelings with the film. In your desire to debunk the "wrong" interpretations of the film, all I really got from this was you letting your love for the film (a movie I very much love myself) pigeonhole yourself into accepting only the interpretations and analysis which paint it in a pretty light.
Like, I fully agree that it's frustrating to see a movie you like get torn apart by laymen and professionals alike for seemingly the same, vague and dismissive reasons. There are movies I will defend to the grave against my better judgement, but I think this video is more for people who already fully believe the answer to the title's question is "no" before even clicking than anyone coming from the point of view of the academics you lambast.
// You just sort of pointed out the different interpretations and went "yeah but I don't like that." //
Fair enough... I ascribe the weakness of my argument there to the fact that reception theory is OBVIOUSLY wrong.
As I say in my video, reception theory has an interesting place as a psychological analysis of the audience, but it utterly irrelevant when it comes to actually understanding the film. For that you do have to understand the author and the cultural-historical context. The feelings, good or bad, someone in 2023 has about King Kong is completely irrelevant to understanding the film.
How does one explain how irrelevant it is? The person in 2023 who is all up in feelings that, frankly, probably aren't even their own feelings but rather a second-hand opinion picked up from somewhere else has nothing whatever to do with the motivations and messaging of the people who made it. It just... doesn't. No relevance whatsoever. It's like, for example, a Creationist complaining that evolutionary theory hurts their feelings because they don't want to imagine themselves descended from monkeys. So what? That has no bearing on the factuality of evolution whatsoever.
On the contrary, if anything I would consider it somewhat damaging. Invoking presentism can DAMAGE perception of the film and create a false narrative that unfairly besmirches it. Modern feelings largely SHOULD be ignored, as a moral imperative. To draw out my prior analogy, reception theory is to film studies as Creationism is to science. Creationism can actually damage public perception and knowledge of science and its findings, all because some people caught up in their feelings and opinions don't LIKE something that they don't even understand.
And I guess that's where I'm coming at it more from. To me, academic analysis of art is much more like a science. My feelings about the artistic work are secondary to the objective facts of who made it, how, why, and what actually happens in the work. And I think it is literally insane to believe otherwise. Like, I don't understand how you could possibly think that the feelings of someone in 2023 has any relevance whatsoever to the film's meaning.
As Ryan George Collins (a.k.a. OmniViewer) has said, even though Kong being an allegory for black people is a valid interpretation, it is still not racist, because Kong was meant to be a sympathetic character.
Y'all need to new topics to focus on.
Trust me, this is the sort of video I wish I didn't feel like I needed to make.
@@MonsterKidCory "needed to make"? you feel the "need" to perpetuate racism? To drone on about a film that is almost 100 years old, made in a time when the world, then when society itself was completely different. When film making was at it's advent and especially of a film that was not only groundbreaking but incredibly influential to countless other film makers. Calling Kong racist or the approach of the film as racist does absolutely nothing other than perpetuate ignorant theory agendas that continue to divide and confuse people. Racism exists. Always has and unfortunately always will as long as people continue to drone on about it. The past is the past. You want to attempt to end racism? Stop talking about it and focus on something more proactive and constructive that brings people and understanding of our differences together.
@@sagdragon64 So you didn't watch the video then. Got it.
@@MonsterKidCory No, I didn't watch the whole video, guess I should have to get the punch line, right? The point is that the vid was made at all especially with it's title. I see it either as click bate or a continued practice to make Race about everything or vice versa. I first saw King Kong in '73 when I was 9yrs old. I grew up in Southern MD where everyone seemed racist. My parents were verbally racist so I understand very well what racism is. Since '73 Kong has remained one of my top favorite films that I have watched countless times and not once have I looked at or perceived the film as racist. That fact that anyone "needs" to contemplate this about this film is abhorrent. The title of the vid made my eyes roll, first thought "click bait" but since I have an affinity for the film, I thought I'd see what you had to say then after a few minutes I just became disgusted this has to be a topic. I am really sick and tired of EVERYTHING being about race. But, I will watch the rest of the vid to see if my perception is wrong. I do know to evaluate properly w/o judging first, it's just the race topic is so out of hand and the more it is discussed in any forum the more it will remain an issue. To me Kong is a classic monster movie that is a retelling of Beauty and Beast that has had monumental influence on many brilliant film makers. It's not about race, so to me the topic is moot.
@@sagdragon64 // No, I didn't watch the whole video, guess I should have to get the punch line, right? //
I don't even get a minute and a half into the video before my opinion becomes pretty clear. You didn't even watch it to the BEGINNING, let alone to the end.