King Kong- Film Review

King Kong overall is a film that I personally didn’t find too enjoyable. It is a film in which the female protagonist is weirdly sexualised as a competitive prize in a fight between an animal, being Kong, and the main protagonist sailor. The film makes it clear that she’s nothing but a pretty face and it has made its way into cinema and still is in cinema to this very day. Women have been treated as romantic prizes for a long time and as times have changed it has become less common but in the time that this film was made it was very common to see an attractive woman that appealed to the masses ideal of beauty and seduction, other characters throughout cinematic history can be seen as Jessica Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Bella Swan from the film twighlight in more recent years. It’s a severe objectification which only within the past century we have made significant efforts to stop and prevent this mentality towards women within film and cinema. The other ideal with women in this film that I personally could not appreciate and stand was the amount of screaming and fainting the women did, hardly making an effort to escape, just sitting and screaming at the horror before them. This can be linked to a preference within Victorian art, where pale complexion, something the main female has as well, and light-headedness was considered graceful and attractive. The sexism towards the lady in the film is also clearly shown, though the filmmaker doesn’t really seem to encourage nor discourage these acts, through the film most their accusations and downtalking of the woman is proven right when Kong takes her away. So most likely it was meant to agree with the point of view that on a ‘mans dangerous mission’ women have no form of place or duty to be present. Yet again, those attitudes were a product of their times. 

Non-Caucasians are dressed in very stereotypical clothing. 

Another showing of the times that the film was created in is the whole subtext in which King Kong is based. At the time, slavery was becoming abolished and seen for what it was, however there was plenty of racism, especially in the cities where mostly white people were living for many years before people of other skin colours began to come into the cities. Nothing experienced by the people before and cause for much debate of how to treated these people who white people were very used to having as slaves and such people. With this context King Kong looks like a film that is demonising minority races that were coming into the cities at the time. Arguing also on this point was David N. Rosen saying ‘Racist conceptions of blacks often depict them as subhuman, ape or monkey-like...’(1)drawing attention to this point I agree, the timing is just too close for this not to at least minorly be about racial tensions. The parallels between what Kong goes through and what slaves went through is quite disturbing as well. Kong is taken from his home alike many slaves were, shown to a rich audience for money, which in its display in the cinematography has quite a parallel to the slave markets with a big stage and a few presentors. Not to mention that King Kong is a Gorilla. Something that racist people would call black people as a slur. 

The film does not do much gold for itself in terms of seeming inclusive, not only do black people get a lot of flack but Asian people did as well. All the Caucasian men on the ship as they sail to find Kong are wearing typical ship clothes, but the Asian cook on the boat gets dressed in very stereotypical chinese costume which encourages the stereotype that the actor has to enforce. 

Kong also sees the emergence of an idea of an island of mystery shrouded in fog, which would make its way into films like Peter Pan and even later films such as Pirates of the Caribbean, so much so that it has become quite a staple of Pirate and Adventure Genres of film. 

Personally I couldn’t see this as a horror film, but it can show how people are desensitised to such violence these days I couldn’t imagine a modern critic saying ‘It (the film) essays to give the spectator a vivid conception of the terrifying experiences of a producer of jungle pictures and his colleagues,’(2) like Mordaunt Hall has claimed in 1933 because as said by Roger Ebert a film critic originally ‘The men shaken from the log fell into a chasm where they were devoured by giant spiders... people walked out (the cinema)and Cooper cut it.’ [3] being eaten by spiders is just something that’s very stereotypical, especially in the fantasy genre films such as Lord of the Rings and video games like Divinity and Skyrim; nowadays people are fine with characters being eaten by spiders. Culture is desensitised in majority to that kind of thing.

(1) Rosen,D,N (1975) Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media Jump Cut, no. 6, pp. 7-10

(2)Hall,M(1933) ‘A Fantastic Film in Which a Monstrous Ape Uses Automobiles for Missiles and Climbs a Skyscraper’ New York Times, March 3, pp.0

(3)Ebert,R (2002) King Kong <https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-king-kong-1933>