We begin our trip to Skull Island
King Kong is one of the most studied films as possible symbol of racism, sexism, subconscious sexuality, and similar topics. In these posts I will focus on the scientific feasibility of the geography, flora and fauna of the film; the relationship between the woman and the giant gorilla; and changes between versions (1933, 1976 and 2005).
ESPAÑOL / SPANISH
King Kong es una de las películas más estudiadas como posible símbolo de racismo, machismo, sexualidad subconsciente y temas similares. En estas publicaciones les contaré sobre la viabilidad científica de la geografía, flora y fauna de la película; la relación entre la mujer y el gorila gigante; y los cambios entre las versiones (1933, 1976 y 2005).
Image source: imdb.com
The blog will be based on an academic article:
Ann’s secret relationship with King Kong: a biological look at Skull Island and the true nature of the Beauty and Beast Myth
(By Julián Monge-Nájera, Laboratorio de Ecología Urbana, Vicerrectoría de Investigación UNED, Sabanilla MO, S. José, Costa Rica; julianmonge@gmail.com)
Reproduced with permission from:
I was lucky enough to watch all versions of King Kong on the big screen, not reduced to a less impressive miniature on television or a computer. As a teenager, I saw the original (1933) version in a festival of American film history in the Centro Cultural Costarricense-Norteamericano in San José, Costa Rica, as well as Guillermin’s and Jackson’s versions when they were first shown in theaters in 1976 and 2005.
I liked all of them and I introduced my children to the story in due time (they disliked the end, but loved the rest of the film). In this essay, as a biologist and film fan, I will tell you my personal perspective and unify the cores of all those analyses about King Kong’s geography, evolution, ecology and sexology presented throughout the years in numerous blogs, websites and book-length treatments. I conclude that despite the directors’ view -that in adventure films drama is more important than scientific accuracy- King Kong had scientific plausibility and even surpassed some scientific knowledge at the time it was made. Finally, I explain why I reject Dekker’s (1992) interpretation of animal-woman sex myths as exclusive products of the male mind, and base that rejection on recent scientific research about this taboo topic.
Skull Island shot from King Kong, 1933
The 2017 film Skull Island, from Legendary Pictures and Tencent Pictures, revisits King Kong's home and the company promised an interesting approach to the island itself:
"Previous works have touched on the island, but staying and exploring this mysterious and dangerous place offers Legendary the opportunity to take audiences deeper inside this rich world"
Source: geeksofdoom.com
I will add comments to this blog when the film becomes available, and this will be this blog's addition to what is included in the CoRis article.
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The One and a Thousand Nights version of King Kong / El King Kong de Las Mil y una Noches
In this post I set King Kong in the historical context from the Epic of Gilgamesh, through Emmanuel Frémiet’s sculpture, until the 1933 film. In future posts I will explain how −despite the deformations of the era− the island’s vegetation and the culture of the natives have some plausibility, but not the existence of large animals on such a small island. A 20-ton gorilla is at the limit for mammal biology but would work in real life, as evidenced by the existence of Paraceratherium bugtiense during the Oligocene. Furthermore, I will show how gigantism makes sense on an island with large predatory dinosaurs.
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El King Kong de Las Mil y una Noches
Aquí ubico King Kong en el contexto histórico, desde la Epopeya de Gilgamés, pasando por la escultura de Emmanuel Frémiet, hasta la película de 1933. Concluyo que −pese a las deformaciones propias de la época− la vegetación de la isla y la cultura de los nativos tienen cierta verosimilitud, no así la existencia de animales tan grandes en una isla tan pequeña. Un gorila de 20 toneladas está en el límite de lo posible pero podría funcionar en la vida real, como lo prueba la existencia del Paraceratherium bugtiense durante el Oligoceno; además, el gigantismo tendría sentido en una isla con grandes dinosaurios depredadores. __________________________________________________________________
The geographic setting of Skull Island, with its particular geology and climate, has been imagined by the Weta team (Workshop, 2005) which designed the miniatures, make-up, native costuming and weapons of 2005’s version. The island’s ecosystems and their evolution were superficially treated by Silverberg (in Haber, 2005), who shows an good knowledge of biological principles even though he is not a biologist (but he is one of the most important names in science fiction history).
The biomechanical properties of film monsters were considered by LaBarbera (2003) and specifically for Kong by David Ewalt (2005); the archaeological origins of the island’s “tribe” were developed into a novel, Kong: King Of Skull Island, by author-illustrator Joe DeVito and by Brad Strickland, a professor of English at the University of North Georgia (DeVito & Strickland, 2005).
King Kong: actually a thousand year-old story?
But certainly it does not mean that King Kong is based, or even inspired, in The Epic of Gilgamesh, it could also be just a coincidence: after all, the more you summarize a story, the more it looks like other stories.
In the next post we will check if the island where Kong lived makes ecological sense.
--The One and a Thousand Nights version of King Kong / El King Kong de Las Mil y una Noches
In this post I set King Kong in the historical context from the Epic of Gilgamesh, through Emmanuel Frémiet’s sculpture, until the 1933 film. In future posts I will explain how −despite the deformations of the era− the island’s vegetation and the culture of the natives have some plausibility, but not the existence of large animals on such a small island. A 20-ton gorilla is at the limit for mammal biology but would work in real life, as evidenced by the existence of Paraceratherium bugtiense during the Oligocene. Furthermore, I will show how gigantism makes sense on an island with large predatory dinosaurs.
_________________________________________________________________
El King Kong de Las Mil y una Noches
Aquí ubico King Kong en el contexto histórico, desde la Epopeya de Gilgamés, pasando por la escultura de Emmanuel Frémiet, hasta la película de 1933. Concluyo que −pese a las deformaciones propias de la época− la vegetación de la isla y la cultura de los nativos tienen cierta verosimilitud, no así la existencia de animales tan grandes en una isla tan pequeña. Un gorila de 20 toneladas está en el límite de lo posible pero podría funcionar en la vida real, como lo prueba la existencia del Paraceratherium bugtiense durante el Oligoceno; además, el gigantismo tendría sentido en una isla con grandes dinosaurios depredadores. __________________________________________________________________
The story of Kong, widely remembered as the gorilla with the woman in his paw, was a cinematic success the three times it was filmed, and became a part of popular culture worldwide (Erb, 1998). Besides inspiring a large number of cultural products (some described by Erb, 1998), King Kong has been the subject of many analyses, including its geography, biomechanics, ecology, archaeology, history, and sociology; these analyses are scattered among many printed and digital publications dating mostly from a decade or more ago and sometimes difficult to find.
Source: hellhorror.com
The geographic setting of Skull Island, with its particular geology and climate, has been imagined by the Weta team (Workshop, 2005) which designed the miniatures, make-up, native costuming and weapons of 2005’s version. The island’s ecosystems and their evolution were superficially treated by Silverberg (in Haber, 2005), who shows an good knowledge of biological principles even though he is not a biologist (but he is one of the most important names in science fiction history).
Source: everydayislikewednesday.blogspot.com
The biomechanical properties of film monsters were considered by LaBarbera (2003) and specifically for Kong by David Ewalt (2005); the archaeological origins of the island’s “tribe” were developed into a novel, Kong: King Of Skull Island, by author-illustrator Joe DeVito and by Brad Strickland, a professor of English at the University of North Georgia (DeVito & Strickland, 2005).
Sociology and Psychology have abundantly considered King Kong, which depending on the authors is a representation of imperialism, racism, capitalism, nature versus civilization, sexism, male subconscious, female libido, and several others (Snead, 1991; Jense, 2002; Haber, 2005). But in my opinion after reading as much as I could bear about King Kong, is that it is not about imperialism, racism, capitalism, sexism, or female libido: it is about a giant gorilla who dies trying to keep a woman that he received in an impressive ceremony; the rest are just the worries and prejudices of writers projected on a story that was made far from their own realities (“in the land of myth, speculation is king”, Harry Harrison in Haber, 2005, p. 112).
Source: simonandschuster.ca
King Kong: actually a thousand year-old story?
Both the film and the gorilla-loves-woman concepts have precedents. Peary (1976) listed the films with similar plots and scenes before 1933’s King Kong, and explained which scenes are more likely to have directly influenced the film. The basic idea is that almost every scene in King Kong has a precedent in literature or cinematography; what was special about the movie is that it blended them in a way that continues to attract a public decades after it premiered. Actually, the story of the giant ape and the beautiful woman is far older than you may think (unless you are a historian of literature, of course), but how old it is depends on how stringent we are when looking for similar plots.
Of course, if you want a narrow interpretation, King Kong −the story of the giant gorilla killed on top of the Empire State Building− has no precedents before the twentieth century. If you prefer to see things sensu lato, the origin of King Kong may be a thousand years old, because a giant ape and a princess appear in The One and a Thousand Nights and continued well into the European culture of later centuries (Jensen, 2002).
Source: uncommonbooks.blogspot.com
And finally, if you are even more open to overall similarities, you can conclude that the basic story is more than 4000 years old, and for this we must first consider the observation that we feel sorry for Kong, victimized and chained by civilization, because the people who made the films humanized him (Haber, 2005). In other words, we would not feel the same if Kong were giant spider, for example.
And finally, if you are even more open to overall similarities, you can conclude that the basic story is more than 4000 years old, and for this we must first consider the observation that we feel sorry for Kong, victimized and chained by civilization, because the people who made the films humanized him (Haber, 2005). In other words, we would not feel the same if Kong were giant spider, for example.
A humanized but powerful wild being that attracted by a woman abandons nature, marks the beginning of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, in which Enkidu, like Kong, is a large, powerful anthropomorphic character who ate plants and lived naked in the wild. This wild being is lured into civilization by sex, a basic plot that appears explicit in the Epic and toned down in later versions such as R. Kipling’s The Jungle Book and E.R. Burroughs Tarzan. In the Epic, the sexual element is provided by Shamhat, who not only captures him through marathon sexual sessions but also educates him, taking Enkidu away from nature and into the grandest city of her time (the equivalent of New York), where he dies. The Empire State Building scene in King Kong also resembles the Epic‘s end, when Enkidu realized that his death was precipitated by following the woman, yet he still ends up wishing her the best (i.e. being desired and given valuable goods; see Dalley, 2000, and Ditmore, 2006).
Epic of Gilgamesh. Source: ancient.eu
Epic of Gilgamesh. Source: ancient.eu
But certainly it does not mean that King Kong is based, or even inspired, in The Epic of Gilgamesh, it could also be just a coincidence: after all, the more you summarize a story, the more it looks like other stories.
In the next post we will check if the island where Kong lived makes ecological sense.
Surprise: we know exactly where King Kong's Skull Island is located
There is no question of where the island is located or about its shape, because a map with coordinates appears clearly in the 1933 version; it is west of Sumatra and the film even mentions a monsoon season:
Can an island in that location look like the one in the film?
Well, yes. Because of the location, the monsoon that would affect Skull Island is the Indo-Australian Monsoon, a seasonal change of wind direction that starts in September, bringing stormy weather and floods; even though it is not common in tropical Pacific coasts, the fog that hides the island is a geographic possibility. In real life, islands in this area have large populations of mosquitoes, which we do not see in the film pestering Kong or villagers: there the film is not realistic.
The 1933 map shows a coral reef ring around the island; a sand bar in the south, where people live protected from Kong by a wall; and a larger area that is mostly lowland but has Skull Mountain in the northwest. The coral reef is typical of the region and heavy rains explain the erosion that produced the skull image when softer material was eroded from volcanic rock (Lindsey, 2011). All of this makes scientific sense, and if you look at the lower right of the screen in Kong’s cave you will see that the volcano that built the island is still active and has boiling mudpots.
Source: Californiaherps.com
Source: Californiaherps.com
Also correctly, the lowlands have thick undergrowth and the highlands grow mosses; the island’s vegetation includes bananas, ferns, palms and bamboos, and differs from lowland to highland. Overall this island is credible even though a botanist might notice particular species that do not naturally grow on Pacific islands (have you ever asked why Tarzan rides Indian elephants in the films, instead of African ones? If you have, it shows that you have never tried to tame an African elephant!).
Even if we feel satisfied with this analysis about the ecology of Skull Island, bear in mind that the sets were not made specifically for King Kong, they were from The Most Dangerous Game, a film about an adventure in South America (Dohm, 2007).
In the next post we will find out why the Island natives had a bamboo cage full of chickens; and then move on to the DINOSAURS.
Para regresar periodicamente, guarda la dirección en tu calendario digital:
https://skullislandandkingkong.blogspot.com
In the next post we will find out why the Island natives had a bamboo cage full of chickens; and then move on to the DINOSAURS.
Para regresar periodicamente, guarda la dirección en tu calendario digital:
https://skullislandandkingkong.blogspot.com
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King Kong Island natives: why did they have that chicken cage?
Interesting questions for the ecologist, and for any open minded anthropologist, are:
- Who were the natives and how did they get there?
- Why did they have a chicken cage?
In the story they were Sumatrans, but in the movie the actors were African Americans because Sumatran actors were not easy to find in Hollywood (Haber, 2005). Anyway, there is a mix of African and Asian DNA in the Pacific region, and the fact remains that for the typical American viewer the requirements for “natives” are not stringent.
In the first ceremony, the skipper says that their language is related to that of Nias (a real island which does have its own language despite its tiny size: Zimmer, 2006). Their culture also matches what used to exist in Nias, with villages run by chiefs, large constructions −megalithic, not made of wood− and the concept of selling human beings (Kennedy, 1943; Zimmer, 2006).
In the first ceremony, the skipper says that their language is related to that of Nias (a real island which does have its own language despite its tiny size: Zimmer, 2006). Their culture also matches what used to exist in Nias, with villages run by chiefs, large constructions −megalithic, not made of wood− and the concept of selling human beings (Kennedy, 1943; Zimmer, 2006).
Source: Movepins.com
Is the demographic structure of the village reasonable?
Yes, if you look carefully you will see a variety of ages and types, including children, elders and overweight people. They have basic human technologies such as pottery, basketry, ladders and torches, and are even more advanced than many Latin American countries of the time, where rural people were barefooted, my grandfather included; Kong’s natives wear sandals (not the small children, in accordance with custom in primitive societies, who are often nearly unclad). In a realistic way, they also use different clothes for ceremonies (grass skirts) and daily life (fabric skirts that in the case of young women are short and show the legs).
Yes, if you look carefully you will see a variety of ages and types, including children, elders and overweight people. They have basic human technologies such as pottery, basketry, ladders and torches, and are even more advanced than many Latin American countries of the time, where rural people were barefooted, my grandfather included; Kong’s natives wear sandals (not the small children, in accordance with custom in primitive societies, who are often nearly unclad). In a realistic way, they also use different clothes for ceremonies (grass skirts) and daily life (fabric skirts that in the case of young women are short and show the legs).
The culture looks African if you consider the oval war shields and the headdresses. On the other hand, the flower and feather ornaments, royal cloaks, canoe stabilizers and houses are consistent with Pacific island cultures (see Kennedy, 1943). The cloaks reminded me of Hawaiian ahuúla feather cloaks, but the coconut brassier worn by actress Etta McDaniel is pure Hollywood fiction (see McAvoy, 2012).
Source: monsterkidclassichorrorforum.yuku.com
I may be said that the natives could not survive in real life because they did not have access to most of the island and because you see no fishing boats or crop fields. But when Kong goes through the door, one of the villagers falls on a cage, setting free more than a dozen hens. This led me to wonder how the natives fed themselves and I noticed that their village looks like the very viable and real villages of Amerindians that I have visited in Central America.
For many years Amerindian groups made a living in coastal rainforest, without large crop fields, thanks to a combination of forest plants and animals, and they fished from land (not from boats); these resources were complemented later with introduced animals like chickens like the ones in the film. So Kong’s islanders had an advanced economic system marked the ownership of chickens.
For many years Amerindian groups made a living in coastal rainforest, without large crop fields, thanks to a combination of forest plants and animals, and they fished from land (not from boats); these resources were complemented later with introduced animals like chickens like the ones in the film. So Kong’s islanders had an advanced economic system marked the ownership of chickens.
"Kong’s islanders had an advanced economic system marked the ownership of chickens."
Before King Kong, directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack had shown villagers building high walls against dangerous animals in their 1927 documentary Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness, so it is not surprising that in King Kong they present a tall wall, rather than moats or other defenses.
Source: Wikipedia.
In the next post:
The dinosaurs of Skull Island: how did they get there?
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Was King Kong constantly hungry?
My calculations tell me that he had to be hungry: the island could not produce enough food for Kong.
Source: flickodyssey.wordpress.com
Here I explain why:
Ewalt (2005) calculated that Kong would need 3 400 kg of food per day. A normal gorilla needs 3 km2 of territory, and Kong, 100 times heavier, would require 300 km2, probably too much for the island we see in the map (even if we do not consider the fact that at some time there had to be more gorillas; shown only in the 2005 version).
No hypothetical changes in Kong’s diet or the plants around him can make their populations viable on an island small enough to be missed by cartographers in the early twentieth century.
But certainly Kong could have bitten anything he wanted, look at what is inside the mouth of a male gorilla:
Source: wikipedia.org
Source: flickodyssey.wordpress.com
Here I explain why:
Ewalt (2005) calculated that Kong would need 3 400 kg of food per day. A normal gorilla needs 3 km2 of territory, and Kong, 100 times heavier, would require 300 km2, probably too much for the island we see in the map (even if we do not consider the fact that at some time there had to be more gorillas; shown only in the 2005 version).
We could try to solve this by saying that the natives fed Kong, but again, even if he ate the poor sacrificial victims, there was not enough nourishment there.
No hypothetical changes in Kong’s diet or the plants around him can make their populations viable on an island small enough to be missed by cartographers in the early twentieth century.
But certainly Kong could have bitten anything he wanted, look at what is inside the mouth of a male gorilla:
Source: wikipedia.org
And finally, the food topic brings me to the question:
Why did the natives offer Kong women: did he eat them as a diet supplement?
Why did the natives offer Kong women: did he eat them as a diet supplement?
We'll see the answer in the next post.
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Wrong, King Kong did not fight a snake!
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Wrong, King Kong did not fight a snake!
In the 1933 movie King Kong, Skull Island was populated by dinosaurs from a large time span (Stegosaurus, Apatosaurus, Tyrannosaurus), an unidentified iguana-like reptile, a plesiosaur −often mistaken for a snake−, a pterosaur and birds.
Some herbivores like the gorilla and the Stegosaurus appear to behave incorrectly by eating meat (i.e. humans) but a closer look will show that they use their teeth to kill the victims but do not actually swallow them. This shows knowledge and care by the animators.
The plesiosaur belonged to a marine group that could swim to any distant landmass, the only question about how it got to the island is how it reached the pond near the volcano. The script only calls for “a monster” (Dohm, 2007) so it was the film staff that chose a marine reptile.
They probably were unaware of the problems that freshwater brings for marine animals (as cleverly mentioned by Silverberg in Haber, 2005), but you can also defend their choice by suggesting that perhaps not all plesiosaurs were marine, or that the water in the mountain top is just the remaining of a marine ecosystem lifted by tectonic activity. In any case, the plesiosaur defends itself from Kong by constricting its neck around him, like a snake, something we now know that was not possible, but fully in agreement with paleo-illustrator Charles R. Knight’s reconstruction at the time (Everhart, 2002).
Source: californiaherps.com
They probably were unaware of the problems that freshwater brings for marine animals (as cleverly mentioned by Silverberg in Haber, 2005), but you can also defend their choice by suggesting that perhaps not all plesiosaurs were marine, or that the water in the mountain top is just the remaining of a marine ecosystem lifted by tectonic activity. In any case, the plesiosaur defends itself from Kong by constricting its neck around him, like a snake, something we now know that was not possible, but fully in agreement with paleo-illustrator Charles R. Knight’s reconstruction at the time (Everhart, 2002).
Source: californiaherps.com
It's a plesiosaur, not a snake!
This old reconstruction also shows plesiosaurs with very flexible necks:
Hawkins (1840). Source: Wikipedia.
A newer version reflects the more complete fossil record we now have, but still the neck, seen in isolation, resembles a snake:
Plesiosaur reconstruction by Adam S. Smith, 2002. Source: Wikipedia.
The Brontosaurus (or Apatosaurus, see Choi, 2015) in the movie drags its tail, and this was correct according to scientific knowledge at the time. But it also walks well on land, which was believed impossible at the time: the artistic need for a chase forced the artists to ignore the belief of early paleontologists, and predated current reconstructions of large herbivorous dinosaurs, which could advance at good speed on land (Haber, 2005).
The Brontosaurus about to kill a poor man with its jaws, not "about to eat him":
Source: 21essays.blogspot.com
In our next post, we will continue to see what was right and wrong in King Kong's 1933 dinosaurs.
Kong also met this nice stegosaur, a dinosaur that I have loved since childhood because of its spectacular set of back plates.
Source: donglutsdinosaurs.com
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Wrong for a century: King Kong never fought a T Rex!
Hawkins (1840). Source: Wikipedia.
A newer version reflects the more complete fossil record we now have, but still the neck, seen in isolation, resembles a snake:
Plesiosaur reconstruction by Adam S. Smith, 2002. Source: Wikipedia.
The Brontosaurus (or Apatosaurus, see Choi, 2015) in the movie drags its tail, and this was correct according to scientific knowledge at the time. But it also walks well on land, which was believed impossible at the time: the artistic need for a chase forced the artists to ignore the belief of early paleontologists, and predated current reconstructions of large herbivorous dinosaurs, which could advance at good speed on land (Haber, 2005).
The Brontosaurus about to kill a poor man with its jaws, not "about to eat him":
Source: 21essays.blogspot.com
In our next post, we will continue to see what was right and wrong in King Kong's 1933 dinosaurs.
Kong also met this nice stegosaur, a dinosaur that I have loved since childhood because of its spectacular set of back plates.
Source: donglutsdinosaurs.com
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Wrong for a century: King Kong never fought a T Rex!
The most memorable dinosaur from King Kong may be the Tyrannosaurus that he wrestles. The reptile was also correct according to the knowledge available at the time, with scales instead of feathers. According to audio commentary by Ray Harryhausen in the DVD edition of the film, it was not a Tyrannosaurus but an Allosaurus, but I will keep calling it Tyrannosaurus because the model was not anatomically detailed and because a Tyrannosaurus is what most people think they are watching.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
There is also a scene in which a pterosaur captures Ann but has difficulties taking flight with its heavy load, actually an impossible task for such an animal (the same error appears in 2015’s Jurassic World). If you pay attention you will notice that even though scientifically wrong, the scene recorded the beauty of Fay Wray’s legs for history.
Source: http://greenbriarpictureshows.blogspot.com/
I can imagine the plesiosaurs (from 66 million years before present, mybp) swimming to the island and the pterosaurs (from 80 mybp) reaching it on the wing, but the question of how the dinosaurs could have reached the island if this were a true story forced me to check the paleomaps for the Cretaceous and Jurassic periods. The Stegosaurus and Brontosaurus lived up to 150 mybp in the northern landmass of the time, so theoretically they could have walked to the area, but the Tyrannosaurus lived on a giant North American island 66 mybp so I see no feasible way for the carnivore to reach Skull Island, despite the land connections imagined by Valdron (2005). If you take Harryhausen’s statement that it was meant to be an Allosaurus, the problem disappears and its arrival is believable.
Source: http://bumbletubclub.blogspot.com/
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Did dinosaurs really scratch?
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I love one aspect of the predatory dinosaur that I have not seen mentioned in the literature: before the fight, you see him scratching (or her? Females might have been larger and more fit to fight Kong). This scratching is a genial idea from the animators and forced me to ask if dinosaurs could scratch. Impossible to know? Actually not, and here I got my answer from famous ethologist and Nobel Prize winner Konrad Lorenz: scratching with a limb is a useful stereotyped behavior that appeared in our evolutionary time long before dinosaurs, with the first amphibians (Lorenz & Leyhausen, 1971). Why was it scratching? Perhaps because of the mosquitoes that I mentioned earlier?
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| Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989). Source: http://www.dabase.org/lorenz.htm |
Birds in the Sumatra region are nearly three times as diverse as reptiles, so there probably were many species on Skull Island, but even though we listen to them we only get to see a few types: some flying around when they reach the island, one that flies scared from a nest when Kong is about to place Ann on it (I could not identify this bird) and the vultures that fly above and feed on the Tyrannosaurus carcass.
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| Vultures flying above. Source: http://kingkong.wikia.com |
I have a question for next week: why the dinosaurs did not suffer the size reduction typical of originally large animals when they colonize small islands?
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Nano-dinosaurs: why King Kong's dinosaurs were the wrong size
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Nano-dinosaurs: why King Kong's dinosaurs were the wrong size
One additional question about Skull Island dinosaurs is why they did not suffer the size reduction typical of originally large animals when they colonize small islands, where food and other resources are scarce, as asked by Silverberg (in Haber, 2005).
Does this biological rule apply to dinosaurs? It does, and even though proof was ignored by the paleontological community it was actually found long ago by the tragic Baron Franz Nopcsa in Hateg, a place where dinosaurs could weigh only an eighth of their mainland relatives weight.
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| Baron Franz Nopcs, circa 1913. Source: wikipedia.org |
To be absent from early twentieth century charts, Skull Island should have been much smaller than Hateg with its 78 000 km2 (see Benton et al. 2010) and large dinosaurs there would have needed to be much smaller.
Even if we imagine that the island in the 1933 film appears tiny because it is not to scale, viable populations of animals as large as dinosaurs require far larger landmasses: in brief, science does not support the gigantic fauna of Skull Island (or in A. Conan Doyle’s Lost World plateau that inspired it).
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Source: https://burrunjor.com/page/7/
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What Galileo Galilei had to say about King Kong
Kong shows intelligence and curiosity, I have heard of no criticisms to these aspects of his behavior. When the first King Kong was made, almost nothing was known of gorilla behavior, but gorillas are so close to us that the writers and animators succeeded in giving Kong an acceptable personality. He comes when you call him with the gong (but even a turtle that I had at home, a Kinosternon scorpioides, did that); he turns the mechanism that keeps Ann’s ropes stretched to set her free, and he makes sure she is safe when the planes attack.
On land, bigger animals are heavier and need thicker legs, and for this reason Ewalt (2005) wrote that Kong was too big to walk: his bones would be crushed by his weight because of the square-cube law, described in 1638 by Galileo Galilei (who found that volume grows faster than area when one changes the size of things). Our current analyses of Kong and his island are not different from those that Galileo applied to another imaginary being and his habitat, i.e. Lucifer and Hell; and he was only following the steps of Antonio Manetti (1423-1497), the Florentine mathematician, architect and writer (Fisher, 2011). Regarding the question of why serious academics should pay attention to such useless topics, I cite Galileo himself:
It is an admirable and difficult thing ... that men should have been able by long observations, continuous vigils, and perilous navigations, to measure and determine the intervals of the heavens ... and the place of earth and sea, things that completely, or for the greater part, fall under the senses. How more wonderful should we consider the study and the description of the place and size of hell which lies in the bowels of the earth hidden from all the senses (full translation: https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/mpeterso/galileo/inferno.html).
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Ewalt (2005) adds, though, that giraffes are tall and thin-legged but functional and gives Kong some hope, but there he fails to consider weight. Giraffes weigh 1,5 ton, while Kong would weigh more than 20 ton (Ewalt, 2005), thus I rather agree with Valdron (2005) who wrote that if Paraceratherium (Indricotherium) bugtiense not only lived but colonized much of Eurasia with a weight of 20 ton and normal-width legs (see Clauss, et al., 2003), Kong could indeed walk well. Having to choose between mathematical calculations and real organisms, I always choose the later. Even Galileo got his hellish calculations wrong the first time (Fisher, 2011).
The most common ecological causes of gigantism are cold weather and protection from predators. The tropical climate of the island limits us to the option of protection, and even though this probably never crossed the minds of King Kong’s writers, the sole presence of Tyrannosaurus is enough to explain such a need. The second question is harder to answer, could Kong find enough food?
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The basic idea of sacrifice is that of a gift given to maintain a good relationship; and food is a common form of sacrifice, well known in the West from the Cain and Abel tale.
In the 2005 version of King Kong we see skeletons of previous “Kong brides”, but no evidence they were eaten, so we must assume they died from other causes such as panic or starvation; but there is no need to continue along that line, the script clearly says they were brides (Dohm, 2007).
Source: Americanmusicpreservation.com
According to the Oxford Dictionary, a bride is “a woman on her wedding day”, wedding is “marriage ceremony” and the meaning of marriage in most places and times, and certainly at the time of the first King Kong film, implies sexual access (Bell, 1997). In other words, the girls become Kong’s wives and the problem here is that sexual intercourse is impossible because Kong’s phallus is assumed to exceed the capacity of his human brides.
This uncomfortable but valid topic has been around since the film was first shown (Gottesman & Geduld, 1976). Several interesting answers have been proposed, perhaps the most unexpected one is that in the film we do not see Kong’s penis because Kong is a female (David Gerrold in Haber, 2005, p. 217). A second option is that they sexual relationships would not be penetrative and a third one, that his penis is unusually small, but a simple calculation shows that this is not necessary: the erect penis of real gorillas is about 4 cm long.
At 7,5 m Kong is about 4 times taller than an normal gorilla, so we could expect a 4x4= 16 cm phallus, that is, a common human size; coupling is possible in the two positions known from gorillas, rear and face to face. I find this value more acceptable than the 60 cm calculated in Gottesman and Geduld (1976). Furthermore, gorilla and human penises are similar in shape and have a glans, unlike chimpanzees and bonobos (for details about sex organ evolution in primates, see Parker and Jaffe, 2008).
Source: marruda3.wordpress.com
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Frémiet 's troublesome sculpture: why did King Kong carry Ann?
Now that we know it would be possible, where does the idea come from?
Sexual intercourse of women with other animal species has been represented in art for thousands of years, with early examples known from Egypt, India and Greece (Dekkers, 1992). How this the idea get from Mesopotamia through Arabia and into King Kong thousands of years later?
There is no real mystery about how the beauty and beast association in King Kong was born. We already saw that the sexual association of apes with women is ancient, but for Gorilla gorilla it began shortly after the species was named in 1847: only ten years later Emmanuel Frémiet presented in Paris a sculpture of a gorilla carrying a woman to rape her (Jones, 2006).
Cooper said that he originally wanted to film a documentary about gorillas but having no funds to do it, ended up with King Kong, and that when young he had read some cheap novel in which gorillas kidnapped village women (Haber, 2005, p. 187). The film’s dialogue mentions that you need a pretty face and a love story to attract viewers (Dohm, 2007) so everything was there for a gorilla-loves-woman story.
Having established this historical connection, I wonder if something similar could happen in real life. You may be surprised.
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Ape love: Dian Fossey and other real life stories
In real life, sexual intercourse between women and apes is limited to an unconfirmed report of women raped by orangutans (Maugh, 1992), but the sexual attraction and even love that women can feel for apes have recently appeared in the media; see for example the BBC report of women attracted to Buff, the silverback gorilla of Higashiyama Zoo described as fatherly, handsome and with rippling muscles (Anonymous, 2015). If women like J. Goodall, D. Fossey and B. Galdikas openly state that they love apes (Jensen, 2002) −and I assume that this is always meant in a non-sexual way− can women also feel sexually curious or even attracted to apes? Buff ‘s report is not unique, a similar and more sexually clear report was published a few years before about women interested in reproducing with Guy, a London Zoo gorilla (notice that it was written by a woman who says she was initially skeptic about it: Jahme, 2001).
Even before these early twentieth-first century examples, Mary Bradley, the first American woman to see gorillas in nature, challenged the official story by suggesting that they were not monogamous and that she was not repulsed by the idea of being taken by one. According to Jones (2006), when she wrote that sexually-charged comment, she undermined the image of white woman’s “purity”, placing herself at the same level of the “lusty black women”. A similar “purity” belief was held by science fiction writer Ray Bradbury when he lamented that in Guillermin’s version “instead of a virgin beauty, they depicted an unclad lady of the night” (Haber, 2005, p. 11). Psychologist Laura Irwin stated that those who see exploitation, abuse or rape in beauty and beast stories miss the point: the beast could harm the damsel in distress but chooses not to, and there is a happy ending (Irwin, 2010).
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King Kong and the myth of "rape fantasies": the Chivers Experiment
After commenting with a couple of lady friends that I was writing this essay, I believe that women can find attractive features in apes: my friends were surprised to learn that men do not expect them to be attracted. “Sex is in itself attractive” and some gorillas “look very powerful” −they said. But the possibility of interspecies sex is not limited to unreliable media reports or friends’ comments, there is also peer-reviewed scientific information on the subject. The conclusion to this date is that normal women do not have “rape fantasies” (a misleading term), but that they do have fantasies of being wanted so much by a powerful male that he is willing to overpower them, imagining an “ultimately willing surrender” (Meana, 2010).
By using a device that measures genital arousal, Chivers, Seto and Blanchard (2007) found that women get sexually aroused by watching explicit and strong sexual activity in non-human primates. This result, as shocking as it can be to some, should not embarrass anyone. It is consistent with the evolution of our species, in which women were selected to favor strong males and to survive forced intercourse (Chivers, Seto and Blanchard, 2007). Dekkers (1992) thought that all stories of sex with other species were the product of male minds, not because he had evidence, but because he imagined it to be so. Ironically it took the minds of female researchers like Meredith Chivers to show how weak his argument is.
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No sex in his mind! King Kong was just curious about Ann: the Koko experiment
Janaisa (2012) presented a good multimedia comparison of the three King Kong versions, and found that Ann’s attitude towards Kong changes from always trying to escape (1933) to trying to save him in the other versions, where he no longer kills humans (according to Irwin, 2010, Dwan and Ann’s fraternizing with Kong could be cases of Stockholm Syndrome).
The supposedly “erotic” scene in which Kong examines Ann (or Dwan, in the second film) was also analyzed by Janaisa (2012). In the third film, Ann makes pirouettes for him; in the second, Kong washes her, and in the first version, Kong peels off Ann´s clothes and sniffs his fingers. Janaisa does not discuss the reason for these differences, but it was the lack of eroticism in the third version that triggered my idea of comparing versions and writing this article.
The 1933 version with cloth removal and sniffing is the most interesting of the three. Esther M. Friesner (in Haber, 2005, p. 158) wrote that Kong is surprised because Ann doesn’t smell like previous brides, and that she is not eaten for that reason. But I will turn to the original script for a more official explanation of what is happening in that scene (Dohm, 2007):
“Kong, in side angle, begins to pick her clothes off, as a monkey might pick a rag doll to pieces.
INT. LAIR - MED. SHOT – NIGHT
Ann shrinks and screams as her clothes are pulled off bit by bit.
EXT. TRAIL - FULL SHOT – NIGHT
Driscoll comes up the trail. He can hear the girl's screams. He hurries.
INT. LAIR - FULL SHOT – NIGHT
The girl is almost naked.
SIDE ANGLE. Kong is still picking at her when he turns startled.”
What Kong does with Ann is exactly what a real gorilla does with a doll, as you can see in the video Koko's 42nd Birthday (https://goo.gl/HHj6ox).
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Surprise: there WAS nudity in the first King Kong and Guillermin's 1976 version was the most succesful
In conclusion, this famously erotic scene is not at all sexual, even though viewers might be aroused by the undressing itself. Actually, Ann’s shapes and nipples are more visible during the test scream scene and when she swims after the pterosaur scene.
There is no sniffing in the 1976 version, but here Dwan is less passive, she even calls Kong a “goddamned male chauvinistic ape” and flirts for her life (Haber, 2005). With his inspection Kong uncovers her breasts (not seen thanks to a rapid cut), and Kong not only showers her but also dries her by blowing, a tender scene that in real life would probably be shocking because of his bad breath (I have not been that close to a gorilla but I am extrapolating from my Rottweiler).
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| Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3313978/Throwback-photo-Meryl-Streep-32-unlikely-viral-hit-shared-fan-page-inspiring-message-overcame-sexism-Hollywood.html |
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| Source: http://kingkong.wikia.com/wiki/Ann_Darrow |
The final version, that according to Mackenzie (2006) has no soul and according to me has no eroticism, is Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake. Why is his script so dull?
When there were no strong financial and censorship pressures, Hollywood was realistic and innovative; according to Dirks (2016), in the 15 years before King Kong, mainstream films had shown sex work (Traffic of Souls, 1913; Girls about Town, 1931), full female nudity (The Penitentes, 1916), atheism (The Godless Girl, 1929), lesbianism (Pandora’s Box, 1929), sadomasochism (Red-Headed Woman, 1932) and rape (The Story of Temple Drake, 1933). Like other films (Croft, 2006), all King Kong versions reflect the culture and times when they were made. The 1933 version served escapist needs during the depression and presented partial nudity and explicit violence. The 1976 version had a conservationist message and reflected the sexual liberation of the period. My hypothesis is that the 2005 version also reflects its time, when a right-wing president sat in the White House and an erotic component could get the film a rating that would keep families away, threatening the film financially (see Croft, 2006).
Many reviewers unfairly rejected the 1976 version (Morton, 2005), yet it was the one that made the best profit: 3,96 times its cost, against 2,66 of the 2005 version and 2,43 of the original (calculated from references in wikipedia.org). So, at least financially, there was justice for John Guillermin’s version.
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Scandalous! King Kong was NOT a symbol of imperialism, racism, capitalism or sexism
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Scandalous! King Kong was NOT a symbol of imperialism, racism, capitalism or sexism
Perhaps the more interesting thing about previous writers is how uncritical they were when they stated that King Kong was a symbol of imperialism, racism, capitalism, sexism or the many other things that they imagined.
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| Source: https://likeawhisper.wordpress.com/category/racism/page/16/ |
The contradictory nature of these explanations should be a warning to anyone reading them, even if they chose to ignore that the man who had the idea and made it into a classic, Merian C. Cooper himself, unambiguously said that such interpretations were wrong (Huntington, 2005).
Finally, the idea of love, attraction and even actual sex between a woman and a gorilla, even with one as large as Kong, is scientifically possible and this certainly is the most surprising result that I got from researching, analyzing and writing this article. Quoting film character Carl Denham himself:
“Every legend has a basis of truth”.
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King Kong: the economic imperative
After reading about King Kong until I felt dizzy and letting my brain digest all that in the juices of my experience as ecologist and movie fan, I believe that all that “scholarship” about the meaning of King Kong has less verisimilitude than the island and village culture shown in the 1933 film.
The existence of animals of huge body mass on such a small island is not biologically correct.
The behaviors of the reptiles, Kong and humans are actually more valid and believable than those in more recent movies such as Jurassic World,
The director Jurassic World, refused to put feathers on his dinosaurs, citing something also known to the makers of the original King Kong who changed the animal’s size according to artistic needs: in films, dramatic effect is more important than scientific accuracy (Phillips, 2015).
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Brilliant minds that inspired this blog: Bibliography and King Kong, Skull Island, and pertinent feminist studies
People have written ad nauseam about these films and I thought that what was missing was an article that summarized all that scattered work, checked the claims (made mostly by non-scientists), and considered the changing levels of eroticism that Janaisa (2012) only mentioned superficially. This is the contribution that the present article intends and I dedicate it to Jessica Lange, my favorite of the three Kong ladies, and to Marcel Delgado and Mario Larrinaga, the seldom mentioned Mexican artists who made 1933’s Kong’s body and beautiful Doré-inspired landscapes.
About my mentor and friend:
Revista Coris
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Brilliant minds that inspired this blog: Bibliography and King Kong, Skull Island, and pertinent feminist studies
Even though this is a blog, its contents are based on a scientific article, in which what I did, how I did it and who's work I used must be crystal clear and honest, so here is the bibliography for all the previous authors from whose work I benefited.
A big thanks to them as well.
References
Anonymous. (2015). 'Buff' silverback gorilla drawing crowds of women to Japanese zoo. BBC Newsbeat. Retrieved from: http://goo.gl/BaIufM
Bell, D. (1997). Defining Marriage and Legitimacy. Current Anthropology, 38 (2), 237–253. doi: 10.1086/204606
Benton, M. J., Csiki, Z., Grigorescu, D., Redelstorff, R., Sander, P. M., Stein, K., & Weishampel, D. B. (2010). Dinosaurs and the island rule: The dwarfed dinosaurs from Haţeg Island. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 293(3), 438-454. doi:10.1016/j.palaeo.2010.01.026
Chivers, M.L., Seto, M.C. & Blanchard. R. (2007). Gender and sexual orientation differences in sexual response to sexual activities versus gender of actors in sexual films. Journal of Personality and Sexual Psychology, 93(6), 1108-1121.
Choi, C. (2015). The Brontosaurus Is Back. Scientific American. Retrieved from: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-brontosaurus-is-back1/
Clauss, M.; Frey, R.; Kiefer, B.; Lechner-Doll, M.; Loehlein, W.; Polster, C.; Rössner, G. E.; Streich, W. J. (2003). The maximum attainable body size of herbivorous mammals: Morphophysiological constraints on foregut, and adaptations of hindgut fermenters. Oecologia, 136 (1), 14–27.
Croft, S. (2006). Culture, Crisis and America’s War on Terror. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dalley, S. (2000). Myths from Mesopotamia, Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh and others. New York: Oxford University Press.
Dekker, M. (1992). Dearest Pet: On Bestiality. London: Verso.
DeVito, J. & Strickland, B. (2005). Kong: King Of Skull Island. Oregon: Dark Horse.
Dirks, T. (2016). History of Sex in Cinema: The Greatest and Most Influential Sexual Films and Scenes (Illustrated). American Movie Classics http://www.filmsite.org/sexinfilms.html
Ditmore, M. (Ed). (2006). Encyclopedia of Prostitution and Sex Work. Santa Barbara, California: Greenwood Publishing Group.
Dohm, S. (2007). King Kong script, changes 09/01/1932 - 09/06/1932 http://www.whiskeyloosetongue.com/scripts/kong1933.html
Erb, C. (1998). Tracking King Kong. A Hollywood Icon in World Culture. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Everhart, M. J. (2002). Where the elasmosaurs roam: Separating fact from fiction. Prehistoric Times, 53, 24-27.
Ewalt, D. (2005). The Biology of King Kong. Retrieved from: http://www.forbes.com/2005/12/12/king-kong-biology_cx_de_1213kongbiology.html
Fisher, L. (2011). Crashes, Crises, and Calamities: How We Can Use Science to Read the Early-Warning Signs. New York: Basic Books.
Gottesman, R. & Geduld, H. (Ed). (1976). The Girl in the Hairy Paw. King Kong as myth, movie, and monster. New York: Avon
Haber, K. (Ed). (2005). Kong Unbound: The Cultural Impact, Pop Mythos, and Scientific Plausibility of a Cinematic Legend. New York: Pocket.
Huntington, T. (2005). King Kong: How the greatest special-effects movie was made with the simplest technology. Retrieved from: http://www.americanheritage.com/entertainment/articles/web/20051214-king-kong-monster-special-effects-movie-fay-wray.shtml
Irwin, L. (2010). Romancing the Beast; The Sex Appeal of Vampires and Beasts. Retrieved from: Hubpages.com (page no longer online).
Jahme, C. (2011, July 5). Lice, sex, gorillas and genetics. The Guardian. Retrieved from: theguardian.com/science/blog/2011/jul/05/lice-sex-gorillas-genetics
Janaisa. (2012). Technological Innovation in the King Kong films. Retrieved from: https://janaisa.wordpress.com/author/janaisa/
Jensen, S. (2002). Waarom vrouwen van apen hauden. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker.
Jones, J.E. (2006). Gorilla Trails in Paradise: Carl Akeley, Mary Bradley, and the American Search for the Missing Link. The Journal of American Culture, 29 (3), 321-336.
Kennedy, R. (1943). Islands and Peoples of the Indies. Washington: Smithsonian Institute War Background Studies: Number Fourteen.
LaBarbera, M. (2003). The Biology of B-Movie Monsters. The University of Chicago: Digital Collections. Fathom Archive. Retrieved from: http://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/2/21701757/
Lindsey, W. (2011). Kong's Kingdom: A Study of Skull Island. Retrieved from: http://geog1202skullislandstudy.blogspot.com/
Lorenz, K. & Leyhausen, P. (1971). Biología del comportamiento: raíces instintivas de la agresión, el miedo y la libertad. México: Siglo XXI
Mackenzie, A. (2006). King Kong (2005) Movie Review. Retrieved from: http://www.beyondhollywood.com/king-kong-2005-movie-review/
Maugh, T. H., II. (1992, January 13). Orangutans in the Mist: Woman's 20-Year Study of Elusive Rain Forest Apes Finds They're Not Antisocial After All. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from: http://articles.latimes.com/1992-01-13/local/me-231_1_orangutan-foundation/1
McAvoy, A. (2012, October 13). No coconut bras: Hawaii focuses on real traditions. HeraldNet. Retrieved from: http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20121013/LIVING/710139997
Meana, M. (2010). Elucidating Womens’(hetero) Sexual Desire: Definitional Challenges and Content Expansion. The Journal of Sex Research, 47 (2-3), 104-122.
Morton, R. (2005). King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon from Fay Wray to Peter Jackson. New York: Applause Theatre and Cinema Books.
Parker S.T. & Jaffe K. E. (2008). Darwin's Legacy: Scenarios in Human Evolution. Maryland: AltaMira Press.
Peary, G. (1976). Missing Links: The Jungle Origins of King Kong. Retrieved from: http://www.geraldpeary.com/essays/jkl/kingkong-1.html
Phillips, I. (2015). Jurassic World’ completely ignores these important discoveries scientists have made about dinosaurs. Business Insider. Retrieved from: http://www.businessinsider.com/jurassic-world-ignores-science-behind-dinosaurs-2015-6
Snead, J. (1991). Spectatorship and capture in King Kong: the guilty look. Critical Quarterly, 33(1), 53-69.
Valdron, D. (2005). King Kong II: How did that monkey get so big? ERBzine. Retrieved from: http://www.erbzine.com/mag15/1521.html
Workshop, W. (2005). The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island (King Kong). New York: Pocket.
Zimmer, B. (2006). Nias, Komodo, and "Kong". Retrieved from: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002751.html
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Acknowledgments
I thank Guillermo Coronado for backing me up to write this as a sanity project during a long European vacation taken by the rest of my family.
People have written ad nauseam about these films and I thought that what was missing was an article that summarized all that scattered work, checked the claims (made mostly by non-scientists), and considered the changing levels of eroticism that Janaisa (2012) only mentioned superficially. This is the contribution that the present article intends and I dedicate it to Jessica Lange, my favorite of the three Kong ladies, and to Marcel Delgado and Mario Larrinaga, the seldom mentioned Mexican artists who made 1933’s Kong’s body and beautiful Doré-inspired landscapes.
My recommendation to visit the excellent site of the Carthage Circle Philosophy Group:
From the Circle's presentation (reproduced with permission):
El Círculo de Cartago también es nuestro
Debemos reconocer que algunos no ven al Círculo de Cartago como una entidad secreta, sino como un ente inverosímil. Apenas cabe duda: en años recientes, varios colegas han creído que se trata de un locus exclusivo. No falta quien vea en el Círculo una especie de acaecimiento inusitado, metafísico, podría pensarse, por haber sido concebido en lugar tan confabulatorio como Cartago.
Apenas podría darse razón a tales opiniones. El Círculo de Cartago es ahora, ciertamente, más pequeño que en décadas anteriores, al menos si se atiende a varios textos y legados orales, entre los que destaca un agradable testimonio de Roberto Murillo, aparecido en el primer número de la Revista CoRis. Enamorado, como era, de la escritura borgeana, Don Roberto rubricó esa referencia al Círculo de Cartago en 1989 y la publicó en un libro que, desde el título (Segundas estancias, 1990) se antoja especular, no solo porque remite a vivencias, charlas y contertulios, sino por la particular atmósfera que teje en torno al grupo.
Que ese Círculo se haya reducido no significa que sea más secreto. Nunca lo fue, en realidad, y nunca pretendió serlo, según he comprobado por otros testimonios y por unas remembranzas de Guillermo Coronado, quien –como apunta el mismo Roberto Murillo- con vocación y perseverancia ha dado asilo y vigencia al grupo.
Esto es el Círculo de Cartago hoy en día, al menos en uno de sus sentidos: un pequeño grupo que cultiva el diálogo y ejerce la curiosidad, la crítica e incluso la ironía, en diversos campos de la filosofía, el quehacer intelectual y artístico.
Se sabe que nació en la década del cincuenta y que su gestor e inspirador fue Francisco Hernández, un inspector del Colegio San Luis Gonzaga. Detalles de su historia, que no podría yo mejorar ni contradecir, se narran en los escritos citados de Murillo y Coronado. Hay quienes refieren, además, la existencia de muchas actas, con detalles de cada reunión, de cada conferencia o de las ceremonias iniciales, que parecen haber consistido en la defensa de alguna tesis sobre asuntos filosóficos o culturales. Entiendo que las reuniones fueron, durante mucho tiempo, semanales, apasionadas, tácitamente obligatorias. Concebido como un círculo de estudios, se le llamó, al principio, “Alejandro Aguilar Machado”, luego “Mario Sancho”.
Entiendo que, por su ideario y sus prácticas, el Círculo provocaba habladurías y disgusto entre algunos cartagineses. Con elegancia, Murillo recuerda que la apertura intelectual de sus asociados implicó un “agudo contraste con el Cartago aldeano y conservador” de entonces. Esas y otras memorias coinciden en las causas: un sueño de los circulistas era convertir a Cartago en una “segunda Atenas”: patrocinaron conferencias de pensadores liberales, utilizaron medios radiofónicos para difundir sus ideas, opinaron sobre temas controversiales, disfrutaron libremente de los paseos y caminatas por muchos rincones de la provincia, propugnaron por la creación de una buena biblioteca pública, trataron de transformar el Colegio de San Luis Gonzaga en un liceo universitario e, incluso, se atrevieron a fomentar la participación femenina en sus actividades. De ahí, seguramente, la sospecha de inverosimilitud, que evoqué al principio: el Círculo de Cartago no encaja, desde su fundación, en el estereotipo localista. Murillo advierte de aquello lo nefasto: “rencores y envidias, aunque nunca efectiva competencia”.
Atardecían los cincuentas. La transformación onomástica citada acentuó, seguramente, la animosidad en contra del grupo y, según creo, Cartago lo venció. No supo destruirlo, pero lo obligó a trasladarse, como bien relata Coronado: “bajo el alero del bufete Guier y la guía del historiador Jorge Enrique Guier Esquivel”. Mudarse a San José fue “el principio del fin”, opinaría Murillo. No fue así, pero ciertamente lo debilitó: la dimensión social (y política) de sus prácticas fue diluida. Desde entonces posee otro carácter.
En 1972, Guillermo Coronado (cartaginés incontrovertible, aunque disidente imperdonable del legado futbolístico provincial) se hizo cargo de rejuvenecer al Círculo. Labor encomiable, como la de Nora, su esposa: supo devolverle “patria” y casa, reanimó esa capacidad de asombrarse, de admirarse, extrañarse o maravillarse que se trasunta en el vocablo griego Thaumadsein y, sobre todo, resucitó la constancia, el gusto por el conocimiento y la cofradía. Don Guillermo, como le conocen sus discípulos, atrajo el interés de académicos como Claudio Gutiérrez, Nicolás Farray, José Alberto Soto y el mismo Roberto Murillo, quien se había alejado cuando el Círculo adoptó el nombre de Sancho. Se incorporaron Edgar Roy Ramírez, oriundo de Pérez Zeledón y Mario Alfaro, de Puriscal, ambos interesados por la filosofía y la historia de la ciencia, temas en que Coronado ya era considerado como experto. Tras un letargo importante, motivado por los estudios de este en Indiana, se reanudaron las actividades.
Mi conocimiento directo del Círculo data de los ochentas. Me incorporaba, como profesor interino, al Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica. Tenía intereses en el terreno de la estética y de la ética, pero la posibilidad de trabajar en la Sección de Filosofía del ITCR era seductora y me condujo, eventualmente, al Círculo.
El lugar fue importante para mi desarrollo: aprendí un gusto por la filosofía de la ciencia y, sobre todo, por la ética aplicada a problemas del desarrollo científico y tecnológico. En el Círculo no sancionaban negativamente mis enfoques, sino todo lo contrario. Coronado estimulaba la lectura, la discusión y la polémica, Alfaro motivaba, mediaba, coordinaba actividades. Roy Ramírez gustaba de la confrontación intelectual: solía poner a prueba mis ideas y pequeños escritos, me obligó a depurar argumentos. Creo que nuestros enfoques –diferentes, a veces contrarios- enriquecieron la dinámica del grupo, misma que desembocó en una de sus actividades más extendidas: la publicación de artículos y de libros. Evidentemente, el nexo Círculo de Cartago-Sección de Filosofía del ITCR era muy fuerte. Hoy lo es, también, pero en menor grado. El trabajo en la UCR también nos ha dado aportes valiosos, nos ha transformado.
No somos los únicos representantes del nuevo período, por supuesto: a las reuniones del Círculo asisten amigos, familiares, intelectuales de prestigio; todos con el gusto por la filosofía, la buena cocina y el vino, la creación literaria, científica, tecnológica. Nos reunimos normalmente en casa de los Coronado, ocasionalmente en otros hogares.
Con seguridad, la normativa del origen no funcionaba en esta generación. Pero el encanto de una aventura intelectual, de un aniversario filosófico o científico, de una tesis, o la conversación y la amistad vuelven a ser motivos consuetudinarios. Ha sido hermoso aprender, aceptar y disentir, ha sido hermoso construir puentes entre nuestros territorios.
Me parece que hoy asistimos a la cuarta generación del Círculo: descendientes, otros amigos, académicos que empiezan o que, tras algún contacto casual con el grupo, decidieron frecuentarlo, aunque todavía no se incorporan debidamente, con la disertación primera. Algunos se han ido, algunos también nos han rechazado. Inusitados resultan sus hechos: no es excluyente ni metafísico; ha legado escritos, ideas, actividades; anatematiza fanatismos y abusos del poder. He aquí el testimonio de un herediano: ese Círculo –cartaginés por nacimiento y propósitos- también es nuestro.
Álvaro Zamora.
Apenas podría darse razón a tales opiniones. El Círculo de Cartago es ahora, ciertamente, más pequeño que en décadas anteriores, al menos si se atiende a varios textos y legados orales, entre los que destaca un agradable testimonio de Roberto Murillo, aparecido en el primer número de la Revista CoRis. Enamorado, como era, de la escritura borgeana, Don Roberto rubricó esa referencia al Círculo de Cartago en 1989 y la publicó en un libro que, desde el título (Segundas estancias, 1990) se antoja especular, no solo porque remite a vivencias, charlas y contertulios, sino por la particular atmósfera que teje en torno al grupo.
Que ese Círculo se haya reducido no significa que sea más secreto. Nunca lo fue, en realidad, y nunca pretendió serlo, según he comprobado por otros testimonios y por unas remembranzas de Guillermo Coronado, quien –como apunta el mismo Roberto Murillo- con vocación y perseverancia ha dado asilo y vigencia al grupo.
Esto es el Círculo de Cartago hoy en día, al menos en uno de sus sentidos: un pequeño grupo que cultiva el diálogo y ejerce la curiosidad, la crítica e incluso la ironía, en diversos campos de la filosofía, el quehacer intelectual y artístico.
Se sabe que nació en la década del cincuenta y que su gestor e inspirador fue Francisco Hernández, un inspector del Colegio San Luis Gonzaga. Detalles de su historia, que no podría yo mejorar ni contradecir, se narran en los escritos citados de Murillo y Coronado. Hay quienes refieren, además, la existencia de muchas actas, con detalles de cada reunión, de cada conferencia o de las ceremonias iniciales, que parecen haber consistido en la defensa de alguna tesis sobre asuntos filosóficos o culturales. Entiendo que las reuniones fueron, durante mucho tiempo, semanales, apasionadas, tácitamente obligatorias. Concebido como un círculo de estudios, se le llamó, al principio, “Alejandro Aguilar Machado”, luego “Mario Sancho”.
Entiendo que, por su ideario y sus prácticas, el Círculo provocaba habladurías y disgusto entre algunos cartagineses. Con elegancia, Murillo recuerda que la apertura intelectual de sus asociados implicó un “agudo contraste con el Cartago aldeano y conservador” de entonces. Esas y otras memorias coinciden en las causas: un sueño de los circulistas era convertir a Cartago en una “segunda Atenas”: patrocinaron conferencias de pensadores liberales, utilizaron medios radiofónicos para difundir sus ideas, opinaron sobre temas controversiales, disfrutaron libremente de los paseos y caminatas por muchos rincones de la provincia, propugnaron por la creación de una buena biblioteca pública, trataron de transformar el Colegio de San Luis Gonzaga en un liceo universitario e, incluso, se atrevieron a fomentar la participación femenina en sus actividades. De ahí, seguramente, la sospecha de inverosimilitud, que evoqué al principio: el Círculo de Cartago no encaja, desde su fundación, en el estereotipo localista. Murillo advierte de aquello lo nefasto: “rencores y envidias, aunque nunca efectiva competencia”.
Atardecían los cincuentas. La transformación onomástica citada acentuó, seguramente, la animosidad en contra del grupo y, según creo, Cartago lo venció. No supo destruirlo, pero lo obligó a trasladarse, como bien relata Coronado: “bajo el alero del bufete Guier y la guía del historiador Jorge Enrique Guier Esquivel”. Mudarse a San José fue “el principio del fin”, opinaría Murillo. No fue así, pero ciertamente lo debilitó: la dimensión social (y política) de sus prácticas fue diluida. Desde entonces posee otro carácter.
En 1972, Guillermo Coronado (cartaginés incontrovertible, aunque disidente imperdonable del legado futbolístico provincial) se hizo cargo de rejuvenecer al Círculo. Labor encomiable, como la de Nora, su esposa: supo devolverle “patria” y casa, reanimó esa capacidad de asombrarse, de admirarse, extrañarse o maravillarse que se trasunta en el vocablo griego Thaumadsein y, sobre todo, resucitó la constancia, el gusto por el conocimiento y la cofradía. Don Guillermo, como le conocen sus discípulos, atrajo el interés de académicos como Claudio Gutiérrez, Nicolás Farray, José Alberto Soto y el mismo Roberto Murillo, quien se había alejado cuando el Círculo adoptó el nombre de Sancho. Se incorporaron Edgar Roy Ramírez, oriundo de Pérez Zeledón y Mario Alfaro, de Puriscal, ambos interesados por la filosofía y la historia de la ciencia, temas en que Coronado ya era considerado como experto. Tras un letargo importante, motivado por los estudios de este en Indiana, se reanudaron las actividades.
Mi conocimiento directo del Círculo data de los ochentas. Me incorporaba, como profesor interino, al Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica. Tenía intereses en el terreno de la estética y de la ética, pero la posibilidad de trabajar en la Sección de Filosofía del ITCR era seductora y me condujo, eventualmente, al Círculo.
El lugar fue importante para mi desarrollo: aprendí un gusto por la filosofía de la ciencia y, sobre todo, por la ética aplicada a problemas del desarrollo científico y tecnológico. En el Círculo no sancionaban negativamente mis enfoques, sino todo lo contrario. Coronado estimulaba la lectura, la discusión y la polémica, Alfaro motivaba, mediaba, coordinaba actividades. Roy Ramírez gustaba de la confrontación intelectual: solía poner a prueba mis ideas y pequeños escritos, me obligó a depurar argumentos. Creo que nuestros enfoques –diferentes, a veces contrarios- enriquecieron la dinámica del grupo, misma que desembocó en una de sus actividades más extendidas: la publicación de artículos y de libros. Evidentemente, el nexo Círculo de Cartago-Sección de Filosofía del ITCR era muy fuerte. Hoy lo es, también, pero en menor grado. El trabajo en la UCR también nos ha dado aportes valiosos, nos ha transformado.
No somos los únicos representantes del nuevo período, por supuesto: a las reuniones del Círculo asisten amigos, familiares, intelectuales de prestigio; todos con el gusto por la filosofía, la buena cocina y el vino, la creación literaria, científica, tecnológica. Nos reunimos normalmente en casa de los Coronado, ocasionalmente en otros hogares.
Con seguridad, la normativa del origen no funcionaba en esta generación. Pero el encanto de una aventura intelectual, de un aniversario filosófico o científico, de una tesis, o la conversación y la amistad vuelven a ser motivos consuetudinarios. Ha sido hermoso aprender, aceptar y disentir, ha sido hermoso construir puentes entre nuestros territorios.
Me parece que hoy asistimos a la cuarta generación del Círculo: descendientes, otros amigos, académicos que empiezan o que, tras algún contacto casual con el grupo, decidieron frecuentarlo, aunque todavía no se incorporan debidamente, con la disertación primera. Algunos se han ido, algunos también nos han rechazado. Inusitados resultan sus hechos: no es excluyente ni metafísico; ha legado escritos, ideas, actividades; anatematiza fanatismos y abusos del poder. He aquí el testimonio de un herediano: ese Círculo –cartaginés por nacimiento y propósitos- también es nuestro.
Álvaro Zamora.
About my mentor and friend:
Guillermo Coronado
Apuntamientos de historia del pensamiento científico
Autor de numerosos artículos en revistas especializadas.
Dirección electrónica: gmocoronado@yahoo.com
Evolución: azar, valores y teleologismo. La perspectiva de Alexander Skutch en El Ascenso de la vida
ABOUT THE JOURNAL
Revista Coris
Se ha escogido el nombre de Coris con la única finalidad de rendir homenaje a ese hermoso pueblo ubicado al Oeste de la provincia de Cartago en las faldas de la Carpintera, pues ese fue uno de los varios sitios que durante muchos domingos recibió a los peripatéticos visitantes, fundadores y precursores del Círculo, quienes hasta ahí llevaban sus auténticas preocupaciones por la política nacional e internacional, los temas del arte, de la filosofía, la historia, la literatura, las matemáticas, etc.
Como explicarse que en un país como el nuestro, tan acostumbrado a los proyectos fugaces, se haya logrado contar con un grupo de reflexión y de producción intelectual por cuarenta años? La respuesta se encuentra en la visión que tuvieron sus fundadores y precursores en el sentido de que la interdisciplinaridad cultural sería su norte, la tolerancia y el respeto a las ideas el medio propicio y el dogmatísmo se desterraría. Además es necesario mencionar que nunca ha respondido ni prestado a intereses políticos personales y menos de partido alguno. Nació para promover el gusto por la cultura y por la vida, como apuntó una vez Roberto Murillo.
Mario Alfaro Campos, Director. (tomado de: Editorial, Revista Coris, volumen I)
With this blog -and specially with this summary- I want to spread in a more friendly way the information published in a formal article published in Spanish by the philosophical journal Coris.
I do not plan to add more entries to this blog. However, if you want to continue the discussion, feel free to contact me: julianmonge@gmail.com
With this blog -and specially with this summary- I want to spread in a more friendly way the information published in a formal article published in Spanish by the philosophical journal Coris.
I do not plan to add more entries to this blog. However, if you want to continue the discussion, feel free to contact me: julianmonge@gmail.com
