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
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.
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
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.
