This review will analyse Why Merian. C Cooper’s King Kong is not an Allegory for Racism?

looking
at how the intent of Cooper, the director impacted the film in comparison to the view point of the
audience from the 1930s and modern day, with Ajileye’s King Kong of the Tower and Zakarin’s
King Kong’s long journey from Racist Monster to woke hero looking at Cooper, while McKittrick’s
The History of King Kong on Screen and Blay’s This Video Breaks Down The Racist History Of
'King Kong’ looking at modern and past readings of the film and how allegory changes the way
both audiences see the film.

Despite its many sequels and re-imaginings, one feature of King Kong that arguably has stuck out
most strongly is its controversy around its display of race and therefore racism, which can be
defined as discrimination or prejudice against someone of the opposite race, usually centred
around superiority between them. This can be seen more prominently in the introduction of the
native islanders, with their feathery garments and passive demeanours towards the travelling
Americans as well as in the capture and display of King Kong, but these recent ideas have been
brought up through the usage of allegory; a medium that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden
meaning, so for King Kong this would be the racism as a sub text in the film’s story, however
allegory, for it to be valid must be confirmed by the creator, and for Cooper the director subtle
racism wasn’t intended to appear within the film.

Fig, 1, “Hollywood pioneer man Merian

C.Cooper”, (2003),

Fig 2, the natives spot the explorers, (2015),

The film was originally made by Cooper to be a display of his time in the war, an adventure film
filled with the traditional archetypes; the strong hero and the damsel in distress, to familiarise the
audience in the un-familiar territory, while also incorporating his own wonder and excitant that he
found on his travels, “Cooper was a famed fighter pilot, journalist, and adventurer, who wrote
stories about far flung locations around the globe for Americans who could hardly fathom places
so far away.” (Ajileye, 2017). This presents itself with the wild, tribal outfits of the natives and in
King Kong, the big monster that was meant to encapsulate the sense of wonder and fear he
wanted to present, the racist undertones of the natives didn’t come intentionally from Cooper, as
he didn’t consider the implications of presenting the natives in this way, he just wanted to present
a film that showcased his life as a pilot, who had seen things that others couldn’t imagine at the
time, “To Cooper, King Kong was all about his experiences — he’s even in a plane at the very end
of the movie, as one of the people shooting down King Kong,”(Zakarin, 2017). But this also
doesn’t mean that Coopers representation isn’t problematic, as his lack of understanding about
the implications of the representation of black people was still hurtful, showing them as primal
beings compared with the civilised white American travellers, the natives show the mind set of
people like Cooper in the 1930s, but not that the film is intentionally racist.

Fig 3, Dorothea Lange, Migrant

mother (alternative), (1936)
To the audience of 1933, the film came out at a very critical time; the great depression. At the
time, America experienced the Wall Street crash that left hundreds of people un employed,
hopeless and wanting to forget their problems and King Kong allowed them to do that, while also
celebrating what made America successful “King Kong wowed audiences during the Great
Depression and over and over again in the following decades” (McKittrick, 2017). Similar with
Cooper, the films representation of the natives wasn’t seen as an issue because critical race
theory and the black lives matter movement didn’t exist, so the film perpetuated what was seen
as normal at the time, still making it problematic, as it’s only recently that viewers have started to
question the films representation, this in tern shows that Coopers thoughts on the representation
in King Kong, or lack of was universal and therefore is a product of its time. The film helped
audiences escape the economic depression, and emphasis the greatness of America, so because
that was the focus of the film, it could have arguably helped to push down the ignorance around
the representation, but didn’t perpetuate that the audience new they were looking at a
representation of their own societal racism.

Unlike for the 1933 audience, allegory and subtext within film is analysed more commonly, “Critics
have drawn connections between the capture of Kong and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, with
Kong’s disastrous escape in New York symbolic of the perceived “disaster” of granting black
people in the U.S. true freedom.” (Blay, 2017), so whereas the 1933 audience would have seen an
adventure film, a modern audience can read between the lines, such as the chaining and
displaying of King Kong can be connected to the slave trade as well as apes and monkeys being
considered a derogatory term for black people in the 1930s. However as stated before the hidden
meaning in question must be confirmed within the source for it to be legitimate, and because the
intent of Cooper was to present a large scale adventure film, the racism allegory as subtext in the
film doesn’t count, but the problematic representation of the natives can still be seen as an issue,
reprinting the film makes ideologies that weren’t intentional at the time “Even if King Kong is not
racist (which I would argue), it plays on racist stereotypes and structures the movie is not aware
of…I would be surprised if any movie came out of Hollywood in 1933 without racist stereotypes.
(Zakarin, 2017). This can also be the same for a lot of other films, the changing of societal values
allows people to see media in a different way, so King Kong’s racist labelling comes from a
change in values, and not from the conformation of the creator, because Cooper never intended
the film to be about racist values in America, making the film not racist but problematic.

Fig, 4, American Kaiju: An Examination of ‘King

Kong’ (1933)

In conclusion, King Kong cannot be racist because of the lack of intent from Cooper. Because the
ideologies of the time, the attitudes around the representation of people of colour within the film
wasn’t seen as an issue until modern interpretations criticised it, but since allegory relies on
creator intent for the meaning, the film therefore isn’t racist but undoubtably problematic in
modern cinema.

 Illustrative Bibliography

Figure 1, “Hollywood pioneer man Merian C.Cooper”, (2003), [Online Image], URL: http://
freemotoreview.info/startmkey-merian-c-cooper/, (Accessed: 04/12/18)

Figure 2, the natives spot the explorers, (2015), [Online Image], URL: http://
harveycoxswainsfeatureflicks.blogspot.com/2015/09/king-kong-1933.html, (Accessed: 04/12/18)

Figure 3, Dorothea Lange, Migrant mother (alternative), (1936), [Online Image], URL: https://
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
File:Dorothea_Lange,_Migrant_mother_(alternative),_Nipomo,_California,_1936.jpg, [Accessed:
04/12/18)

Figure, 4, American Kaiju: An Examination of ‘King Kong’ (1933), [Online Image], URL: https://
www.popoptiq.com/american-kaiju-an-examination-of-king-kong-1933/, (Accessed: 04/12/18)

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