Deep Thoughts about King Kong with William Patrick Day

Was it beauty that killed the beast? Or was it capitalism…aided by airplanes?

On this week’s episode of Deep Thoughts, Tracie and Emily welcome Oberlin Professor Pat Day to talk about the ape, the myth, the movie legend: King Kong. Prof. Day walks us through how the original filmmakers in 1933 used new technology (A musical score! Claymation! The newly-built Empire State building!) to critique how technology destroys nature. The conversation covers all three versions of Kong: 1933 starring Fay Wray, 1976 starring Jessica Lange, and 2005 starring Naomi Watts, and we discuss the sexualized and racialized nature of Kong’s threat to the beautiful blond woman and what it means that Watts, unlike her predecessors, truly sympathizes with the doomed ape.

Grab your headphones and join us on our voyage to Skull Island!

Mentioned in this episode:

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/king-kong-2005 (Note from Emily: I could have sworn it was Ebert who said that if Kong fighting one T-Rex is cool, then him fighting three is even BETTER, but that does not appear in his review here. If anyone can remember who said that back in 2005, please let us know!)

Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video versions, and early access to Deep Thoughts by visiting us on Patreon. 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I'm Tracy Guy-Decker and you're listening to Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, because pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head? On today's episode, my sister, emily Guy-Burken, and I are joined by Professor William Patrick Day from Oberlin College, and he will be sharing his deep thoughts about King Kong all three movie versions. Let's dive in. Have you ever had something you love dismissed because it's just pop culture, what others might deem stupid shit? You know matters, you know it's worth talking and thinking about, and so do we. So come over, think with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit.

Speaker 1: 0:44

So, professor Day, those of you who are avid and very observant listeners- might recognize his name from our Fraggle Rock episode because Professor Day oversaw my independent study where I looked at Fraggle Rock and some of the deeper political and sociological lessons in Fraggle Rock. So Professor Day teaches in the English department and cinema studies and comparative literature programs at Oberlin College. He's written about horror and gothic literature and vampires and has a longstanding interest in pop culture. In addition to horror stories, professor Day is interested in science fiction, fantasy and detective stories. On the other hand, he's quite happy working with what is called High Art, the work of writers such as Henry James, william Faulkner and Wallace Stevens. He's currently working on two projects a book on history and film called Imagining History, and an essay on wonder in the 1933 and 2005 versions of King Kong. It's called the Ape in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. So welcome to the show, professor Day. It is great to have you here.

Speaker 3: 1:57

It's great to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:59

So King Kong, when I reached out to you, I actually reached out to Professor Day to let him know that we did that episode about Fraggle Rock all these years later, and so I saw the King Kong connection and so asked if you might be willing to come on to talk about King Kong.

Speaker 1: 2:15

So I'll briefly share what's in my head about King Kong and then I'll turn it over to Emily and then we'll dive in. So in my imagination, king Kong I don't know if I've seen. I actually do not know if I've seen the movies. I know I haven't seen the most recent one, the 2005. I think maybe I've seen the one from the thirties, but in my imagination, you know, immediately I think of the is it the Empire State Building and the airplanes and I and all of the sort of derivative things you know, like Donkey Kong and some of the other like derivative images of the gorilla and the sexy, fragile woman and I also immediately go to sort of racist tropes about hyper-sexualized and very strong black men that King Kong kind of immediately brings to mind.

Speaker 1: 3:15

So that's kind of what's in my head about.

Speaker 2: 3:17

King.

Speaker 1: 3:17

Kong, which is largely from the zeitgeist, because I don't think I've spent a lot of time. I know I haven't spent a lot of time watching it. Emily, what about you? What's in your head?

Speaker 2: 3:27

about King Kong. I don't know that I've seen all of the original film. I know I've seen bits of it. When you mentioned the 1976 film in the email that we were talking about, I was like oh yeah, I have seen that. I remember seeing it on television.

Speaker 2: 3:43

Oh yeah, I have seen that I remember seeing it on television. I can recall it on the TV in the basement on 48 Millstone Road Trace. I remember that Very specific. I remember Jack Black's character impressing me in that he was so charming and so awful. I was impressed by him as an actor, marrying those two things that you're charmed by him and then later realize, oh, he's just completely morally bankrupt, which has very little to do with actual King Kongong, but that that's, uh, what I recall from the film. Also, adrian brody was in it and I remember, was it naomi?

Speaker 3: 4:32

watt who played the part.

Speaker 2: 4:33

Okay, yeah yeah, so, so I have. I have some some like strong memories of that, a little bit about like the. There's a scene where King Kong is in like Central Park on like and like on ice and he and Naomi Watt are like playing on the ice, and that really stuck with me. But, the oddly, the biggest thing I think of when I think of King Kong is actually the movie the Cider House Rules, which is based on the John Irving book. I'm a big John Irving fan but I've never read that book and I only happened to catch that movie and it was sometime around when King Kong came out. The new version came out and in the orphanage where the Tobey Maguire character grows up, they only have one movie and it's King Kong.

Speaker 2: 5:24

And so they watch it every single week. And there's a point where he's telling someone like, oh, but it's a great movie, it's got everything in it. And I have found myself thinking like you know that question, like you, you have to go to a desert island. You only have one movie for the rest of your life. What would it be? And I was like, actually, king kong seems like it wouldn't be a bad one, like there is a lot to it that could actually make it not tedious.

Speaker 1: 5:49

That'd be the only film you watch over and over again.

Speaker 2: 5:52

So that's where it kind of sits in my brain. So, Pat, tell us what's at stake here. Why are we talking about it today?

Speaker 3: 6:02

Well, there's a lot of different ways into King Kong. It is actually a really unusual film in the history of Hollywood movies. It is the first film to successfully score music as a series of leitmotifs and continuous narration in the Jungle and Second, new York sequence. Max Steiner, at the suggestion of the overall producer, david Selznick, was trying to do this. Nobody did this before, I mean, except Steiner had tried it twice before. So it was really remarkable that that was done and people really noticed that that version was made to some degree by Steiner's music. It's also highly innovative in terms of making the sound design and the sort of ambient effects coordinate with the dialogue and the music, coordinate with the dialogue and the music. And so the 1933, which looks really quaint today and all that was really quite unusual at that time, and it's use of stop motion to try to do the King Kong and that looks really odd at this point. But the technical things they did with shooting and shooting I mean because there are lots of dinosaurs in it and there's dinosaur fights and stuff and they had to do a lot of back screen, you know shooting and multiple takes to insert things into it and in a lot of ways I mean it just sort of overwhelmed people. I think that that's a very interesting aspect of it.

Speaker 3: 7:59

It is also the case that Marion Cooper and Ernst Schroedzak, who were the people who actually made the film, had started out as documentarians. The film had started out as documentarians and they did documentaries which basically went into Central Asia and Sumatra and did sort of slightly fictionalized in a couple instances ethnographic films. They literally followed a tribe of Central Asians moving from one grassland to the new grassland as winter came, and it's usually seen as the second major documentary after Nanook of the North and he then moved into finally doing fictional films and ended up. Mirren Cooper had a very long career in Hollywood as a producer, and so a lot of this just sort of follows out a tremendous number of interesting things about cinema, and my particular interest in it is in fact rooted in the way in which Kong is portrayed through different, because Kong's a lot of things. I mean, you know he's an implausibly large ape. He is in fact sort of working through this kind of set of racial stereotypes that you mentioned, and that's part of what's going on in it. He is also a special effect, and it's the first instance anybody knows of a special effect, becoming a hero or a central figure in a film.

Speaker 3: 9:35

And from 33 to 76 to 2005, we really see the way in which the technology is used. We really see the way in which the technology is used and it modifies the way in which Kong, who ultimately in all three movies is an object of sympathy and engagement and this was true in 33. People recognize that the death of Kong as he falls off the Empire State Building after trying to protect Anne and clearly sort of accepting his own death to do that, I mean, he was a very People always thought that you know, this was the sad moment of the movie. And that's, I think, the sort of issue of technology and this idea of the he's also nature. I mean, what could be more nature than a giant ape that lives in a jungle where he fights dinosaurs? Uh, you know, it's like you got about as much nature as you could ever have in that and and and this idea that that he's kidnapped and taken to the city and it's the city that actually destroys him and he fights with it. Those are these tropes that I think really are interesting. Change in all three movies. That's the other thing. Once you have the three movies, you can sort of chart the development of Kong, not only in terms of the history of cinema but in terms of these sort of things in which he's surrounded by them. Because, emily, as you may have, I mean it may be a while since you've seen it, but there's this theme of environmentalism that runs through the 76. I mean, it's all about an oil company which is predatory, and they're sort of up to despoil the environment and they end up bringing Kong back so he can be a advertising gimmick for Pet Rock Petroleum and there's a lot of that kind of satire in it.

Speaker 3: 11:43

And then Jackson is interesting because he I'm going on a long time here, but Jackson is maybe the world's greatest King Kong fan.

Speaker 3: 11:53

I mean, if he was sent to a desert island he would probably take Kong.

Speaker 3: 11:57

Actually, he has a huge collection of Kong memorabilia and he's actually said that it was the first movie he saw, that he made him realize he wanted to be a filmmaker and and and it had been a project that had been on his mind for a while, um, and he'd been sort of fooling around with it. And then he starts, uh, doing lord of the rings cycle and of course new zealand is turned into basically a gigantic studio to do that. And then he starts realizing no, I can do Kong and that's the next project he wants to do. And he shoots in New Zealand because it has all these different locations that he was really deeply engaged with, because he considers this to be one of the great movies and actually there is a good history of filmmakers, particularly people in sound and animation and cinematography, saying this is the movie that made me want to go into the movies, this is what inspired me, and Peter Jackson is only sort of the top of that at that point, since after Lord of the Rings he could have filmed anything.

Speaker 1: 13:13

Whatever he wanted.

Speaker 3: 13:13

Whatever?

Speaker 2: 13:14

he wanted.

Speaker 3: 13:15

But he does this one.

Speaker 2: 13:16

He was the 800-pounder.

Speaker 3: 13:17

Exactly exactly. Well, it's a film about movie directors, overtly in the first one and the Jackson one, and then it turns to being about advertising and image making in the second, and there's no filmmaker in it, but the Jeff Bridges character is taking photos all the time. He's doing the photo record of the whole expedition. So I'm going on. I just find all these fascinating aspects of this movie in terms of culture and the history of movies themselves.

Speaker 1: 13:56

It is fascinating. So bring us up to speed. So for me and for our listeners who haven't seen it or haven't seen, it recently. Can you give us the synopsis of the plot and maybe kind of the start with the 33? And then maybe give us, and then 75, 76 did this and then 2005.

Speaker 3: 14:13

Okay, um, in the 33, it's in the middle of the depression, I mean, it's literally in the middle of the depression. Uh and uh, this guy, carl Denham, uh, who has been making, who has been making something which is really common at that point animal pictures, going off and filming animals and people in so-called exotic places and things. And he wants to go and do a shoot on this island that he's heard about that. No, as he says, no white man has ever seen about that. No, as he says, no white man has ever seen. And the studios don't want his work because there's not enough romance in it. That's all about animals and stuff and things like that. And so he recruits a young woman named Ann Darrow, who is out of work and can't get any other work, and persuades her to come with him on the ship. And he keeps a secret where they're going and what they're going to find, and he keeps talking about oh, this is going to be amazing, you'll see things you can't imagine, it'll be beyond this. And you have scenes on the ship where he actually rehearses her to see Kong, he films her and she's in a costume that makes it sort of like evening wear and he says you know. All right, you're happy. Then look up. Look up, you see the most terrifying thing in the world. You've never seen anything like it. Scream, anne scream, and she does, and Fay Wray does this. And so they're all ready.

Speaker 3: 15:51

They get to Skull Island. They find out that Skull Island is inhabited by a bunch of islanders who worship Kong and he is their deity, basically, and they sacrifice to him. And they just arrive at the wrong moment, when they're going to do a sacrifice, and when they see Anne, they go oh yeah, she'd be a much better sacrifice. And they kidnap her and they want to leave. At that point Everybody's kind of scared of this, because Kong is behind this gigantic wall, as you see in all of them, and so he can't get out. But they're pretty nervous about it. But once she's kidnapped, they have to go back and get her. They go into you know the Kong world and you know everybody's attacked by something and Kong fights with a huge number of dinosaurs and other kinds of creatures. But he takes Anne along with him. She's there as the sacrifice, but he's curious about her and so he keeps looking at her in that. And then, finally, the first mate, jack Driscoll in this film who has fallen in love with her, even though he don't like women on ships. But, as he says to her at one point, yeah, but you ain't women.

Speaker 3: 17:10

It's actually a very self-conscious film about this and the final screenplay was actually written by a woman named Ruth Rose, who did a great job with it. Oh, wow, she's really good. She was actually married to Ernst Schozak, who was Cooper's partner, and she actually modeled denim specifically on Marion Cooper and Jack Driscoll on her husband. Wow, and she's kind of unsparing with them actually when she does it. So in the end, kong bursts out into the village because he's pursuing Anne. He destroys the village. He eats, pursuing Anne. He destroys the village. He eats several people. He's eaten people before he throws them up in the air. He stomps on them.

Speaker 3: 17:53

It's an extraordinarily brutal movie.

Speaker 3: 17:55

It's pre-code and the stuff that they do in this is still shocking today, I mean, even though of course it's a giant Kong head chomping on a little tiny doll, but it's still awful to look at.

Speaker 3: 18:13

And then they take him back to New York where he is to be exhibited as the eighth wonder of the world and he sees Anne and he freaks out and he tries to and she runs away. She's always terrified through him in the movie. She never has any sense of any connection with Kong at all in the whole film, which is actually the far more reasonable reaction, that kind of oh we can be friends, or you're kind of sweet, that sort of thing, because he's not. I mean, he really is a monster in all these ways. But he sees her and he goes on a rampage in New York. He eats somebody and he picks up somebody who's a blonde and he sees this not-an and he throws her out in the air and she falls 50 feet to her death and then he destroys an elevated train looking for her, finally finds her, climbs the Empire State Building, which interestingly enough, was not even open at that time. It had just been completed and it was actually referred to in the early advertising as the eighth wonder of the world.

Speaker 3: 19:25

The building was the building was the building was oh yeah, yeah, you know, and, and then, and then you know the planes come and and they kill him. Um, and the movie ends with the line with uh denim standing over the dead body of uh kong in the streets with a huge crowd around it, and they say, well, the airplanes got him. And he says, no, the airplanes didn't get him. It was beauty killed the beast. And I knew I was.

Speaker 3: 19:55

I had an interesting relationship to this film because it was the first thing and I was like 11. The first thing that came into my mind was well, hell, no, you killed him Because, because this is this weird fascination with both the terror and the exoticism of the natural. But when you get New York is a terrible place. It's the depression in the first part, and then it's full of these gawking idiot spectators, you know, who basically just will crowd in to see anything without knowing what it is, because it's supposed to be important, and Kong, by that time, is a sympathetic character and he's destroyed by all this technology. He almost triumphs over it, but that's what kills him. Finally, and it starts this sort of weird thing that runs through a lot of the movies, all the movies, as this kind, the 76 movie brings in the oil company and it drops the overt movie theme. But the Anne character, who is Dwan this is Jessica Lange's first film too, and yeah, and she plays this sort of naive, starstruck young woman who is basically convinced that she's going to be a star and is very conscious about the fact she's very beautiful, but she's a nice person too, and she is there and is kidnapped by Kong.

Speaker 3: 21:40

Kong, at this point, though, becomes not I mean, he does terrifying, horrible things, but he actually seems to understand more of what's going on with him, and he's actually played by a guy and there is no Kong on his own. In the first movie it's all stop action, it's a little 18-inch puppet, basically. And the second one, he is actually played by Rick Baker, who is one of the most famous makeup artists in Hollywood who goes on to this career, but Kong is a guy in an ape suit, and so he actually looks much more human than the earlier Kong, because he really is human in that way. But she actually sort of forms a relationship with him and it's even kind of eroticized on both sides in that one. It's very it's kind of odd, interesting, but that's always one of the things you have to do to sort of like figure out how to deal with this story.

Speaker 3: 22:42

You know where you're going to end up, sympathizing with Kong and so they start in that film to write that in that Anne actually likes him and identifies with him in some way. And then they do the same thing. They take him to New York to abuse him and he breaks out and he starts killing people and doing things. In that film he ends up on the top of the World Trade Center, which doesn't work anywhere near as well as the Empire State Building. It's a flat roof. Who cares? And then what Jackson does that's different is he really gives a really complicated backstory for all the characters in the voyage to Skull Island and you get to know them a lot better. The first film just moves with an incredible pace. I mean, it's a beautifully paced film and the story in terms of beats is just right on time all the time. He's much more leisurely at the beginning, um, but what happens it's interesting to me is that, and what's particularly striking is um kong is played by andy circus. Uh, who did gollum in?

Speaker 3: 23:58

uh lord of the rings yep, and it's cgi'd um and he is extraordinary. He's a very good actor when he's just being himself, but he's extraordinary at doing this kind of motion thing for golems and you know Kongs and stuff like this. But Kong in that is now really looks like an ape and they get it. He's extraordinarily expressive. Baker does the best he can to make Kong expressive and he's really pretty good. Get it. He's extraordinarily expressive. Baker does the best he can to make Kong expressive and he's really pretty good at it.

Speaker 3: 24:31

But with Circus, I mean, he's human from the beginning and you get this strong when he's carrying her through the jungle. You get the sense that I mean she's his because they gave him to me and you know I take them when they give me these sacrifices. That's mine. But she actually is a performer and she tries to win him over by dancing for him. She's a dancer and she performs this dance and at first he's like what the hell's going on? I've never seen anything like this. And then he starts to like it. He's like what the hell's going on, I've never seen anything like this. And then he starts to like it and there's this kind of like okay, we have a relationship but I mean, I'm still your prisoner and you're still a monster ape, so we have some problems, but he protects her from all these monsters in there. He kills three Tyrannosaurus rex in 10 minutes to protect her. He kills three Tyrannosaurus Rex in 10 minutes to protect her.

Speaker 2: 25:27

I can remember Roger Ebert's review at the time saying like if Kong fighting one. T-rex is cool fighting three T-Rexes is way cooler.

Speaker 3: 25:38

It's amazing. The thing which really struck me I like the Jackson version, but the thing that's interesting is that he gives you the sense that Kong lives in an incredible is brutal, because he lives in a brutal world. There is nothing to do but fight all the time. And he connects with Anne because she dances for him, she juggles for him and he likes that. And all of a sudden there's this sense of pleasure and there's this scene where he goes after they have been fighting and all this, and he goes and he sits on the ledge of his lair to look at the sunset and he looks really sad and she comes up to him and looks at it and looks at it and looks back and then she says beautiful. And it's this moment where they connect, not in an erotic or sexual way but in the sense of beauty, not just her but the idea of the beautiful itself that he appreciates. Because you get this feeling that Kong has been out there killing T-Rexes all the time and all he can do is come back to his mountain lair and watch the sunset and he's fully human by that point. And then they have that scene where, after he escapes with her in New York, she takes him ice skating, basically, and they have fun, and then they have to go up on the tower and he has to die all the same, and they all have this arc of this kind of strange, brutal, monstrous creature who is also nature in some way. Um, that is, is being destroyed by modern culture. Uh, and of course, all of them are about technology and technology's intrusion into these things. Um, and that's the thing which fascinates me, because it does change and it does develop and it is always of its own time in some way. The mythology is much bigger than any one of the individual movies and that's why it gets repeated.

Speaker 3: 28:00

The later movies obviously, in some sense, are trying to sort of pull away from the image of the ape as racialized predator. Um, he's much more sympathetic in those, in those films, um, what doesn't change and is so bizarre is that the, um, the, the islanders, uh, in the first film, are, are black, they're africans. What are act doing in the middle of the south pacific? I mean, it's never explained. Um, uh, and, and it is a real sort of primitivism at that point I mean, that's what's what's being done, uh. And in the second movie, uh, they do the same thing. Um, they're, they're in the south seas. They're not actually, uh, you know, doesn't make any sense that they're there, but again they function as this symbol of this not only primitive but destroyed primitive cultures that they've they've slid back into absolute savagery and and human sacrifice yeah, I mean that makes us to.

Speaker 1: 29:06

That makes a certain amount of sense about the American psyche, white American psyche that there is definitely a racial hierarchy and Pacific Islanders are higher than black folks. Black folks are at the bottom of the hierarchy.

Speaker 3: 29:20

Yeah, although in the Jackson version it seems to me it's in New Zealand. So he casts indigenous New Zealanders actually in it, maybe some Australian indigenous peoples too, but you still get that sort of racial effect on this. This is just so it becomes in the 30s. It's just baked into the world, I mean, that's who lives out there in these strange places, and they are, you know, savage in some way. The other two, I think they're just, they're kind of like well, that's the movie, I mean, that's the myth, I mean, and there's nothing we can do about it.

Speaker 3: 30:07

Jackson, actually he can explain a large mythology about this, about why he does this. And one thing that's striking in the movie I think he's trying to sort of balance this. He has in the first part an important black character who is quite heroic and really does present a significant contrast. But you know you can't get rid of the actual tropes that lie behind it in some ways. But I don't even think with Cooper that he's actually doing that for ideological reasons. It's just built into his life, it's just how the culture works and he was a complete reactionary in his politics. You can't redeem this.

Speaker 3: 30:58

But the one thing he said was like well, of course the world is engaged in a race struggle for dominance. And then he says but you know, I'm not sure white people are going to win. We may not be superior I mean, I like to think so because I'm white which actually has no actual value to it, but it was an odd moment. He was fascinated by technology, but he was an odd moment. He was fascinated by technology, but he was also fascinated by using technology to get away from civilization, and that's a kind of tension in his own life about this, because he saw himself as literally he would use this word as an adventurer. That's what he saw himself as being.

Speaker 2: 31:50

It's interesting. Well, I'm just thinking. I did a independent study when I was at Kenyon on the literature of British imperialism because I just find it really fascinating, and so I'm hearing a lot of echoes of what I studied in that, like there's this very clear criticism of kind of these imperial ideologies of you know like we're going to go to someplace that no white man has ever been before before and uh, and it's like kind of, instead of the british version of it, which is we're gonna go and we're gonna take over everything and set up railroads.

Speaker 2: 32:32

It's like we're gonna go, we're gonna find the coolest thing there, we're gonna make money off of it.

Speaker 3: 32:35

Yeah, um, which is very american, yeah yeah, well, cooper was very fond of kipling and and writer ha. Those are the things he read, and I'm sure he read some Edgar Rice Burroughs too and was aware of those things yeah.

Speaker 2: 32:52

Yeah, and that's. That's all part of what I was reading, and it's like so much of the DNA, of our idea of adventure stories. Like we talked about Ryder Haggard a little bit when we talked about Indiana Jones, the idea, the fact that he thought of himself as an adventurer really hits with that viewpoint. Just that it's such a privileged point of view to be like yeah, I have the means, the ability, the right to just go wherever I want to go and do stuff and bring stuff back and bring stuff back and disrupt people's like regular routines and rituals and say well, isn't that interesting.

Speaker 2: 33:40

And considering the fact that the directors were ethnographers, which is is kind of you know, a similar aspect of it.

Speaker 3: 33:51

Yeah, no, no, I mean, it is part of that whole cultural system that they would have been working in at that time. But the way in which each of the movies ends up also being critical of the culture represented by New York and the explorers, and the denim character in in the second movie is he's played by, uh, charles groden and and he's not carl denim, but he's basically the same thing. Um, they, they all end up. They're crazy. I mean, they're, they're. They're actually portrayed, portrayed as as nuts in all of this and obsessed with fame and money. And that idea of creating celebrity and turning Kong into a celebrity. Is this very bringing him back to be. That is really fundamental to the mythology and it's also fundamental to, by the end, making Kong this figure of pathos and even tragedy in certain ways.

Speaker 1: 35:02

Yeah, the tension that I'm hearing, that you're describing so many layers of tensions between potentially false dichotomies, but dichotomies nonetheless. You know nature and and civilization. I'm putting quotes around civilization and and technology and nature and and beauty and survival and um, and I think it's I'm I'm particularly fascinated by the tension that I think you named in the beginning when you were talking about why this matters to you in the the innovative technology of the original movie itself like this.

Speaker 1: 35:40

So this, this piece of art which is critiquing technology, which is itself innovative technology, I'm finding like really, really fascinating like the tension in that like pushing the medium to do something that it had never done before right. Like we couldn't have told the Kong story on film before they invented these techniques right. And to push the medium like the, I never would have thought about the score that you brought to us, and that was the first thing that you named that yeah.

Speaker 1: 36:11

And that which has become something we just rely on, like I know how I'm supposed to feel when I'm watching a movie, because the music tells me how I'm supposed to feel, and so the idea that we could point to this movie as one of the first places to do that, while it was critiquing technology, it's just like blowing my mind a little bit.

Speaker 3: 36:28

Yeah, no, it really is. I mean, the essay I'm working on is really about this idea of kong as wonder and movies as wonder, yeah, and and that that's sort of like that's really the center of what's going on, because the most wonderful thing is not even kong, it's the movie about kong, you know and he totally gets replaced by it in that way.

Speaker 2: 36:51

Yeah, well, and it's, uh, one of the things that we've talked about, uh, before, specifically when we were talking about michael jackson's thriller, is, um, taking a new medium seriously, yeah, and so just because I'm thinking, like with stop motion, I, I'm imagining that people like, oh what, what are you going to do with that? It's like, you know, I don't know, I don't know if that's that's how they would react, but I do know, when I have seen new media come about in my lifetime, it's immediately derided by traditional media. And so, when we were talking about Michael Jackson's thriller, we were saying one of the things that was cool about it was the fact that Michael Jackson and John Landis, who directed it, took the medium of music videos seriously. They were like, yeah, we're going to do something very intentional with this, whereas prior to that it was just, you know, images of the people singing at best, and so we're low production value or whatever.

Speaker 2: 37:54

And so I saw that with blogging, you know when, when people started blogging, we're like, well, this is real writing. I was like, well, the novel didn't used to exist either. You know, that was a new media, a new medium at one point. So so I think that's also really interesting because there is this embrace of new technology in a movie. That is like critiquing the use of technology and using technology that may have been just not thought of or derided or whatever. I do know like people now tend to think of stop motion just because it looks so different from the technology we're used to.

Speaker 3: 38:34

Yeah, oh yeah, and I mean, and it was, it was startling when it was the stop motion, when it was done, it was it was roughly developed by this guy, willis O'Brien, who had made a monster movie using it, uh, like seven years earlier, but it was not a huge success, um, but I mean he was seen as having perfected it so that could actually be used because there was no other way to get kong in the picture. You know it just, it just wouldn't have worked. You couldn't use animation and they didn't want to use a guy in an ape suit. So this was it. And yeah, and I mean, this is released in 33.

Speaker 3: 39:17

Sound film is still new and the question of what you're going to do with it and how it will work is really complicated at that time. But its capacity to produce this level of wonder because the wonder is not just Kong, it's the wonder, oh, what we have for all these kinds of movies how did they do that? If they'd had a way of doing a director's commentary in 33, it would have been all about like, yeah, we had all real trouble with that shot. It was really difficult. It took us 14 takes because, you see, you got to get the camera at exactly the right angle. That's all they would talk about. You know how they, this is how we made it, and that is the fast, in some ways the fascination behind, behind that I'm curious to hear.

Speaker 1: 40:13

we've talked about horror a few times on the show. I am not at all a horror aficionado. I'm just too much of a wimp to be perfectly honest. But I really I'm interested to hear about Kong kind of in the how Kong sits in the genre, in the development of the genre, because looking back on it now it doesn't feel like horror.

Speaker 3: 40:33

Right.

Speaker 1: 40:34

And yet some of the key components of what makes horror horror, I think, are there especially in 33. Can you talk to us about that a little bit?

Speaker 3: 40:42

Yeah, the first time I ever actually wrote about Kong was actually in a book. I wrote about the Gothic and it's when I was talking about 20th century sort of versions of the Gothic, how it got rerouted and redone, and I talked about Heart of Darkness and Freud's Dora, a Case History, and Vertigo and I talked about Kong. And Kong is horror in its most forceful way. I mean, horror stories involve the direct confrontation with the monster, with something which is an overwhelming force that comes at you. It's a little different than stories which are full of terror, which keep the monster away as long as possible, and of course Kong does that on the voyage to the island, but it really is in a lot of the earlier things. Of course it's kind of a supernatural creature, something which goes beyond the sort of the ordinary realm, and Kong does that, but again he remains natural and the confrontation with that's going on in this again is on, at least on a formal level. Is this sense of its erotic quality, this sense of its erotic quality, that horror starts to merge in some weird way with sexuality? And there's a scene in the 33 version which is duplicated in the 76, but not in the 2005, where Kong picks Anne up and he's curious about her and so he starts sort of scratching at her with his finger and her dress starts coming apart and he's sort of pawing at her. Now, because of the technology they've had for the head that we're looking at and the way we're looking at him, he looks like, you know, an eight-year-old boy looking at his sister's Barbie. The stuff in the 76 version is overtly eroticized and made sexual, and I think that's the sort of idea of the horrific and desire that are really being brought together in that.

Speaker 3: 43:14

Because kong is I mean he's not in in the first movie. I don't think he's driven so much by beauty. I mean he is because he's fascinated with uh, uh, and and and, and feyre is quite attractive, you know, and to to regular people, not not just apes, obviously, and so that's there. But he's driven by this desire for something that she represents to him and he pursues it, and he pursues it to the point of his own destruction. But he destroys everything else on the way and you get the sense that in that film that if he hadn't been worried about protecting her he would have destroyed New York. I mean he's that powerful in that way, kinds of horrible things that ultimately you know, manifest themselves here in the primate that feels very close to the human at the same time I think that's another thing that's going on with this that you know we are related to Kong on some biological level. You know, distant cousins type thing.

Speaker 1: 44:33

Yeah, the symbolism of that, of what you're describing now, particularly with what you shared, is the final line of the movie that you know had 11 year old pat going well not really um you know the symbolism of that, like sort of the, the, when I iterate that out, you know, to the power that female sexuality has over culture. Yeah Right, that like this Rhymal urge which could have destroyed New York.

Speaker 3: 45:03

You know yeah.

Speaker 1: 45:04

But, but beautiful feyrey was able to, you know, distract and and subvert and somehow control, even though I don't think that it doesn't sound like anne felt that she had any control oh no, no, you know, as portrayed, so it's it's like, uh, emily and I talk regularly about the way that pop culture or culture in general, will sort of give with one hand and take with the other and that's, that's for female sexuality. That's what I'm hearing a lot Like super powerful, but not inside your control, lady.

Speaker 3: 45:35

Yeah, well, that's true in this situation, although it's interesting that she, you know, when she's on the ship and she meets Jack Driscoll, the first mate, who says I don't like women on ships, but you're not women, but eventually comes to you don't like women on ships, but you're not women, but eventually comes to you ain't women? And she sets out to charm him and she does, and she charms him into this idea that you know. Oh, maybe this all-male tramp steamer that I work on isn't all there is in the world, you know, and I'm interested.

Speaker 1: 46:11

Pat, how do we, the viewer, feel about that like? Do we do we appreciate that in her, or are we invited to sort of think of her as somehow duplicitous?

Speaker 3: 46:19

no, no, she's quite sincere and and I mean, and actually she doesn't do it really with kong exactly, but she brings out this other side of Jack.

Speaker 1: 46:31

She humanizes him.

Speaker 3: 46:32

Yeah, exactly, and sort of like, makes him sort of like feel things he's never felt before, and that is some idea of what's going on with Kong.

Speaker 2: 46:43

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 46:44

But he's just so scary that there's no other relation there. Yeah, that there's no other relation there, yeah. And actually at the end when Kong goes berserk and sees her at the exhibition, it's also announced that Jack and Anne are being married the next day. Yeah, well, of course Kong doesn't know that I mean, but you know we do and we can sort of look that up, you know yeah.

Speaker 1: 47:11

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 47:13

It's interesting to me that you mentioned, in the essay that you wrote about the Gothic, that you brought up Part of Darkness which I read and analyzed like at least three times in college. And the first thing I'm thinking is, like I would love to, I'm now thinking I should do a double feature with the original King Kong and Apocalypse Now.

Speaker 1: 47:33

I think that would be fascinating. Oh yeah, Because.

Speaker 2: 47:36

I'm just hearing a lot of echoes between the two of them, but I also the thing that I find like really fascinating is you know, Heart of Darkness.

Speaker 2: 47:48

determines that, determines that, like we are the heart of darkness, like that it's within us um and uh, king kong kind of does that, but also is it like other rises, like there's there, it's um. Very much says like yeah, there's some bad stuff that we do. We probably shouldn't do this, that and the other, but at least we're not. You know an 800 foot foot tall gorilla, and at least we're not sacrificing people to the gorilla.

Speaker 3: 48:18

Yeah, yeah. Well, that's true. I mean not, we're not sacrificing. I think the movie makers were actually surprised how sympathetic the audience was to Kong, because that actually happened, very that right away. This was how people responded to it and I've always thought, I mean, it's not provable, but that this spoke to something about people's feelings, about the Depression. I mean here the entire economic system has collapsed, it's not working anymore. They remember the horror of World War I and it feels like, you know, everybody is a victim and you know, here's this gigantic skyscraper which is this sort of symbol of, you know, I mean, the power of engineering and capitalism and it's part of this thing which kills him. And I think people actually did respond to that aspect of Kong that you know he was OK, you know.

Speaker 2: 49:24

Well, also the fact that he's being exploited to, to for capitalists to gain. So I'm sure the average person could really identify with that during the depression.

Speaker 3: 49:37

Although the portrait of the Kong audience as a version of a movie audience basically makes them look like idiots. It's really odd. I mean, if the audience is watching it in some way and seeing themselves in the audience for Kong, they are seeing them as fools. On the other hand, the audience for Kong is clearly rich people. It's very expensive to go see Kong and they actually make that point. You know that this is what's going on with it.

Speaker 1: 50:06

That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, so I'm going to pause here and invite you, pat. You came on here. You've got a lot to say about con, which is awesome is there anything that we didn't touch on that you wanted to make sure that you shared with us?

Speaker 3: 50:26

uh, let's things that are actually significant about this. Again, you don't want to get me started on Kong, obviously. I mean it just goes on and on and on?

Speaker 3: 50:39

No, we definitely do, I mean I sometimes think the only person who would want to talk to me is Peter Jackson. He has a lot of memorabilia too, that love to see, actually, you know uh, so there would be that. But no, I think we've covered um most of the things that are are really significant, uh, the issues that are raised by them. You know, and and and um the way a certain kind of uh fantasy, uh thing can move through culture and appear over and over again and always be reconstructed in some way or another and dealt with, yeah yeah, yeah, to reflect the time that it's it's needed.

Speaker 1: 51:20

Yeah, well, let me see if I can reflect back some of the highlights of what we, what we and Pat and Emily feel free to stop me interrupt, edit, add nuance. So this I heard. I heard layers of tension in this movie. I heard sort of the fundamental kind of surface level tension between nature, represented by Kong, and capitalism and civilization quotes around that word, represented by kong, and capitalism and civilization quotes around that word represented by new york and the. Some of some of the interesting things about that. That surface level tension are the ways in which, though kong was a monster because he was representing nature and also the opposite of capitalism, there was a great deal of sympathy for him in the thirties, which we, the end of our conversation we talked about, sort of maybe set up by the audience. Who was the audience for Kong in the movie was not the audience proxy for us watching the film. In fact, they were also representatives of capitalism.

Speaker 1: 52:30

So there was.

Speaker 2: 52:30

There's definitely a sort of anti-capitalist message in this, in this um mythology for sure in the original film, but it sounds like oh yeah throughout the iterations yeah, uh, that's part of what I when I mentioned, like how impressed I was by jack Black, being both charming and morally bankrupt. That's what he. He says the exact same thing about two different people who die.

Speaker 2: 52:57

And the first time he says it, you're like, oh wow, he really does get that. Like you know how his actions have affected people. And then, like some amount of time later, he says the exact same thing about someone else who's died. And you realize like, oh no, he's just glib and he's just very good at performing and all he cares about is his. Whatever his goal was I think I don't know if it was the money or if the, because it's been sought in the theater but whatever his goal was was all he actually cared about, and he was good at manipulating people.

Speaker 1: 53:29

So there was that same the capitalist critique. You say exactly, yeah, um, we also.

Speaker 1: 53:39

We talked a little bit about sort of the just baked in kind of racist, white supremacist kind of cultural comportment that shows up, not an intentional ideological like the birth of a nation, but just that baked into the culture of kind of white folks who get to be adventurers, who get to be colonists, who get to be imperialists, who go to skull island and of course, it's black people there, because we want to see that they are savages and we're, and that they're so much, uh, so superior to these savages who would sacrifice people to a monster, um, and also our, the white folks, end up being monstrous in a different way we also talked about in.

Speaker 1: 54:28

We talked about the eroticism of this. That has a racialized component to it, for sure, in the 30s, but then the eroticism is ramped up in the 70s. I heard between the Anne character and the giant ape, which in the 30s for sure was there, but it sounds like it was less explicitly conveyed, in part because of the limitations of the technology of the ape head.

Speaker 1: 55:06

Yeah, yeah, and that some of the differences that you pulled out that I found really interesting were Faye Ray's portrayal yeah yeah, was some sort of connection between the two characters. Yeah, yeah, I love, I love what you brought about kong being sort of a model for a scored film. That and that speaks to what emily was pointing out where we talked about michael jackson's thriller where these movie makers took this new-ish medium ie sound films seriously about what it was capable of doing and the kinds of emotion it was capable of creating in us the viewer and I.

Speaker 1: 56:04

I find that really, really fascinating to kind of be able to point to a specific place in the history of film and say that's it and that it's. This film is really interesting. There's so much symbolism in the characters, but also in the way that they then the setting, like every aspect of it. So, for instance, pat, you pointed out the fact that the empire state building versus the world trade center like aesthetically is so different, but also in terms of like the symbolism of what the empire state building represented in the 30s, this brand new eighth wonder of the world that the movie makers put the eighth wonder of the world on that's right, which again is like really interesting kind of layers of meaning and symbolism and tension, which didn't translate quite as well into the 70s of the world trade center as the, which is just a, was just kind of a square, boxy building.

Speaker 1: 57:07

Um, what am I forgetting?

Speaker 2: 57:09

I know we talked about more than that um, we talked a little bit about how, um, where king kong fits in the idea of horror, um and um, why we see some of the tropes that are common to horror in king kong Kong and what that means and that kind of. That's part of where that eroticism comes from is because that tension is often in horror films. And then a little bit also talked about like giving with one hand and taking away with the other, about women's power and female sexuality, in particular, female sexuality in particular, female sexuality in particular.

Speaker 3: 57:51

yes, yeah, yeah, yeah I, I guess the only thing I mean, I I think this, we, this is what we covered, and and I think this is all all works. I think I just uh. The other thing to remember is this this is hung on an incredibly when you're just watching it, particularly in the 33, really, where they really have a story that just cracks along all the way and is just mesmerizing to watch and the action never stops once it starts. And all of those, whatever they're doing with the effects, whether they work well or less so in the 76, or really well but different in 2005 those really are marvelous things to look at, yeah that is something that you pointed out, pat, about the storytelling in particular.

Speaker 1: 58:49

You named that the story beats the pacing of the beats in 33 was perfect. I think that maybe even was the word that you used. And the way that then that adapts over the next two iterations. And Emily brought in our friend Roger Ebert and his point that if it's cool to watch Kong and a T-Rex, it's even cooler to watch Kong and three T-Rexes. That's right, exactly, exactly, yeah, so you know we've spent a lot of time talking about sort of the intellectual like the symbolism and the tension but just a reminder and thank you for that that this is just fun media to consume it's just enjoyable storytelling.

Speaker 1: 59:28

Yeah, cool.

Speaker 3: 59:35

All assume it's just enjoyable storytelling. Yeah, cool, all right, okay, any final thoughts? Nope, I've really enjoyed this. Uh, yeah, great to have a chance.

Speaker 1: 59:38

Thank you, yeah so where can our listeners find your writing, pat?

Speaker 3: 59:43

um. The gothic book uh in the circles of fear and Desire is published by University of Chicago Press, and the Vampire Story in American Culture what Becomes a Legend Most is published by University of Kentucky Press.

Speaker 1: 1:00:00

Okay, we will link to both of those. Awesome, we will link to both of those in the show notes. So, listeners, if you want to check that out and do you know where the essay, the Kong essay, is, to be published.

Speaker 3: 1:00:11

No, I'm still polishing it, to be honest with you, and this has been great because it's given me a chance to sort of run through it again and think about some things with this. That's great, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:00:22

All right, Well listeners, if and when Professor Day lets me know where it's published, I will add that retroactively to the show notes to this episode and it has been so wonderful to be in space with you again. It has been so. I looked it up, I think it was maybe 97.

Speaker 3: 1:00:41

Yeah, that's about right. That's what I was going to say for you, for Fraggle Rock.

Speaker 1: 1:00:44

I think that is yeah, it's been a long minute and it's really fun and maybe we'll come back to you about I.

Speaker 2: 1:00:54

I love vampire stories. There's something like I love vampires I love.

Speaker 1: 1:00:57

Dramatic irony is like my favorite literary device of all time and vampire stories like have to have dramatic irony, because we know that that guy's a vampire, exactly, exactly, yeah so, uh, maybe we'll have you back on to talk about a specific uh vampire in pop culture okay, all right, well, it's been a lot of fun.

Speaker 2: 1:01:18

Thanks so much emily I think it's your turn next what are you going to bring me? I am going to bring you my deep thoughts on four weddings and a funeral. Oh man movie that made.

Speaker 1: 1:01:29

Hugh Grant, an international sex symbol he was certainly my sex symbol for a long time because of that movie yeah, oh so cute.

Speaker 1: 1:01:39

Yeah, all right, even though he's a little wee nose because I'm like Simone, with big noses and broad shoulders, I do. Who can make me laugh? All right, well, I look forward to those deep thoughts next week. See you then. Do you like stickers? Sure, we all do. If you head over to guygirlsmediacom, slash, sign up and share your address with us, we'll send you a sticker. It really is that easy, but don't wait, there's a limited quantity. Thanks for listening. Our theme music is Professor Umlaut by Kevin MacLeod from incompetechcom. Find full music credits in the show notes. Until next time, remember, pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head?