RE: The Kong kerfuffle in the press

[serai]

Maybe it's my bitchy nature, but I gotta wonder:


What the hell kind of mind looks at a 28-foot tall GORILLA and thinks "Black Person"?


I mean, seriously. These ninnies are going around yelling about racism, but what about the connection they're making in their heads? You know, I don't look at Kong and equate him with a black person. You know why? Because he's a fucking GORILLA. Gorillas are not black people. They're APES.

It's like the same kerfuffle that happened with LOTR, with the same idiot "social critics" (read: professional bitchers) who equated ORCS with black people. Nobody else was thinking that. Just the people claiming to represent black people. I don't know about you, but anyone who looks at huge, greasy, yellow-fanged, red-eyed, murdering berserker demons and thinks "Hey, those are black people!" sure as shit sounds like a racist to ME.

Same with Kong. I'm sorry, but no matter how much you'd like to think everything is about the particular issue that gets up your ass, it ain't. Sometimes things are just what they look like, in this case, a movie about a fucking GORILLA.

And for those who whine about the "natives" in the movie, and claim they're unrealistic: NO SHIT, SHERLOCK. Of course they're unrealistic - it's a goddamn FANTASY. It's fascinating to me that these people will zero in on that one aspect, and yet don't bitch about the presence of friggin' DINOSAURS. Or even, dare we say it, the fact that Kong himself is 28 FEET TALL.

You'd think these little facts would clue them in to the idea that we're not supposed to take any of this seriously. But nooooo. Out of all this wonderfully nonsensical thrill ride, they actually think people are going to take that ONE aspect of the film at face value.


Jesus Christ in a diamond tiara. These people really take the cake.

Comments

[starlit-woods.livejournal.com]

Jesus Christ in a diamond tiara.

LOL Well I think that really just said it all! :)

[rodneyscat.livejournal.com]

I agree with you that neither King Kong, nor the natives or the orcs & uruk hais remind me of black people. I think I know where they critics are coming from though, because if all these characters in these movies aren't black people then where are the black people. They just don't exist in these movies (although I haven't seen King Kong yet). A lot of the time when critic like that is given it's because there are only white people and apelike 'monsters' in these movies, so that's how they draw their conclusion I guess.

It was the other way around with Harry Potter. The movies (especially the latest two) have been critisized for having an unrealistically amount of coloured kids in the movie. Just because they weren't specified as being coloured in the books. Because, every time a skin colour isn't mentioned, it must be white of course... For that I love the (ironically meant) icon from someone on my flist that says: 'in my fandom Hermoine is black'.

I don't know about English schools, but I doubt they're much different from Dutch ones, and over here schoolpics look pretty diverse where it comes to skincolour. The Harry Potter movies are very realistic in that respect.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Well, I've always thought the whole "Where are the black people?" thing when it came to LOTR to be ridiculous beyond imagining. It's supposed to be a mythology about pre-historic times in ENGLAND. The English never even SAW a black person until the 1300's or so. How in the world do these people expect there to be black people in the story? It's like one chick I knew who bitched about this, and couldn't get it through her thick skull that hundreds of years ago, the number of people who went farther than 50 miles from their homes in their entire lifetimes was microscopic, because she just couldn't imagine that someone wouldn't just get up and WALK 400 miles on a whim. When it comes to that kind of mentality, you just have to give up sometimes.

As for Kong, like I said, FANTASY. It's not supposed to be real. What I'd like to know is, where the hell are these people when it comes to all the violent, pimp-turned-rapper films? THOSE are racist movies. With a film like Kong, you have to turn cartwheels to invent stuff to dislike in this vein. With shit like those 'hood movies, it's right there in the open. Why the hell aren't they whining in the press about that shit?

[rodneyscat.livejournal.com]

Well in prehistoric times en England there weren't any hobbits or elves either, and even if Tolkien naturally didn't think of making at least some of them black because it wasn't part of his reality to make this an obvious choice, there were more things changed in the movies, things that in my opinion changed more about the spirit of the books than skincolour could ever do, so why not take a couple of black actors/actresses.

I don't know if there are any black people in the movie King Kong, but if there aren't, well, there sure were enough black people around in America in that period of time. Even in fantasy it's nice to be recognized as to exist at all. And a lot is being said about violent, pimp-turned-rapper movies, but not nearly enough. And don't get met started on the way black people and women are portrayed in videoclips on MTV and such.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Oh Jesus. I'm sorry, but no one is ever going to convince me that putting a human multi-racial cast in LOTR is anything but PC horseshit. No way. The elves are based in archetypal mythic forms that are native to Northern Europe - they're not things Tolkien just made up. And hobbits were supposed to be related to those same European people. The whole idea is that it's a mythology built on the remnants of the real mythology of the area. Saying we should put black people in there is the same as saying, if you're going to make a movie about the Mayan creation myth, why don't you cast Chinese people? Because it would be a grotesque mismatch which doesn't make any sense. It's applying fleeting social fashion to something that's supposed to have real mythic resonance. Tolkien would have been horrified by the idea, and I absolutely agree with him. If someone wants to see a mythic film about black people, why the hell don't they make a film based on the mythologies of Africa? There are hundreds of wonderful, rich stories that come from there, and yet those who whine about the lack of black people in an English myth never seem to ask why no one is making films about Anansi or Mawu or Obatala. And let me tell you, if someone made one of those films and got flack for not putting in any WHITE people, the turnabout certainly wouldn't go down easy.

I'm a pretty liberal person, but there's a difference between that and insisting that every piece of art has to contain all viewpoints. That's just the flip side of right-wingers bitching about every newscast or science book that doesn't contain THEIR viewpoint. And as to fantasy, I take the same stance on this aspect of it as I take towards people who beat their breasts over things like rape fantasies in fanfic: it's FANTASY. Not meant to be taken seriously or as a blueprint for behavior or society. It's solely entertainment, not documentary. Those who cannot separate fantasy from reality have a lot more problems than a movie with a three-story ape running around in it.

Sorry to sound harsh, but I'm just never going to side with a viewpoint that denies the ability of the human mind to make such distinctions. There were riots here in Westwood when the gangbanging film "Colors" came out in the 80's, but I've yet to meet anyone who ever tried to beat up a black person because the orcs made Boromir into a pincushion.