Photo Credit: Jonathan Olley. Copyright: © 2016 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., Village Roadshow Films North America Inc. And Ratpac-Dune Entertainment Llc - U.S., Canada, Bahamas & Bermuda.
Alexander Skarsgård as Tarzan in Warner Bros. Pictures' and Village Roadshow Pictures' action adventure The Legend Of Tarzan, distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures and in select territories by Village Roadshow Pictures.
Photo Credit: Jonathan Olley. Copyright: © 2016 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., Village Roadshow Films North America Inc. And Ratpac-Dune Entertainment Llc - U.S., Canada, Bahamas & Bermuda.
Margot Robbie stars as Jane in Warner Bros. Pictures' and Village Roadshow Pictures' action adventure The Legend Of Tarzan, distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures and in select territories by Village Roadshow Pictures.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures. Copyright: © 2016 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., Village Roadshow Films North America Inc. And Ratpac-Dune Entertainment Llc - U.S., Canada, Bahamas & Bermuda.
(Right) Alexander Skarsgård as Tarzan in Warner Bros. Pictures' and Village Roadshow Pictures' action adventure The Legend Of Tarzan, distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures and in select territories by Village Roadshow Pictures.
By Andrew A. Smith
Tribune Content Agency
1 Corinthians 13:11 tells us: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child, now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things.”
Is Tarzan one of those childish things? Is it time to put away the most famous creation of Edgar Rice Burroughs?
This question is pertinent because the durable Ape-Man returns July 1 in The Legend of Tarzan, a new big-budget movie, starring Alexander Skarsgård, Margot Robbie, Samuel L. Jackson and Christoph Waltz. The previews promise a gorgeous and heart-stopping film, where the special effects have finally caught up to the spectacle we could only imagine when reading the books of ERB.
And read him I did. Burroughs was part of the Nerd Canon, the books and authors that were virtually required reading for everyone in my generation who liked science fiction more than sports. I read every single Tarzan book (and every Pellucidar and John Carter of Mars book) one endless summer in junior high, back to back to back. It was glorious.
But even then, there were elements of the Ape-Man’s stories that made me a little uncomfortable. As I grew older, the causes of that discomfort swam into focus.
For one thing, the subtext of Tarzan is more than a little racist.
Even as a 12 year old, the Li’l Capn wondered why the white guy was better at everything in Africa than the black people who already lived there. Sure, he was raised by apes, so he was swinging around in trees from a young age, developing different muscles and skills than ground-dwelling Africans. But if this is a world where a mother ape might adopt a baby human, is it logical that it only happened the once? And that it happened to the only white baby, one who got there by accident? Seems to me that there are ought to be a few black Ape-Men swinging around the Congo, equal in talent and ability to the transplanted English lord, if not superior.
Also, the Tarzan books were more than a little sexist.
To be fair, Jane Porter showed more agency than most female characters written at the same time. She was shrewd, tough-minded, and not above grabbing a knife and defending herself. But even so, she seemed to spend most of her time in the Tarzan books as a hostage.
And women who weren’t Jane … well, they spent all their time threatened, screaming and/or being captured by bad guys, apes, ant-men, ancient Romans, and a variety of other lost civilizations. They were utterly helpless.
Finally, there was one level of discomfort that was uniquely modern. And that was the awareness dawning on the Li’l Capn – and much of the world – that the many animals being killed in various ways in the ERB books were no longer so plentiful. Not only were many of them disappearing, but so were their habitats. So not only was the large-animal population of the African veldt vanishing, so was the possibility that all of those lost civilizations of ant-men and ancient Romans and such could possibly remain lost. As the world kept shrinking, the Tarzan books were becoming both environmentally reckless and laughably implausible.
I don’t say all this to savage the Tarzan books. They were written in good faith, with no intent to harm anyone. They were just entertainment, and often joyous, vivid entertainment.
And Burroughs wasn’t a bad man. He never wrote anything sexist or racist directly. Women in Tarzan stories didn’t suffer sexual violence (although they did get tied up quite a bit), and many black characters were written with nobility, pathos and honor.
But Burroughs was a man of his time. And his time was a century ago. The first Tarzan story was published in All-Story magazine in 1912, before either world war – a time almost unimaginable from the perspective of today.
To be clear: This was a time when phrases like “white man’s burden,” “Manifest Destiny” and “a credit to your race” were used without irony. The entirely imaginary “Yellow Peril” was frightening enough to white men that the U.S. instituted immigration quotas from Asia, and “Buck Rogers” began in a dystopic future with whites conquered by Asians. Jim and Jane Crow were quite healthy across the country, especially in the states of the old Confederacy. As to women, they didn’t yet have the right to vote, and were expected to have lots of children, be homemakers and do what their husbands told them to do.
Given all that, Tarzan was practically progressive!
Now, however, it’s 2016. The flaws that alarmed the Li’l Capn decades ago have only gotten more glaring over time.
The movie is taking an easy way out by setting the movie in the early part of the 20th century, when many of the problems listed above were not yet considered problems. (We know this, because Legend of Tarzan takes place mostly in the “Free State of Congo,” which was essentially a Belgian colony until it ceased to exist in 1908.) And I have no doubt that 21st century environmentalism and racial/sexual sensibilities will be evident in the writing, because that’s almost unavoidable.
I further have no doubt that when I settle into my seat at the theater to watch Legend of Tarzan – and I will – that I will thoroughly enjoy myself. My inner 12 year old has been waiting for Avengers-level special effects to be applied to my other childhood favorites for a long time. (Here’s hoping modern versions of King Kong and the classic Universal monsters aren’t far behind.)
But as we all plod into an unknown future, we need to update our myths and legends so that they keep step with us. I don’t want to put Tarzan away with other childish things, so future filmmakers, TV producers, comic book writers and prose editors must be mindful of which parts of Tarzan still work, and which don’t.
And the latter -- the racism, the sexism, the slaughter of animals – are the childish things that need to be put away. The rest we can keep. Because as we step into that unknown future, it will be comforting to have Tarzan walking beside us.
Reach Captain Comics by email (capncomics@aol.com), the Internet (captaincomics.ning.com), Facebook (Captain Comics Round Table) or Twitter (@CaptainComics).
Replies
I don't know Cap, I think things can be lost. When I was in school I read heavily sanitized versions of the Greek myths and even more watered down biographies of the founding fathers and other great men in history. The bio I read of Patton didn't mention a lot of his problems. I know for a fact that Nancy Drew underwent changes. I read a few of the Tarzan books and I didn't have as many misgivings you did. Maybe that was a reaction because I was in the middle of bussing and learning to hate everyone in schools, I was just thrilled with the idea that a person could do everything that Tarzan did and get away with it. I would have loved to have lasso-strangled a lot of my classmates and not a few of the teachers. But I also read She by Rider Haggard and even while he was black I never read a character with more self worth and self respect than Umslopogass of the Ax, he could be either pushed too far in a movie or somehow modernized if it were made wrong. The Great Brain was set in Utah in the late 1890s where there was friction between the Mormans and Catholics and Protestants. The narrator of the story -John Fitzgerald- was the youngest of two brothers and to keep himself and his brothers safe he was required to be able to beat up every Morman boy his age, just as his brothers were obliged to be able to beat up every Morman boy there ages. I think the line he used was "There ain't no one more understanding than someone you can whup." Could that line so typical of the time be uttered in a modern movie?
There's a danger in updating to satisfy the cultural norms that weren't even dreamed of when a story was originally written. You can loose the history and the danger to me is that if the attitudes are not portrayed as existing then as they were then you might be telling some kid who doesn't know any better that they never existed then. History has faults and those faults should never be forgotten.
I really think Tarzan should be left in his time period. Some things just don't work well if you move them to the present.
Agreed, Tarzan only works set in the past. Modernizing the character and/or making him more realistic is asking for trouble, robbing him of the fantasy element that is a huge part of his appeal. The Tarzan TV series of the Sixties updated the character for the time and I found the show rather dull. I wanted to see the ERB Tarzan with lost civilizations, over the top villains and a near super-human Ape Man.
Ronald Morgan said:
“1 Corinthians 13:11 tells us: ‘When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child, now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things.’”
Ah, what ever happened to TarzanSoCool? She posted here only twice, but I miss her. [She was the teenager who positively gushed over that godawful TV series that lasted all of two episodes (IIRC) a couple of years ago.]
“For one thing, the subtext of Tarzan is more than a little racist.”
I don’t think Tarzan (well, Burroughs) was a racist per se; I think he was an ethnocentrist. (Perhaps that’s a fine distinction.) He came down firmly on the “heredity” side of the classic “heredity vs. environment” debate. We’ve spoken of this before, but the scene I always think of is when the wild, savage ape-man finally gets Jane alone, but doesn’t ravage her because something in his bloodline stops him short.
“The movie is taking an easy way out by setting the movie in the early part of the 20th century.”
I approve; I think that’s that only way to go.
“But as we all plod into an unknown future, we need to update our myths and legends so that they keep step with us. “
I disagree. I think we need to show those attitudes exactly as they existed at the time. To do otherwise would be to suggest that such notions as you describe never existed.
“(Here’s hoping modern versions of King Kong and the classic Universal monsters aren’t far behind.)”
Well, there was that 2005 version on King Kong starring Jack Black. (How quickly they forget.)
“The movie is taking an easy way out by setting the movie in the early part of the 20th century.”
This reminds me of one of my personal pet ideas, that they could do a Hulk movie that was true to the original story by making it a pastiche of a 60's Bert I. Gordon type horror flick.
One of my personal pet ideas is a modern James Bond movie set during the height of the Cold War.
Philip Jose Farmer's way around the white hero was to make Tarzan not racially superior but genetically superior.
It's always difficult when discussing books, movies and TV shows from decades, if not a century ago because our way of life is very different from theirs.
Tarzan, the Shadow, Doc Savage, the Phantom and their kin are best left in the eras that they were most popular in!
The Phantom especially, I can't see him working in modern Africa. For that matter I've always thought that the Adams Family and the Munsters only worked in the late 1950's to early 1960's, after that they got less and less weird as society changed.
It will be fun to see True Blood's Eric Northman and Harley Quinn in action together.
I didn't realize this until I saw the title of this thread, but I would like to see a Tarzan story told in the modern day. It would be interesting (if done right) to see a guy who grew up in the jungle contrasted with Millennials who have had their face in a zombie-trance staring at screens their whole lives. He would have to be so much more in-tune with nature than anyone is now. I think it could work. Then all of the racism/womanizing/animal killing as a problem would make much more sense given the time period.
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