Abstract
The current study examines the fictional screen figure King Kong—as envisioned by the New Zealand director Peter Jackson in his 2005 remake—to question European ambivalence towards the Self/Other binary division. The modern 2005 Kong acts as a counter visual icon to the Eurocentric version of colonialist ideologies to expose their hypocrisy and myth-making colonial history. The present study is an attempt to integrate the visual narrative of King Kong (2005) into the framework of Postcolonial paradigm and within the theory of Adaptation to highlight the points of departure undertaken by the Postcolonial director Peter Jackson. The study seeks to establish Jackson’s revisit of a prior work as a “willful act” to reinterpret the screen figure Kong as a “Subaltern” subject whose quest for a voice is central to the film’s message. The dialogic relationship between the old and the new cinematic narratives is investigated to challenge Essentialist Western View of “Othering” so as to provide a Postcolonial revision of a fluid relationship between a prior work and a belated one. Thus, the aim of the present study is to deconstruct stereotypical representations, to historicize and contextualize Kong as a cultural and historical metaphor in Postcolonial Cinema. Animal Studies can offer new interpretations of how nonhuman animals can deconstruct the ontological Western discourses of rationality and capitalism within Postcolonial Cinema to rethink the boundaries that separate human and nonhuman.
Highlights
Introduction1.1 Aim and Scope “Western spectator’s eyes have been “imperialized” throughout the history of Hollywood cinema” (Kaplan, 1997, p. 219)
1.1 Aim and Scope “Western spectator’s eyes have been “imperialized” throughout the history of Hollywood cinema” (Kaplan, 1997, p. 219).The current study examines the fictional screen figure King Kong—as envisioned by the New Zealand director Peter Jackson in his 2005 remake—to question European ambivalence towards the Self/Other binary division
The modern 2005 Kong acts as a counter visual icon to the Eurocentric version of colonialist ideologies to expose their hypocrisy and myth-making colonial history
Summary
1.1 Aim and Scope “Western spectator’s eyes have been “imperialized” throughout the history of Hollywood cinema” (Kaplan, 1997, p. 219). Schoedsack, the most recent incarnation of Kong, the longest running three hours and eight minutes and the winner of three Academy Awards for visual effects, sound mixing and sound editing It is the most famous Jungle film about the twenty-five foot gorilla that is considered as “an iconic image in global culture” The revisited King Kong is a romantic, cinematic fairy tale about the monstrous gorilla that falls in love with the beautiful white woman. This is a reminiscent retelling of Marie Laprine de Beaumont’s Beauty and Beast (1756), a link stated in the final cinematic spectacle by Denham: “It was Beauty that killed the Beast”. Kong is an embodiment of Freud’s id, the dark, animal shadow that lurks in the human psyche as well as of Rousseau’s man in a state of nature untainted by modern life
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