KING KONG | 2005-12-19
Until Film Industry professional or Peter or Mark or somebody else gets back to me, I am reduced to discussing sex.
This is embarrassing.
It is true that people have told me that they enjoy it when I discuss politics or sex. It is true that they are interested in the depth of my knowledge on both subjects.
But their enjoyment of the depth of my familarity with sex is somewhat less flattering than their reaction to my knowledge of politics.
In the former case, I dislike their tendency to giggle at me.
People take my knowledge of politics seriously, and it makes me happy that they
enjoy what I say about that subject.
People enjoy my attempts to discuss sex, too. But the giggles ruin the fun.
So you see what I am reduced to when you don't promptly provide me with the input I ask you for.
Because you have no provided me with the input I need on politics, I must discuss sex.
So here it is:
The latest remake of King Kong did not do as well at the box office as the two former versions.
I have mentioned before, both here and in my radio program, the fact that when I was entering my teens, every single advertisement for a horror movie showed a beautiful woman being the victim of a monster or a vampire or an evil man.
The same generation that would have fought anyone who attacked a real woman obviously had fantasies of lovely women being grabbed by monsters. One of the big hits of my youth was called The Woman Eater, a title which lacks a certain sublety but makes my point.
I was talking about this with a woman whose profession had been organizing Sunday Schools in large churches. Her reaction included none of the astonished horror she would be expected to show. She calmly pointed out to me that the audience for the movie King Kong was half female.
Actually, fandom for King Kong was well over fifty percent female. That movie was the ultimate rape fantasy, the lovely tiny blond woman that the fifty-foot gorilla was fixated on.
The first King Kong came out in 1931. It was box office smash.
Valentino was the smash before that.
Shortly before 1931 Rudolf Valentino had been the object of female worship for films like "The Sheik," where he played an Arab who kidnapped a white woman.
The white woman screamed all the way through the film while the female audience pretended to be horrified at her plight. Actually they felt jealous of her every inch of the way.
Men's fantasies tend to be aggressive, as in the case of The Woman Eater and dozens of other horror films.
A lot of women seem to have rape fantasies, of which King Kong is the ultimate.
The fact is that men and women are different. A statement that Politically Incorrent would get me a prison sentence in Europe, but I can get away with it here.
No woman would admit to the fact that she LIKED Valentino's rape fantasy in the Sheik. They talked about how "romantic" he was and what a great actor he was.
It was a little hard to say what a great romantic actor King Kong was so no one discussed the sexual fantasy involved.
In the 1950s no man would admit that he was attracted by The Woman Eater type movie. All those ads were aimed at somebody ELSE, you see.
No woman would say she was jealous of the women who were the objects of the Sheik's or King Kong's somewhat aggressive actions.
Is everybody telling it like it is?
Politics has made me a bit cynical. Could it be that somebody might not be telling the exact truth?
This leads me back to the lack of success of the latest King Kong Movie. The 1931 version and the relatively recent versions were box office smashes. This new one was not really a bomb, but it didn't live up to expectations.
I have a theory as to why that is.
My thesis is that the ultimate rape fantasy is not as fascinating to women today because real rape by real gorillas is no longer a matter of exciting fiction.
In the old days women were surrounded by white guys who wouldn't make a move. They were not only safe, they were BORINGLY safe.
Now women don't go out on the streets alone at night. Now women are in physical danger as a matter of course.
Rape is no longer a fantasy. Being attacked by a large male of a different kind is the reality every white woman faces.
This could have taken a lot of the charm out of the latest verion of King Kong.