King Kong Film 1976 and 2005 Adaptation Sources

King Kong Film 1976 and 2005 Adaptation Sources

1.) Genre -

Films:

“King Kong,” director. Paramount Pictures, 1976.
“A petroleum exploration expedition comes to an isolated island and encounters a colossal giant gorilla.”

Walsh, Fran, and Philippa Boyens, director. “King Kong.” Universal Pictures, 2005.
“In 1933 New York, an overly ambitious movie producer coerces his cast and hired ship crew to travel to the mysterious Skull Island, where they encounter Kong, a giant ape who is immediately smitten with leading lady Ann Darrow.”


Websites:

IMDB.com. “King Kong (1976).” IMDb, IMDb.com, 17 Dec. 1976, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074751/.
“Adventure | Fantasy | Horror”

IMDB.com. “King Kong (2005).” IMDb, IMDb.com, 14 Dec. 2005, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0360717/.
“Action | Adventure | Drama | Romance”

“King Kong (1976 Film).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/king_kong_(1976_film).
“1976 films English-language films, American films, American fantasy films1976, horror films1970s, fantasy films, American horror films, American film remakes, Films directed by John Guillermin, Films set in New York City, Films that won the Best Visual Effects Academy Award, King Kong films, Paramount Pictures films, Films set in 1975, World Trade Center Natural horror films, Films set in the Indian Ocean, Films set on islands, Film scores by John Barry (composer), Films produced by Dino De Laurentiis, Screenplays by Lorenzo Semple Jr.”


2.) Social History -

Books:

Erb, C (1998). Tracking King Kong: a Hollywood Icon in World Culture. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press
“The revised edition of Tracking King Kong updates a groundbreaking study of King Kong as the iconic character enters the twenty-first century. Scholars of film and television studies as well as general readers interested in film and popular culture will appreciate this significant volume.”

Jung, C. (1979). Psychology and literature (Trans. R. Hull). In H. Read, M. Fordham, & G. Adler (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung: Vol. 15. The spirit in man, art, and literature (pp. 84-105). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
"[These essays] reveal the breadth of the great psychiatrist's interests and the rigorous originality with which he attacked diverse manifestations of human creativity." - -The Virginia Quarterly Review

Snead, J (1994). White Screens/Black Images: Hollywood From the Dark Side. New York: Routeledge
“White Screens/Black Images offers an array of film texts, drawn from both classical Hollywood cinema and black independent film culture. Individual chapters analyze Birth of a Nation , King Kong , Shirley Temple in The Littlest Rebel and The Little Colonel , Mae West in I'm No Angel , Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus , Bette Davis in Jezebel , the racism of Disney's Song of the South , and Taxi Driver . Making skilful use of developments in both structuralist and post-structuralist film theory, Snead's work speaks not only to the centrality of race in Hollywood films, but to its centrality in the formation of modern American culture.”


Journal Article:

Dines, G. (1998). King Kong and the White Woman: Hustler Magazine and the Demonization of Black Masculinity. Journal of Violence Against Women. 4 (3), 291-307.
“…Black film critics have long argued that the King Kong movie and its sequels played a major role in the sexual demonization of black masculinity since the ape — the carrier of blackness — was depicted as out of white control; the result being the stalking and capturing of a white woman…”


Websites:

Edelstein, P. (2005). Gorilla My Dreams. Available: http://www.slate.com/id/2132093/. Last accessed 24 September 2016.
“Forget Titanic. Peter Jackson has remade King Kong (Universal) as a spectacular three-hankie tragic love story—sometimes dumb and often clunky and always pretty cornball, but just about irresistible. Watching its gloriously florid climax atop the Empire State Building, wailing teenage girls will bang their heads on the seatbacks in front of them. Grown men will weep at their own inadequacies. Giant gorillas will beat their chests in vindication.”

Edelstein, David. “Donkey Kongs - Your Film Critic Defends Himself from Charges of Knee-Jerk Liberalism and Racism.” Slate Magazine, 13 Dec. 2005, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/reel_time/2005/12/donkey_kongs.html. Last accessed 24 September 2016.
“So, here I am, scribbling away on reviews of The Producers (excruciating) and The Family Stone (not bad) and then comes this avalanche of e-mail: I have apparently been cited by Matt Drudge for mentioning that King Kong has always had problematic racial overtones. My mail divides evenly between the wing nuts ("It just feels so darn good to battle racism—as long as its[sic] not anti-white racism, which is automatically translated into justice served—that you liberal types tend to see it everywhere") and the indignant African Americans ("You see a monkey? And the next thing you think of is a black man?").”

O'Rourke, M. (2005). Kong in Love: The sexual politics of Peter Jackson's King Kong. Available: http://www.slate.com/id/2132377/. Last accessed 24 September 2016.
“If you're Peter Jackson remaking King Kong(1933), the first question is how to make a more plausible ape. The second is how to offer up a more plausible sexual politics—an update to Cooper's archetype of a blond damsel in distress menaced by a powerful, chest-pounding simian. The good news is that Jackson has come up with an apparent solution: In his film, ape loves woman, and woman loves ape. Equality seems to be within grasp.”

McKay, B. (2005). Of Myths and Monsters: Colonial Representations in King Kong (1933). Available: http://blogcritics.org/video/article/of-monsters-and-myths-colonial-representations/. Last accessed 24 September 2016.
“The natural habitat of Kong, according to the film’s narrative, is on the fictional Skull Island located in the South Pacific. Perhaps by choosing to locate the beast’s origins within a fictional locale, the filmmakers wished to avoid any direct implications towards Africa or the Caribbean, but the fact remains that Skull Island represents a popular colonial interpretation of the “dark continent.” Not only is the island home to Kong and a group of Black natives, it is also inhabited by a large number of prehistoric beasts. Dinosaurs are seen to coexist with the indigenous peoples. (If there were ever a more obvious symbol for the perceived primitive nature of Africa and Blacks, I put forward a challenge to find it.) The natives themselves are presented as antiquated savages, an “ideal and unchanging abstraction” (Said 1978): their “facial paint, shields, spears, headdresses, and lack of clothing are physical markings that restrict their potential for narrative action” (Snead 1994). They are portrayed as worshipping Kong as a god and sacrificing virgins to the creature on a regular basis. When a crew of explorers and filmmakers led by Carl Denham lands on the island, the beautiful female heroine Ann Darrow is captured by a group of natives and offered as a sacrifice to Kong. Rather than kill the woman, Kong transforms her into an object of his sexual desire. Interracial sexuality is seen as literal bestiality as his insatiable “desire seems satisfied only by a human partner” (Wartenberg 2001).”

KongIsKing.net. “‘King Kong’ - 1933.” KongIsKing.net, http://www.kongisking.net/history/. Last accessed 24 September 2016.
This is a blog page featuring King Kong fan art, blog posts, latest news, and even a live chat room.

Morley, JC. “King Kong, the White Woman, and 2005: Appropriating Racism.” King Kong, the White Woman, and 2005: Appropriating Racism, 18 Jan. 2010, http://raceandkingkong.blogspot.com/. Last accessed 24 September 2016.
“In as much, by dehumanizing and suppressing African-Americans as they were when the original King Kong was made, the remake suggests that the inhumanity was on the part of the white man who shot King Kong down more than it was on the big black gorilla who fell from the top of the Empire State building.”

Phipps, Keith. “ A.V. CLUB King Kong (1976) .” King Kong (1976) • Secret Cinema • The A.V. Club, 23 Feb. 2012, http://www.avclub.com/article/iking-kongi-1976-69795. Last accessed 24 September 2016.
“Film history isn’t a highlight reel of universally agreed-upon classics. It’s an epic story. But some chapters of the story draw more attention than others. Secret Cinema is a column dedicated to shining a light on compelling, little-noticed, overlooked, or faded-from-memory movies from years past. Let’s talk about the films nobody’s talking about.”




Maggie Anne Gotfredson
Saturday, The 24th of September 2016