Sound Experiment 04
Today I decided to record some more natural sounds, this time seeing how the sound of wind would sound through a window before I recorded it outside, as I think the slight whistling noise through the window would make it sound more interesting, I am planning on collecting more natural sounds, but I wanted to see how it would sound before I progressed onwards in case the background noise was too much in comparison to the wind and ruined it. For the second sound for my second image, I wanted to continue to find something more sharper so I tried to record the sound of cactus spikes, particularly if I ran my fingers through it, as it makes a very sharp, high pitched sound that I think could work better, especially if I could replicate the sound to reflect the more smaller portions of the image. Lastly I wanted to try and collect a more electronic sound for image one, to match its sharp, electric colours so I wanted to start by recording a microwave, as I thought is humming noi
Hi Odette - I've got some advice for you re. the 'project' of your assignment and your actual question: I think you're falling into the trap here of fighting a battle you don't need to have; you certainly don't need to 'prove' that King Kong 'isn't racist' or that it 'is'. You need to think about the term 'problematic' instead; King Kong is 'problematic' - for the reasons you identify; you need to explore 'those problems' in an even-handed way as opposed to seeking to DECIDE that the claims against King Kong are unfair just because the film-maker himself was only interested in telling his story his way and didn't know/couldn't know any better. You're mounting a defence of King Kong, when you don't have to; you just need to explore how people have come to terms with the problems in the films and how it speaks to changing attitudes etc.
ReplyDeleteI also think you need to separate out the difference between King King being racist 'on purpose' (which you suggest the film isn't) and the idea that King Kong enables us to 'see' racism at work at an unconscious level in the creative minds and audiences of the time. Surely what is interesting about King Kong is that its treatment of 'other races' was deemed to be completely 'without complexity' by its audiences - i.e. the caricature was not experienced or perceived as such, and that being precisely the problem! I don't think King Kong is racist propaganda, but I do think it speaks to certain long-held ideas about 'primitive people', about 'civilisation (America) versus wild nature ('Africa') and so on, and a long-held link contrasting 'superior white people' with 'monkeys'...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism
Proving the film-maker wasn't 'a racist on purpose' doesn't make the film any less 'problematic'. King King becomes problematic when viewed through the prism of post-colonialism - and that's where I think you need to re-calibrate your assignment. There's something about your essay question that doesn't seem right; King Kong 'can't' be an example of post-colonialism for all the reasons you state (in 1933 it wasn't about race, it was about a giant monkey); that isn't your enquiry; what you're doing is looking at King Kong from a 'post-colonial' perspective and when you do that, its attitudes to race are very clearly seen as a product of colonial attitudes - no, the film's story isn't about this (the filmmaker's intentions), but the film nonetheless captures a societal/cultural/anthropological zeitgeist - put more simply, yes, it reflects the attitudes of its times - and those attitudes saw no problem at all with equating 'black africans' with 'savages' and making a white blonde woman the prize above all things (not because they were enacting racism in a proactive sense, but 'worse', because it represented the 'truth' of what people thought and worried about).
I want you to a) look again at your actual question: it doesn't make sense: consider something more discursive and open and less 'for or against' and b) think a bit more about what you mean by the term racism, seeking to separate out 'the intent' from 'the result' - you don't need the first to achieve the second. Saying that the director's ignorance of his own images somehow prevents those images from 'being racist' is problematic too...
also... you need to define/discuss talk about 'post-colonialism' as a theoretical idea - you focus on allegory, but in terms of your structure, I think you need to put post-colonialism first as a concept the reader needs understand - as a reaction to/against colonialism. You don't have this content in your structure yet and it's pivotal to explaining WHY King Kong is so diagnostic/indicative of colonial attitudes (conscious and unconscious) etc.
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