While the articles on King Kong were handed out in class, it was pointed out that not everyone got a copy of them. So I have them available here for download. They are pdf files, and contain a scan of the pages from The New York Times that these articles appeared in. 
While I have already said just about everything I usually like to mention when I talked about King Kong in Mentor Session, I did want to direct curious readers to a wonderful oddity in the world of the 1930's: Wasei Kingu Kongu. This was a cheap Japanese copy of the film that was made after the initial American release of the film, as was the tradition at the time in Japan. While the film itself did not survive into the modern age (this frame is thought to come from the film), this American knock-off pre-figured the Japanese "Monster Movie" trend by almost 17 years. It is interesting that Godzilla and King Kong are often seen as the two "giants" in Monster Movie History, and yet Godzilla, it would seem, was really inspired by King Kong.
I'm pretty curious as to how certain horror scenes were allowed. Like when the dummies were thrown off of the logs and fell like rag dolls straight to the bottom. It just seemed much more gruesome than what we're shown today with gallons of blood and the screaming agony, etc. Maybe I'm just not considering the whole picture though? Any thoughts or ideas on that one?
ReplyDeleteI don't think what I saw in King Kong is any more gruesome then what we see in many movies/video games today. The thing that might have been disturbing is the complete disregard Kong had for most humans. Seeing people die is something we are used to, but having humans portrayed convincingly as annoying nats is something a bit more disconcerting
ReplyDeleteThe scene that really left an imprint in my mind was the scene in where king kong is brought into the city and the people are heading into the theater and the lady says,"Another monkey (gorilla), we already have enough of those." I also noticed that the chinese dude on the boat was portrayed as an illiterate man. Prejudice in the 30's.
ReplyDeleteI read the articles about King Kong and noticed the difference in writing style compared to articles about movies now. The article just described what was going on in the movie, without any of the motives, emotions, or plot structure, just a basic description of the actions and events taking place. That seems totally different from movie descriptions now that seem to focus on the characters emotions or larger themes within the movie.
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