The Ape Man Film Analysis

Tarzan

Growing up as a child in the United States I was always easily amused by cartoons that played on the television during the early 2000’s and late 1999’s. By far one of my most watched movies as a kid was Tarzan, which sometimes played during the weekends on Disney channel, so for this week it was entertaining to watch this old version of Tarzan directed by W.S. Van Dyke. In the film Tarzan “the Ape Man”, Jane Parker derives to Africa to visit her father, who was in a pursuit for ivory, Tarzan captures Jane and once the preliminary terror has worn off, Jane apprehends that she adores Tarzan and that jungle life suits her. This take on the modern day Tarzan opened my eyes to a much more realistic viewpoint of race discernment with the

A character must first and foremost be able to identify themselves with their surroundings, but most importantly within themselves as well, this film displays a broad mixture of cultural American imperialism and like every other film previously viewed throughout the course, shows the predominant race as being the white individuals while Blacks are being frowned upon and in this film’s case, taken another look at. The opening of the film also leaves one to assume that African Americans were essentially treated as slaves as early as the 1900’s, the fact that this scene is rendered in the film leaves one to believe that the directors wanted viewers to see the portrayal of African American as a lower class race, in my opinion, I believe that these scenes were entered into the film to show prevalence. Like many of us, when Jane first laid eyes on Tarzan, notions of narcissism first hit and then of course the admiration of his physical physique came to the mind thereafter as stated in the text “Of Ape-Men and Man Apes”, “At first glance, Tarzan’s body building seems to be unaffected by the stigma of unpractical narcissism, as it is justified time and again in countless fights against various beasts of

African Americans were frowned upon as a race from early times, the stereotypical conjectures that are displayed in the film about Africa and blacks during colonialism is very apparent throughout the film, blacks were kept in the background while whites were portrayed as dominant and being able to roam liberally, in my opinion, I don’t believe that blacks could even be called “people” their interpretation in the film lead viewers to think that they were the lazy natives and pygmies. The director cores his focus above all on Whites in the Tarzan films and how they have managed to escape the rigid moral and social limitations of the Metropole, Africa is represented as being an eccentric adventure country where white’s wants and needs are almost always put up on a higher rank. The desire for blacks to get away from their daily life struggles of postmodern America leads them to Africa to escape from the money and material possessions they are quite used to. It was imperative for Hollywood to paint black Africa as an unrestrained location in order to win the support of individuals back in the Americas for colonial expansion