Tuesday, December 13, 2022

TARZAN THE APE MAN (W. S. Van Dyke, 1932)

 

Jane and company search for the elusive Mammut Mausoleum, but her father ends up discovering his own final resting place. The quest sets the narrative in motion, but this is an adventure story of civilization versus ignoble savages in the guise of a white man mysteriously named Tarzan who cohabitates amid other various ethnic stereotypes. The movie is a product of its time when Hippopotamuses were feared Apex predators and black people were portrayed as either pack mules or violent pygmies. Is it racist? As Hell. Is it a feminist restructuring of patriarchal social mores, a cautionary tale of male aggression reducible to a Darwinian theorem? Fuck no. It’s patronizing to the lone female character Jane as she screams more than Tarzan's chimpish companion and becomes objectified by the titular hero’s every brutish sexual impulse.

Jane (Maureen O'Sullivan) arrives in her father’s camp as the very model of 1932 glamour, more worried about her skin than the poor guides who break their backs carrying her over-sized luggage. She genuinely seems interested in the regional culture and asks questions about their dress, language and customs. She’s inquisitive and insensitive yet not in a cruel way, just a common one. Once she’s kidnapped by the titular hero (Johnny Weissmuller) after he saves her and her companions from hungry hungry Hippos (whom they randomly slaughter for little reason while fearing a Hippopotamus stampede. I’m not sure that would be my overriding fear in crossing a dangerous river but what do I know? More people are killed by Hippos than any other land animal per annum, thanks Wiki!) the story becomes one of survival for Jane. She’s indecently assaulted by the amorous man-ape while his chimp-pal looks on in empathetic embarrassment. Now, the chimp isn’t ever named by Tarzan and is given its nomenclature seemingly at random in the third act. As the blackface pygmies shuttle Jane and her fatherly cohorts away, she sees the chimp on the shore. She screams its name with no apparent context, like she just makes it up on the spot since “There’s Tarzan’s chimpanzee companion whom I recently made acquaintance and I’m pissed because it didn’t stop the bully from groping the fuck out of me” is just a bit too long. So, she shortens that sentence to one identifier: Cheetah. Why not Chimp? Or Charley if she like alliteration? And who cuts and styles Tarzan’s hair and shaves his face and chest? The people in monkey suits that cohabitate in his treetop nirvana? But I digress.

The film is just a series of episodes strung together with the barest thread of the quest as narrative glue. But it’s the final act of the film when graphic violence and mayhem make the previous 70+ minutes worthwhile! Abducted by the pygmies, Jane and her entourage are caged and lynched, suspended above a pit containing a raging and engorged Sasquatch while the cheering Lollipop Guild looks on with sadistic fury. An ululating yodel announces salvation just in time as a herd of elephants tramples the village and Tarzan goes mano-a-anthropoid with the hairy giant. The fight is vicious and gory with Tarzan knifing it in the eye and slashing its throat while Cheetah is literally beaten to a pulp. They escape on a dying elephant which leads them to the fabled ivory haven and her father, mortally wounded, joins the plethora of permanent Pachyderms. But it’s a happy ending as Jane and Tarzan embrace with their hairy and newly christened companion. Shouldn't Cheetah be furious that they left him behind as dead meat in the pygmy massacre?

Final Grade: (B-)