Roche Cárcel, Juan Antonio
“King Kong, the Black Gorilla”
Quarterly Review of Film and Video. 2022, 39(5): 1113-1157. https://doi.org/10.1080/10509208.2021.1905473
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10045/115157
DOI: 10.1080/10509208.2021.1905473
ISSN: 1050-9208 (Print)
Abstract: 
Since the premiere of the first version of King Kong in 1933, one of the most widely accepted theses in specialized literature is that the film has a racist content. However, recently some authors have qualified this discriminatory discourse or have even questioned it. In this regard, the research question is to what degree of depth is the film racist? and, the starting hypothesis, that the crisis of 29, its driving force, intensifies the imaginary fear of the whites of the black race, represented by the large dark-skinned gorilla. To confirm this hypothesis, a content analysis of the cinematographic images will be carried out, a heuristic-based interpretation based on a large interdisciplinary bibliography, and the film production will be framed in the social, economic, political, legal, cinematographic and cultural context, manifestly prejudiced and discriminatory toward citizens of color. Specifically, as will be seen, King Kong exhibits the fear of white workers, as they imaginary feel that black citizens take over their jobs in times of massive unemployment. In addition, the film echoes the ideology of the patriarchal, colonial and racial system that makes people of color invisible, that shows the desires and fears of a repressed sexuality, that relates it to death symbolized by blackness and that, in short, it creates an imaginary cinematographic universe that deepens and increases differentiation and social exclusion.
Keywords:King Kong, Film, Racism, Crisis, Fear
Routledge
info:eu-repo/semantics/article