'King Kong' is back, but the great ape never really went away

When you sit down in the theater to watch "King Kong," you may think you're seeing a giant ape storm across the screen, gorgeous blonde in hand, the latest Hollywood retelling of "Beauty and the Beast."

You're not.

Here's what the movie is really about:

"King Kong" is the story of man's elemental animal nature, a depiction of the destructive inner brute that humans struggle to suppress.

No, wait. That's not it.

"King Kong" is a tale about slavery and racism, the story of cruel, heartless men who defile an indigenous society and drag its ruler away in chains.

No, that's wrong too.

"King Kong" is a meditation on the plight of the adolescent American male - flustered by sudden awkwardness, tormented by unsightly hair, and baffled by how to get along with women.

Or not.

What's absolutely, positively true - seriously, folks - is that from the moment he stomped into theaters nearly 75 years ago, Kong has held a monstrous grip on our imagination. He's more than a big, bad gorilla. He's a slate onto which we project dreams and desires, a looking glass through which we envision what we most fear - and most want.

"There's something in all of us that imagines the potentialities that Kong represents - unlimited power, the freedom to go from one geographic place to another, to destroy civilization," says Connecticut College scholar David Greven, who analyzes Kong in his new book, "Men Beyond Desire: Inviolate Manhood and Antebellum American Literature and Culture."

Next Wednesday, Oscar-winning director Peter Jackson's big-budget remake swings onto screens, longer, louder and more technologically advanced than its 1933 predecessor, but following the same plot.

It's a movie about making a movie: Producer Carl Denham travels to a fog-shrouded island to film a mysterious creature known as Kong, and the smitten ape carries off leading lady Ann Darrow. Kong is captured and put on display in New York, where he bursts free and rampages through the city, snatching Darrow and climbing to the top of the Empire State Building.

In a way, "King Kong" is the oldest story in the book: Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back. (Albeit, stomping on a few villagers and wrecking part of New York in the process.) Yet Kong himself resonates through American culture, his name known to every 10-year-old boy, his image used to sell everything from insurance to corn flakes.

One reason for that, film scholars say, is that Kong is a very human sort of ape. He captures not just Darrow but our sympathies. Another reason is that while many people see different things in the story, nearly everyone sees some things that are the same: Sexual attraction. Forbidden love. Themes of innocence and loss. The tug-of-war between primitive and modern, subversion and containment.

"King Kong is who you need him to be," says Wesleyan University film expert Jeanine Basinger, author of nine books on movies. "I constantly tell my students, 'You are what you see.' You want to tell me he's the sexual libido of an adolescent? Now I know who are you, thank you very much."

For many movie-lovers, Kong is the prototypical outsider, a classic American role played by everyone from Steve McQueen (as gunslinger Vin in "The Magnificent Seven") to Clint Eastwood (as outlaw Josey Wales, among others).

"As big as he is, he ends up being an underdog. And if Americans are suckers for anything, they're suckers for an underdog. Or an under-ape," says Robert Thompson, past president of the International Popular Culture Association and a professor at Syracuse University.

Of course, some dismiss these analogies as so much armchair ape analysis. They say Kong's persistence stems from the core elements of the original movie: a beautiful woman, a bustling city, and one big, mad monkey. Add Willis O'Brien's stop-motion photography - the marvel of its day - and a moody score by Max Steiner, and you have a film for the ages.

"I am confident the story is not any type of social or political allegory," says artist Dave Dorman, creator of the cover illustrations for the new King Kong comic books. "Sometimes an ape is just an ape."

Why did King Kong appear then, in 1933? And why is he back now, in 2005?

The original's co-producer, Merian Cooper, said the idea sprang from a dream about a giant gorilla attacking New York.

If you prefer a more psychological explanation, credit Carl Jung and "the collective unconscious," the idea that certain symbols and meanings dwell within us all, surfacing at times of common crisis.

In 1933 the economic ruin of the Depression threw the future into doubt, even as new ideas drew the past into question. Eight years earlier the Scopes Trial transfixed the nation, lawyers battling over whether man was the spawn of God or ape. Monkey-worry was in the air. Movies like "Tarzan the Ape Man" offered characters that blurred the distinction between human and primate.

"The economic backsliding of the Great Depression raised the specter of evolutionary backsliding as well," says David Skal, author of "The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror."

In the opening scenes of "King Kong," Darrow is about to pass out from hunger, trying to steal an apple from a street cart. When Denham offers her an acting job if she'll join in his dangerous voyage, she has little choice.

Those scenes give rise to Kong as a metaphor for the Depression itself - a relentless dark force, laying waste to the heart of capitalist America, New York. Some take it even further, seeing Kong as a stand-in for husbands and fathers who lost their status as bread-winners.

"The monster represents the American worker's feeling at being caged by forces beyond his control," says La Salle University film professor Gerald Molyneaux, author of biographies of Charlie Chaplin and Jimmy Stewart. "He is poised to take desperate measures against the system that has deprived him of his role as the man of the house."

If that helps explain the then, then why now?

That's harder to discern, film experts say. Sometimes the societal currents that propel a particular movie aren't evident for years. But a couple of influences are obvious:

Once again, Americans share a common insecurity, worried about their safety in an age of terror, threatened by the presence of "the other" - this time personified by al-Qaida. Once again, Americans are embroiled in a caustic debate over God and ape.

"All the recent challenges to teaching Darwin in the public schools," Skal says, "tell me we're once more at a Scopes-like moment."

The original "King Kong" cost $672,000 to make. That was more than three times the average price of a 1933 picture - and a tiny, tiny fraction of the $207 million Jackson spent on his new movie.

But more than money has changed in seven decades, says Matthew Wilson, who scouted New York locations for Jackson. And those changes explain why the new movie is set in the same 1930s time period as the original:

Apes and gorillas are less of a mystery to the public now. Global mapping and space travel make the discovery of an uncharted island a tough sell to modern audiences. Today's military weaponry would bring a quick end to Kong's romp through New York.

Wilson, who teaches art at Wartburg College in Iowa, says the director was obsessed about getting the period details correct. Jackson sent him to search out the chemical composition of the paint that coated 1930s taxicabs, and had him measure the exact width of an Empire State Building ledge.

Kong's fall from the spire - after safely placing his beloved Darrow on a ledge - has become American legend, endlessly repeated, replayed and parodied.

Film authorities say modern audiences will find their own meanings in Kong, in his new full-color rendering and his older black-and-white self, and rediscover the metaphors that intrigued earlier fans. But which of the many ways of viewing Kong is correct?

"All of them. And none of them," Thompson says. "I don't agree with any of them if they say, 'This is the truth.' If you say, 'This is one possible way of watching "King Kong,"' every one of them is interesting."

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'KING KONG' THEN ...

-"King Kong" opened in New York on March 2, 1933, playing 10 times a day and setting world records for attendance. In its first four days, the movie grossed nearly $90,000 - an astounding sum in an age when tickets cost about 15 cents.

-Kong was brought to life through the use of six 18-inch models. His roar was produced by recording lions and tigers, mixing their growls, then slowing the tape and playing it backward.

-The movie underwent numerous title changes before its release, including "The Beast," "The Ape," "King Ape" and "Kong."

-The pilots of the biplanes that attack Kong on the Empire State Building are portrayed by co-producers and directors Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack. They decided that since they were the ones who put Kong up there, they should be the ones to bring him down.

-Kong's island home is usually referred to as "Skull Island," though the term is never used in the movie. (The isle's main geographical feature is named "Skull Mountain.")

-The unanswered question: If Kong could climb to the top of the Empire State Building, what stopped him from climbing over the wall on Skull Island?

... AND 'KING KONG' NOW

-Peter Jackson was paid $20 million, the highest salary ever given to a director in advance of production.

-On April Fool's Day 2005, Jackson posted an elaborate practical joke on an Internet diary, "revealing" that he had started production on two sequels. Both would feature the main characters strapping machine guns to the back of the son of Kong and fighting genetic mutants created by Adolf Hitler.

-Fay Wray was in negotiations to appear in the film before she died. Jackson wanted her to deliver the classic last line: "Oh no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast."

-Many shots, including Ann Darrow stealing an apple and Carl Denham directing her to scream at an unseen, off-camera danger, are taken directly from the original movie.

-Actor Andy Serkis, who performed the computer-generated role of Gollum in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, studied gorillas in Africa in preparation for modeling the movements of King Kong.

(Sources: Internet Movie Database; "King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon From Fay Wray to Peter Jackson" by Ray Morton; Wikipedia.)

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(c) 2005, The Philadelphia Inquirer. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service.