Tarzan
Carl Jung once observed that it is easier to
discern the presence of archetypes from the collective subconscious in works of
pulp fiction by writers such as H. Rider Haggard than it is in literary
masterpieces. If only Jung had put Edgar Rice Burroughs on his
depth-psychologist's couch. Burroughs was the George Lucas of his day, creating
in Tarzan and other characters beings as profoundly mythical--and as
stereotypically superficial--as Darth Vader. Like Luke Skywalker's saga, the
tale of Tarzan mixes and matches motifs from the archetype-haunted dreamtime of
humanity anatomized by Jung and Jung's disciple, Joseph Campbell. The tale of
the prince raised in secret by adopted parents (King Arthur, Luke Skywalker) is
fused with the story of the feral child raised by animals (Romulus and Remus,
Enkidu, Mowgli, Pecos Bill) in the romance of the orphaned English lord raised
by a foster family of African apes.
The fact that Tarzan is really an English
lord--Lord Greystoke, to be precise--was central to Burroughs' conception of
his character. In the pulp fiction of Burroughs, as in pulp fiction of any
period, timeless archetypes rub shoulders with the vulgar prejudices of the
writer and his audience. In the works of Burroughs, today's race/class/gender
theorists can easily find a key to the racial, social, and sexual anxieties of
early 20 th -century white American men and boys. When the first
Tarzan books were published, the British Empire ruled the waves, the United
States had recently joined the ranks of imperial powers, and white supremacy
was the norm in the United States and throughout the world. Confidence in the
innate superiority of the Caucasian race--and, within that race, of its
Anglo-Saxon variant--coexisted with paranoia about the yellow peril and black
"savagery."
The two major characters
in the oeuvre of Edgar Rice Burroughs are Tarzan of the Apes and John
Carter of Mars. Although John Carter never made it in Hollywood the way that
his cousin in the jungle jockstrap did, it is worth reviving him to make a
point. Tarzan and John Carter were both exemplars of Anglo-Saxon
masculinity--Tarzan, the heir to an aristocratic English family, and John
Carter, an upper-class Virginian by birth. The Tarzan and Carter stories can be
viewed as experiments--take a member of the Anglo-Saxon ruling class, strip him
of all his advantages, and put him in a radically different environment, in
order that the innate superiority of his breed may be demonstrated. Whether in
Africa (the symbol of precivilized savagery) or on an old, desiccated Mars (the
symbol of overrefinement and cultural exhaustion), the Anglo-Saxon man proves
that he is royalty. Tarzan becomes Lord of the Jungle, John Carter weds the
Princess of Mars. Space, in Burroughs, is a metaphor for time. Tarzan and John
Carter represent the era of Anglo-American civilization, at the midpoint
between prehistoric barbarism and post-historic decadence.
Burroughs' genius can be seen in the way that he redeemed
the imagery of savagery for his Anglo-Saxon ape-man. In the mythology of white
supremacy, even before Charles Darwin, black Africans and other nonwhites were
assimilated to apes (Thomas Jefferson, in his Notes on the State of
Virginia , finds credible the rumor that African women mate with
orangutans). In much 19 th - and early 20 th -century pulp
fiction, American Indians and black Americans have a mystical rapport with
animals, which author and audience alike understood arose from their proximity
on the evolutionary scale. But Burroughs' Tarzan is closer to the animals than
the black Africans who live nearby. The Great White Hope is at once more
civilized and more savage than the "natives"--he is the Lone Ranger
and Tonto. With Tarzan monopolizing the highest and lowest rungs of the
Chain of Being, the "natives" find themselves deprived of the one asset that
racist mythology attributed to them, closeness to the animals, leaving them
without any particular function in the economy of kitsch literature, except to
be rescued by Tarzan from rogue elephants and the occasional witch doctor.
When first published, the
Tarzan stories provided a largely American audience of white men and boys with
a fantasy version of the ultimate White Guy, the virile aristocrat, who, far
from being effete and degenerate, could go Ape as well as Ascot. Something like
this vision inspired Theodore Roosevelt, the asthmatic Yankee patrician who
turned himself into a cowboy and, as an ex-president, nearly died while
exploring a tributary of the Amazon in Brazil, in an adventure that might have
been scripted by Burroughs. George Bush--a professed admirer of TR--is the
Tarzan of our day: A patrician Yalie (Lord Greystoke), and at the same time a
Texan redneck (Tarzan), engaged in wildcatting (could there be a more
metaphorically resonant term?). By jumping out of airplanes in his 70s, Bush
continues to battle the Wimp Factor. Perhaps he should swing from vines as
well. By contrast, George W., a rich kid who, unlike his father, sat out the
war of his generation, is Boy.
The Tarzan mythos, then, depends on a balance of
tensions--between Tarzan the Ape-Man and Lord Greystoke, between England and
Africa, between civilization and savagery. Play down one side of the equation,
and the meaning of this whole system of pre-World War II social stereotypes
collapses.
This is what happened
when Hollywood got hold of the Tarzan story. Beginning with the Johnny
Weissmuller films, the jungle began eclipsing the English manor. Tarzan became
simply a feral child, a white Mowgli. The genre changed to pastoral: Tarzan and
Jane became the equivalents of the innocent shepherds and shepherdesses of
Hellenistic Greek and Renaissance pastoral fiction, striving to preserve their
natural idyll from corruption by civilization. Pastoral Tarzan need not be an
English lord. He need not even be white. A black or brown or Asian Tarzan would
defeat the whole point of the Burroughs mythos but would not be out of place in
the Hollywood or TV versions.
Disney's new animated Tarzan is the politically correct
heir of several generations of Hollywood Tarzans--a facsimile of a facsimile.
Gone is the social Darwinist worldview that underpinned the original. In the
prologue we see Tarzan's parents, but we do not learn they are titled. Indeed,
from their facility at assembling a tree house we might think that they are,
not Lord and Lady Greystoke, but Mr. and Mrs. Robinson (as in Crusoe or Swiss
Family). The embarrassing problem of what to do with the "natives" in a
post-racist age is solved by eliminating the natives altogether. Disney's
gorillas live in a jungle uninhabited by human beings, until Europeans
intrude.
The Disneyfied Tarzan is
such a wimp that he is not allowed to kill anything or anybody, although our
Paleolithic pacifist is permitted to use martial arts techniques in
self-defense. The two villains of the movie are a homicidal (and simiocidal)
cheetah and an English hunter--the Evil White Male without which no PC epic
would be complete. But when the time comes for them to die, both do themselves
in accidentally while fighting Tarzan: The cheetah falls atop a spearhead that
Tarzan happens to be holding, and the Englishman inadvertently hangs himself on
jungle vines. This Tarzan is a warrior for our day, when the United States
refuses to send soldiers into combat because one of them might actually get
hurt.
In the Epic of Gilgamesh, a prostitute lures Enkidu away
from his animal companions. Once he has slept with a woman, the animals refuse
to associate with him; he cannot go home again. Masculine wildness is overcome
by civilized femininity. In Disney's Tarzan film, nature is feminine and
civilization masculine. Disney's Tarzan is not only post-imperial, post-racist,
and post-classist but also post-masculine. Tarzan is a momma's boy. His gorilla
foster mother, Kala (whose voice is provided by Glenn Close), remains on the
scene after he reaches adulthood. When Tarzan introduces Jane to Kala, he
grovels and whimpers before a disapproving Ma Gorilla.
Halfway through the
film, Tarzan, a Victorian-era Enkidu, lured by Jane, is prepared to follow her
back to England. But then, having learned how evil civilized Englishmen can be,
Tarzan, Jane, and her father (in the PC universe, old and feeble white men are
tolerable) decide to renounce civilized society for the jungle. There, by happy
coincidence, the two alpha males (Kerchak the bull ape and the evil English
hunter) are gone, clearing the way for the utopia of beta males and females.
Although Tarzan is now nominally in control, one suspects that Kala the
Ape-Mom, the Empress Dowager of the Jungle, is really in charge. At movie's
end, Tarzan and Jane move in with Mom and her furry family, like '90s yuppies
who have given up and moved back home. Perhaps Jane's widowed human father will
wed Tarzan's widowed gorilla mother (so the Southern Baptist Convention should
be worried about bestiality but not homosexuality).
If the pulp fiction of Edgar Rice Burroughs gives us a
glimpse into the often appalling collective unconscious of white-supremacist
America, the Disney version of Tarzan will provide a similar service
to future scholars pondering the equally weird mentality of feminized and Green
America, circa 2000. If the original Tarzan celebrated the Anglo-Saxon male
proving his superiority over Nature red in tooth and claw, Disney's version
embodies the ideology that vilifies the "white male" and idealizes the feminine
(human and ape) and the wilderness imagined by customers of The Nature Store.
Me, Tarzan. You, Jane. Nature Good. Civilization Bad. Girls good. Boys bad.
Rumor has it that the next object of touchy-feely
bowdlerization by Disney is Beowulf. No doubt in the Disney version, Beowulf
and the feisty, coed-army warrior-princess who inevitably will be written into
the script as his partner will befriend a misunderstood Grendel and Grendel's
mom (it's not easy being green). For my part, I plan to endorse the Baptist
boycott of Disney. Disney is evil--not because it's turning children into
liberals, but because it's turning them into wimps.
