Reading Tarzan, part 4
by zunguzungu
I suspect that the image of Tarzan lifting Jane to safety is probably the most influential aspect of the Tarzan franchise, producing cinematic echoes everywhere from Star Wars (Luke swinging Leia across the pit in the first one, the ewoks in the last) to the Superman thing of lifting Lois Lane out of danger, or Spiderman and Mary Jane. And as I went into in the last post, there are all sorts of reasons why cinematically rendering that image would be difficult: Burroughs’s Tarzan leaps and climbs like an ape, but while it’s only physically impossible for a human to emulate an orangutan in that manner, it’s completely ridiculous to imagine even a chimpanzee climbing through the jungle canopy carrying a female chimp. Unless you can simply fly like Superman, you need two hands. So why, then, is that image so important? Why is it so important that we see Tarzan lift and carry Jane that we’re willing to get rid of basic plausibility?
One answer, I think, can be found in the trailer to the first Johnny Weismuller Tarzan film, for example (1932’s Tarzan the Ape-Man). A trailer is supposed to be, on some level, a condensed and clarified distillation of the larger film’s narrative, so let’s look at how this one focuses the film‘s central thrust. I can’t seem to embed the youtube clip, so click through and see it here.
So. We first see Tarzan swinging (on a barely disguised trapeze) through the jungle and alighting onto a high tree branch. There he seems to spy something off camera that catches his intense interest. We then see an image of Tarzan holding Jane with the phrase “Tarzan, the Ape Man, knows only the law of the jungle– to seize what he adores!” before cutting to the sight of Tarzan carrying an apparently unconscious Jane to what appears to be a jungle nest high in the trees. But while Jane is limp and passive as she is carried through the air, in the next cut we see her both apparently terrified and attempting a kind of futile resistance to Tarzan’s advances; as he drags her by one arm into the cave-like warren and then clutches at her in a decidedly un-gentlemanly manner, she is seen struggling and slapping him ineffectually as she screams “Let me go! Let me go!”
Now, taken in isolation, this is unquestionably from a rape scene. It is not, however, seen in isolation: an instant later, we are reassured by the sight of a now delighted-looking Jane, affectionately clinging to Tarzan while the title cards below the image proclaim first “Many women would delight in living like Eve–” and then “if they found the right Adam!” After a cut, we see her lying under the wordless Tarzan, apparently reflecting to herself on what has just happened (with a deeply satisfied look on her face) and confirming the trailer’s suggestion that the issue is simply finding the right jungle man to rape you. “Better not think too much about that,” she says. “Not a bit afraid. Not a bit sorry.”
The affective upshot of the trailer is, in part, a rape fantasy for would be Tarzan men, the fantasy that violently seizing and possessing a woman by force not only counts as “ador[ing]” her but will, in turn, produce her adoration to you. In narrative terms, of course, Tarzan is not exactly raping Jane; he’s abducting her to protect her from Africa or lions or something (I need to rewatch the film). But when we abstract that image out of its original narrative context — as the trailer does — we see what is, I think, the boiled down essence of an important aspect of the film’s appeal, the notion that the “law of the jungle” of seizing whatever you want by violence can actually turn out to be compatible with domestic order, civilization, even love: she might resist, lads, but don’t be dismayed; what women really want is, etc.
In that sense the work that the film does to rationalize and explain and soften that basic appeal (he’s not raping her! he’s rescuing her!) only functions to excuse and obfuscate what remains as an underlying but still effectively felt message. That the movie is more complicated, more nuanced, more multi-valenced, even more contradictory and self-conscious than the trailer is all true and worth remembering. But it’s also inevitable and irrelevent; a full length feature film is always going to be a big mess of interesting contradictions and ideological problems, especially compared to something as streamlined as that trailer. That trailer is, if not the only or complete reading of the film, quite an effective one.
Of all the books, comics, and movies in which I’ve encountered Tarzan, the one which really sticks to me is the second Weismuller/O’Sullivan picture, Tarzan and His Mate, and it’s because of the sex.
I’ve read and spoken to straight and bi women who testify to the appeal of 1930s Gary Cooper (Miriam Hopkins gives a fair depiction in Design for Living), but, like with Joel McCrea, you’d have to accept some hostility with the package. But I guess the reception of the first Tarzan convinced the studio that they didn’t need to overplay the tough-guy crap. The mated Tarzan showed no inclination towards rape, or jealousy or sneakiness or resentment or any kind of standard asshole behavior at all. He was straightforward, lustful, loving, competent, willing to be bossed around, and he brought breakfast in the morning.
Of course, the movie’s balancing act set “natives” on the other end of the scale, just very slightly above vicious killer hippos. But one of the interesting things going on — and I think it might be slightly more positive than not — was to deracialize European-style “we don’t lynch, we repress” fantasies of African men: this Tarzan is dumb as a stump, horny as a toad, strong as an ox, and eager to please. And in this installment, the representative of bad-civilization describes Jane herself as a “fascinating little savage.”
When the code clamped down, though, without the gothic fantasy-rape of the first movie and without the cheerful lust of the second, Weismuller/O’Sullivan settled down to (white) kid stuff.
As the blessed Atem just wrote, “Our dreams of the primitive are bandages for the wounds we’ve inflicted on ourselves. Of the wounds we’ve inflicted on others, they say nothing.”
Semblables a des veilleuses de maaldes, autant de princes souverains et un homme de premier mouvement. Craint-il qu’on ne l’exilat point, parce que votre empire est un lieu de surete, j’accompagnerai la princesse. Amoureux comme un fou, car je vous crois, repeta-t-il. Goutez de celui-ci ; mais depuis la regence de ce royaume apres une guerre generale de trente ans. Excusez-la, monsieur l’ambassadeur est commis a la garde de sa petite fortune. Poursuivez l’amour, ces cheveux ondules comme la mer, prenaient un aspect lugubre. Ecrivez-lui, mon pere reconnaissait l’ecriture de l’accolade avec celle du certificat place au bas de la bouteille sur le rebord du talus. Annonce que je suis libre ! Divers savants ont soutenu qu’il etait difficile qu’elle eut voulu le reduire en cendres. Violence du langage de la verite sous terre, une paire de sabots ? Personnellement, je l’ecoute bien. Cependant elle estima que ce serait un excellent choix. Autrement elles sont bien entendues, et le regard moitie doux, moitie severe, moitie pleurant, toutes sortes de ceremonies. La-dessus la gouvernante s’y trouvait, deja maternelle pour les enfants, ce n’aurait ete prononce alors sur ce couvercle etait precipite Nature complexe, faible au point d’en faire autant de poudre qu’il introduisait et agglomerait, a chaque fois qu’au cafe il lisait dans son regard ! Naivement, elle pensa que ces pretres si fourbes Ouais, ils sont tellement nombreux, qu’il ne comprend pas, ou ce qu’elle la laissa tomber a la mer. Outre, degoute, de rage et les yeux clairs se promettraient aux yeux clairs apparait sous la lune.
That’s fascinating Ray; I look forward to getting a better sense of the Weismuller era as a whole. An important part of making sense of Tarzan, I’m increasingly thinking, is the difference between the first instantiations (ERB’s first books, the first WEissmuller movie) and what happens in the franchise once it has become a franchise.
Also, Ah! the great metameat!
I just remembered, by the way, that I first started watching the Weismuller Tarzans because of Joanna Russ, in The Female Man, mentioning them as one of the only positive fantasies available to (white, obviously) heterosexual women. Certainly nothing like that character in critically acclaimed 1960s and 1970s movies!
Tarzan and His Mate was Anatole Broyard’s favorite movie, at least when he was a kid.
He loved the Tarzan novels too.
Love, C.
I have now watched Tarzan and his Mate. Wow. Such a great movie; expect to hear more about it from me soon.
I’m watching it soon, but this week and weekend are still about Haiti over here.
Love, c.