A Silent Scream: An Approach to «King Kong» and the Evolution of the Contemporary American Imaginary
Summary
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its dimensions, functions, types, and social and individual meanings. It also shows that fear represents a desire to eliminate the Other and that horror films have their origin precisely in crisis and fear, which gives it a fundamentally xenophobic nature. This is demonstrated in the book through the analysis of the four most important versions of the King Kong myth: 1933, 1976, 2005 and 2017. These versions are the result of the fear of the Other that was generated by particular crises in US society: the stock market crash of 1929, the 1970s energy crisis, 9/11 and the military intervention in Iraq in 2003 and its consequences. These conflicts also led to psychological and sociological effects that created a desire for escape that King Kong's films manifest.
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the author
- About the book
- This eBook can be cited
- Table of Contents
- I. Introduction
- Chapter 1. Starting Hypothesis, Objectives, Theoretical and Methodological Foundations, Fundamental Concepts and Structure of the Book
- 1.1 Starting assumptions and objectives
- 1.2 Theoretical and methodological basis
- Sociology and film
- Philosophical hermeneutics, image hermeneutics, and the association between iconological analysis, the documentary method, and Visual Framing
- 1.3 Fundamental concepts: the social imaginary, crisis, fear and the other
- The Social Imaginary and Cinema
- Crisis as a time of transition and fear
- The multidimensionality and multifunctionality of fear in times of crisis
- Fear drives the desire to eliminate the Other
- Chapter 2. Crisis, Fear, and Xenophobia in Horror Cinema
- 2.1. Terror, horror or fantasy films?
- 2.2. Terror films, crisis, and fear
- 2.3. Horror cinema and colonial racism: the monster and the space and time it inhabits
- Chapter 3 Crisis And Fear In King Kong
- 3.1. Crisis or the four American versions of King Kong
- 3.2. Four crises — related to economy, ecology, terrorism, and the military— or Modernity as a crisis
- 1 The Economic Crash of ’29
- 2 The 1973 energy crisis
- 3 The Twin Towers crisis of 2001
- 4 The military crisis between 1973-2011
- 3.3. Types of fear provoked by crisis and King Kong
- II. “Terror of History” and “Refuge in Nature” or “Shelter in Cinema”
- Chapter 4. Nostalgia for the Origin
- 4.1. The departure of History towards the island of Nature
- The flight from history
- The entry into Nature: from nostalgia for the lost paradise to melancholy for ourselves, for what we could have been or for what we have ceased to be.
- The battle between technology and nature
- 4.2. Skull Island or the Mystery of Death and Origin
- Introduction
- Fear of nature and death and giving meaning to life are at the origin of religion.
- The Mystery of Skull Island
- A journey through time
- The mythical mountain and grotto of Skull Island or the cradle and the grave
- 4.3. The rites of the tribe, or the return to the same old order, reinforced
- Religion and the origin of the island’s tribal society
- A hierarchical and monotheistic society
- A closed and autarchic society
- A hybrid matriarchal-patriarchal, hunter-warrior, tribal-fraternal society
- Sacrifices and rites of passage in King Kong or the exorcism of crisis and the renewal of society
- 4.4. The survival of religiousness in the city of skyscrapers
- New York or the return to the same old, reinforced order
- From earth to heaven: a human journey as opposed to that of the gorilla
- An unfinished myth, fed by a succession of crises and fears
- 4.5. Nostalgia for the origins of New York City
- III. Crisis and Fear of the other in King Kong
- Chapter 5. King Kong and the Internal and External Fear of the Other
- 5.1. King Kong, the feared Other
- A king and a lonely god
- The battle between purposeful rationality and the irrationality of the unconscious
- Chapter 6. Fear of the Black Race
- 6.1. King Kong’s colonial racism
- The racism debate in the 1933 version of King Kong
- The raw and sibylline manifestation of racism in King Kong
- The invisibility of the black race
- 6.2. Economic and social racism
- The crisis of ’29 and fears of the black race in King Kong
- The denial of social advancement to people of color
- 6.3. King Kong, the black gorilla
- King Kong is black
- King Kong, object of desire and white fear
- A masculine sexuality that protects femininity
- The fusion of sexuality and dark death
- From the most carnal and pornographic sexuality to a residual eroticism
- 6.4. The Western Hunter’s Voyeurism on the “primitive” colored tribal people
- 6.5. King Kong or the buried impulses of the civilized human being
- 6.6. The evolution towards the coexistence of black and white individuals
- Chapter 7. Male Fear of Women
- 7.1. The female object of male erotic desire: abducted, undressed, and penetrated
- 7.2. The woman as an object of male fear: a permanent problem, a memory of temptation and sin, and a source of war
- 7.3. The battle between Beauty and the Beast, between Nature and Civilization
- Women’s relationship with death, according to patriarchal ideology
- Nature and Barbarism personified in women
- Women constitute the hinge between Civilization and Barbarism according to patriarchal thinking
- 7.4. Continuities and changes in patriarchal thinking as regards women and their bodies
- Animosity, ambivalence, and changes towards women
- Civilizing sentiments come from women
- IV. Epilogue: From the Industrial to the Digital Society, from Modernity to Late Modernity
- Chapter 8. The Crisis, or Where We Come From and Where We are Going
- 8.1. Modernity as a crisis: from the industrial society to a digital one, from Modernity to Late Modernity
- 8.2. Crisis and fear of the Other: the circularity of fear
- 8.3. Fear of the Black Race: the heart of barbarism is just a few minutes away from civilization.
- The crisis of ’29, King Kong, and the fear of colored people
- King Kong and colonial and racial ideology
- King Kong embodies the fear of dark death and the desire for renewal in the face of crisis.
- Social differentiation and the role of filmmaking
- 8.4. Fear of Women: King Kong versus Instrumental Rationality
- Final coda: the silent scream
- Bibliography
- Series Index
Chapter 1. Starting Hypothesis, Objectives, Theoretical and Methodological Foundations, Fundamental Concepts and Structure of the Book
This chapter describes the fundamental concepts from which the book starts, i.e. crisis, fear, and the social imaginary, as well as the methodologies used to interpret the four versions of the giant gorilla: hermeneutics; and the sociology of imaginary cinema. From these concepts and methodologies, the book pursues the following objectives:
1st) To describe the main characteristics that define the emotion of fear, its dimensions, its functions and its types, as well as its social and individual meanings
2nd) To show that fear represents a desire to eliminate the Other
3rd) To explain the emergence of horror movies from crisis and fear
4th) To reveal the essentially xenophobic nature of horror movies
5th) To analyze if the four versions of King Kong indeed result from crisis and the increased fear that it triggers
6th) To examine and interpret how King Kong expresses the fear of the Other, particularly of the black race and women, installed both inside the mind and outside the environment.
←13 | 14→1.1 Starting assumptions and objectives
Graphic 1 Source: own elaboration
According to the first starting hypothesis of this book, crises intensify the population’s fear and this, in turn, fosters horror films, which flourish precisely during such traumatic transitional periods. More specifically, as will be seen later on, the four most important versions of King Kong are based on the crises caused by the Crash of ’29, the 1973 oil crisis, the attack on the Twin Towers, and the crisis of confidence in the US military capacity that actually led to a strengthening of the military spirit. These critical periods stimulate fear, thus generating at least three important effects which basically have an imaginary nature: (1) terror of History or refuge in Nature; (2) nostalgia for the pre-crisis origin; and (3) fear or exacerbation of the other, the black race, the invisibility of the unemployed, of poor people and immigrants, and a male fear of women.
The different times when the four productions were made additionally reflect an evolution of the American imaginary which, overall, makes progress in the acceptance of the Other belonging to a different race, in women’s equality and, consequently, in the decrease of colonial, racist, ←14 | 15→and masculine fear, which does not completely disappear, though. Similarly, this step mirrors the transformation from rejection of the Other, and the desire to annihilate them, to affective coexistence. Finally, these developments respectively match the two great stages of modernity: the first or industrial one; and the second: digital or knowledge-based.
Graphic 2. Source: own elaboration
The above table shows the fundamental concepts that will be used in this essay —fear-crisis-horror cinema-social imaginary— together with the relationships between them. In fact, if imaginary reality serves as the basis for horror cinema, this genre flourishes precisely in times of crisis as a result of which the social order has been shaken. This collapse, combined with the insecurity and uncertainty that it provokes, intensifies and diversifies a whole range of fears which, while infecting the social imaginary, eventually become reflected in horror films. This genre, for its part, simultaneously devalues the practical issues of the crisis reality and enhances the affective reality —the emotion of fear, for example— thus managing not only to echo the fears derived from the time of upheaval but also to help build them. In other words, although horror cinema is nourished by crisis, it feeds crisis too.
Details
- Pages
- 212
- Publication Year
- 2022
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9783631883112
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9783631883129
- ISBN (Softcover)
- 9783631883105
- DOI
- 10.3726/b19914
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2022 (September)
- Published
- Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Warszawa, Wien, 2022. 212 pp., 13 fig. col., 27 fig. b/w.
Biographical notes
Juan Antonio Roche Cárcel (Author)
Juan Antonio Roche Cárcel is Professor of Sociology of Culture and the Arts at the University of Alicante (Spain). He is currently President of the Committee for the Sociology of Emotions of the Spanish Federation of Sociology. His research focuses on culture, emotions, visual sociology, arts, cinema, theater and skyscraper architecture, creativity.
