juan
December 27th, 2005, 05:24 PM
Hi guys! While going through my newspapers I saw an editorial by Maureen Dowd. I often like to read the opinion section of the papers to see what’s going on. My favorite columnist is cool headed, common sense liberal Dan Friedman—I also watch his show on Discovery Times Channel—but I still like Maureen Dowd. I have so much fun listening to her bash the Bush administration! However, in her December 21st diatribe, “Hot Monkey Love,” it got rather wonky.
It started out by her despairing that all bush does is play cowboy but that before the man* puts on his Texas belt buckle he should ask himself if he’ll invoke images of Brokeback Mountain, a film of about two *** cowboys that fall in love. She later asks if we should “take another look in John Wayne’s stride.”
“Everything will have to be re-evaluated.”
She keeps talking on gets to Kong. The following I cut and pasted from the web.
Hollywood is busy sensitizing - and emotionally layering - archetypal macho guys, including our most famous alpha male. He's still strong and decisive. His back's as hairy as ever. But it's just not the same Kong.
This lovable overgrown monkey is more like the brooding, wounded and steadfast romantic heroes Heathcliff and Rick Blaine. Like Jane Austen's Mr. Darcy, Peter Jackson's big ape goes for gals with spunk. He likes babes who juggle more than jiggle.
This gorilla doesn't go around tossing "gorilla dust," as Ross Perot used to call it, just to get into another alpha's space. He doesn't look for a T. rex simply to rip its jaws apart - he only protects his loved ones. He'd rather hang out on his mountain, enjoying the sunset and watching his gal juggle and do pratfalls.
In a way, the new images of alpha archetypes are subversive precisely because the cowboys and the king of the jungle remain macho even as they become more nuanced.
The latest Kong waits for the blonde to come to him. "This time, he really seems to have the qualities of a hero in a woman's romance - he's distant, he's suffering, he's aloof," says Cynthia Erb, a professor and the author of "Tracking King Kong: A Hollywood Icon in World Culture."
As the hairy antihero grows more sensitive with each remake, the Ann Darrow character gets more sexual and aggressive. "She goes from a naïve, innocent, screaming, virginal character in the 30's to a sexually free, liberated feminist woman in the 70's," Ms. Erb notes. "In this one, she has the benefits of feminism and is the one who in some ways initiates the courtship. She actually works to earn his interest." And tries to save him.
For all its dazzling digital spectacle, "King Kong" is not as daring as it could be. Peter Jackson could have made Kong a woman. Or, while he was borrowing "Titanic" imagery for the lovers' parting on the EmpireStateBuilding, he could have gone all the way and made "BrokebackIsland."
Just picture it: Leonardo DiCaprio, blond, doe-eyed and smitten, curled in the ape's epicene yet hairy grip. Kong, swinging both ways.
*Oddly enough, my mother calls Bush, el chango, or the monkey. (My whole family is liberal:) .) I once asked her who was the bigger monkey, Bush or Kong? She said Kong but Kong was a respectable monkey whilst Bush was not. :p
It started out by her despairing that all bush does is play cowboy but that before the man* puts on his Texas belt buckle he should ask himself if he’ll invoke images of Brokeback Mountain, a film of about two *** cowboys that fall in love. She later asks if we should “take another look in John Wayne’s stride.”
“Everything will have to be re-evaluated.”
She keeps talking on gets to Kong. The following I cut and pasted from the web.
Hollywood is busy sensitizing - and emotionally layering - archetypal macho guys, including our most famous alpha male. He's still strong and decisive. His back's as hairy as ever. But it's just not the same Kong.
This lovable overgrown monkey is more like the brooding, wounded and steadfast romantic heroes Heathcliff and Rick Blaine. Like Jane Austen's Mr. Darcy, Peter Jackson's big ape goes for gals with spunk. He likes babes who juggle more than jiggle.
This gorilla doesn't go around tossing "gorilla dust," as Ross Perot used to call it, just to get into another alpha's space. He doesn't look for a T. rex simply to rip its jaws apart - he only protects his loved ones. He'd rather hang out on his mountain, enjoying the sunset and watching his gal juggle and do pratfalls.
In a way, the new images of alpha archetypes are subversive precisely because the cowboys and the king of the jungle remain macho even as they become more nuanced.
The latest Kong waits for the blonde to come to him. "This time, he really seems to have the qualities of a hero in a woman's romance - he's distant, he's suffering, he's aloof," says Cynthia Erb, a professor and the author of "Tracking King Kong: A Hollywood Icon in World Culture."
As the hairy antihero grows more sensitive with each remake, the Ann Darrow character gets more sexual and aggressive. "She goes from a naïve, innocent, screaming, virginal character in the 30's to a sexually free, liberated feminist woman in the 70's," Ms. Erb notes. "In this one, she has the benefits of feminism and is the one who in some ways initiates the courtship. She actually works to earn his interest." And tries to save him.
For all its dazzling digital spectacle, "King Kong" is not as daring as it could be. Peter Jackson could have made Kong a woman. Or, while he was borrowing "Titanic" imagery for the lovers' parting on the EmpireStateBuilding, he could have gone all the way and made "BrokebackIsland."
Just picture it: Leonardo DiCaprio, blond, doe-eyed and smitten, curled in the ape's epicene yet hairy grip. Kong, swinging both ways.
*Oddly enough, my mother calls Bush, el chango, or the monkey. (My whole family is liberal:) .) I once asked her who was the bigger monkey, Bush or Kong? She said Kong but Kong was a respectable monkey whilst Bush was not. :p