King Kong: The Film

1012 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Essay on king kong

The use of cinema to display symbolic representations within society is a notion to which many films adhere. Movies can be used as a means to which producers may convey a message to the world alongside amusement. These messages, hidden in plain sight, provide the audience with a revelation or opportunity to reflect upon oneself. Symbolic representations used in film, alters society’s outlook on current issues which are either taboo to speak of, or require worldwide exposure. In the plot, which unfolded within Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsacks’s King Kong of 1933, the act of revolution and overpowering black masculinity was dispersed throughout the movie. Whereas, in 1954’s Godzilla directed by Inoshiro Honda, the message within the movie was an environmental strike against nuclear weapon testing. From prehistoric times, women are attracted to physically strong, muscular men with a firm jawline and prefer men of tall stature. These physical attributes are genetically present within the African American men. The movie, King Kong, amplifies this perception by presenting the great Kong as a giant ape, with immense strength, dark skin contrast, and astounding masculine traits thus luring women with his appeal. “It is both as a political and as a sexual threat that black skin appears on screen” The portrayal of overpowering black masculinity indulged a sense of threat to the Caucasian population by planting the seed of fear within the white men. Their minds spurred the illusion that “their” white women would prefer “black savages” over themselves. The following information is from an interpretation of a comical strip within Hustler magazine, a mass distributed pornography magazine. “The message that white women prefer black... ... middle of paper ... ...esentation in order to present an environmental crisis to the public, which in fact is a great idea. The general public does not like to read the newspaper or worry about the side effects of pollution, however, cinema has combined both of these aspects and provide amusement alongside self-awareness within their films. In the midst of enjoying their movie, they are exposed to the frightening events which may occur in the not too distant future should they decide to remain the way they are. Movies such as King Kong and Godzilla depict symbolic representations in attempt to display current issues within society. From revolution against authority to environmental activists proclaiming their concerns, films are a means to which the world may receive a message through entertainment. …….HELP ME FINISH PLEASE Bibliography: 6) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816711/quotes

Show More
Related

  • Victory At Avalon Character Analysis

    512 Words  | 2 Pages

    Films are necessary in our time period because the human eye can articulate the message intended through sight allowing visual imagination to occur. In the book, world 2 by Max Brooks, he creates a character by the name Roy Elliot who was a former movie director. Roy Elliot manages to make a movie titled “Victory at Avalon: The Battle of the Five Colleges” and some how it goes viral. Similarly, Frank Capra’s film, “Why we Fight” expresses a sense of understanding the meaning of wars. Films do not inevitably portray truth because they display what the film director views as important and beneficial for people to know.

    Read More

  • Greg Smith It's Just A Movie Summary

    656 Words  | 2 Pages

    In his essay, “It’s Just a Movie: A Teaching Essay for Introductory Media Classes”, Greg M. Smith argues that analyzing a film does not ruin, but enhances a movie-viewing experience; he supports his argument with supporting evidence. He addresses the careful planning required for movies. Messages are not meant to be telegrams. Audiences read into movies to understand basic plotlines. Viewers should examine works rather than society’s explanations. Each piece contributes to Smith’s argument, movies are worth scrutinizing.

    Read More

  • King Kong: A Cultural Snapshot

    964 Words  | 2 Pages

    Racist characteristics in films and stories are something that can be perceived in this generation, but was something that was normal and expected in the 1930’s. Sexuality and raciness were items that made films a commodity in the 30’s and King Kong uses both of these to attract a wide audience. These qualities are also a factor as to why King Kong remains a classic throughout the generations.

    Read More

  • Metaphors In Films Like Godzilla, Big Bug Films

    1344 Words  | 3 Pages

    The best thing about movies like Godzilla and Tarantula are the metaphors. The saturation of metaphors is immense. This shows the importance of films like these in the cinematic industry. People have a way to express emotions and express fears. In the article” Looking straight at "Them!"

    Read More

  • Words that Speak in the Movie, Do the Right Thing by Spike Lee

    886 Words  | 2 Pages

    Movies distort reality by creating an ideal conflictual ambience, from which all the subtle human emotions and the characters arise. Humans might appear as consensus beings, seeking conformation and avoiding alienation by “society”. However, referring back to Aristotle’s saying, “human beings are by nature political animals” (1999), humans continually strive for power and control inasmuch as they strive for pure oxygen to breathe. Movies unleash these “socially unacceptable” political animals, exposing the hidden moral corruption embedded within most humans. Movies accomplish such a task by distorting reality, by reshaping the truth into a collection of video shots, taken from different angles, creating different meanings to content; the true meaning. The three genres of literature – narratives, poetry and drama – establish the key to revealing the distortion, thus providing humans with the ultimate method of deciphering our reality through the eyes of a glass lens. In the movie Do the Right Thing, these genres come together to paint a “picture” of us.

    Read More

  • Mulan vs. Kung Fu Panda: The Battle for Accurate Portrayal of Chinese Culture

    1201 Words  | 3 Pages

    Ever since the establishment of cinema in the early 1900s, Hollywood has continuously recreated elements of history to reenact for its future generations. In order to clearly broadcast a specific theme or message to relay to viewers around the world, Hollywood executives tend to embellish real life events, in order to provide a “fairytale” aspect to a seemingly not so “happily- ever-after” story from history. As part of this “fairytale” aspect, Hollywood tends to delegitimize as well as provide a more disrespectful and more comical version of societies and cultures in the specific time frame that the film is being set. Through the art of story telling, the movies Mulan and Kung Fu Panda, depict the two sides of Hollywood, the falsifying and mockery making of Chinese people, their society, beliefs and true events of history and that of an accurate portrayal.

    Read More

  • Classical and Post-Classical Hollywood Cinema

    2472 Words  | 5 Pages

    Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...

    Read More

  • The Great Imagination Heist Essay

    584 Words  | 2 Pages

    One could easily dismiss movies as superficial, unnecessarily violent spectacles, although such a viewpoint is distressingly pessimistic and myopic. In a given year, several films are released which have long-lasting effects on large numbers of individuals. These pictures speak

    Read More

  • The Hero's Journey in Modern Film

    1757 Words  | 4 Pages

    Being one of the world’s most popular art forms, it was inevitable that these archetypes would find their way into film as well. In this essay I will argue that the films Pulp Fiction, Taxi Driver, Watership Down, and Trainspotting are all versions of The Hero’s Journey, consequently demonstrating just how prevalent these archetypes have become in modern cinema. And that mythology and storytelling are important parts of each culture because they prevent the darkness in our hearts from spreading.

    Read More

  • Analyzing the Film Food Inc and the Propaganda Message for Positive Change

    1448 Words  | 3 Pages

    Society tends to associate propaganda films with issues such as Nazi Germany and their film messages for their country; however, it is also possible for small independent companies, groups of like-minded people and individuals to use the media of film to incorporate messages for our society (The Independent, 2010). These messages are often in relation to changes that individuals should make in order to improve the standards by which they live their lives and changes to everyday habits that will benefit the individual, the individual’s family, a group of individuals or even a single person (Barnhisel and Turner, 2010).

    Read More

  • The Two-Tiered System of Allusions

    1605 Words  | 4 Pages

    In recent times, such stereotyped categorizations of films are becoming inapplicable. ‘Blockbusters’ with celebrity-studded casts may have plots in which characters explore the depths of the human psyche, or avant-garde film techniques. Titles like ‘American Beauty’ (1999), ‘Fight Club’ (1999) and ‘Kill Bill 2’ (2004) come readily into mind. Hollywood perhaps could be gradually losing its stigma as a money-hungry machine churning out predictable, unintelligent flicks for mass consumption. While whether this image of Hollywood is justified remains open to debate, earlier films in the 60’s and 70’s like ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ (1967) and ‘Taxi Driver’ (1976) already revealed signs of depth and avant-garde film techniques. These films were successful as not only did they appeal to the mass audience, but they managed to communicate alternate messages to select groups who understood subtleties within them.

    Read More

  • The Big Sleep: Movie vs. Novel

    1588 Words  | 4 Pages

    Film and literature are two media forms that are so closely related, that we often forget there is a distinction between them. We often just view the movie as an extension of the book because most movies are based on novels or short stories. Because we are accustomed to this sequence of production, first the novel, then the motion picture, we often find ourselves making value judgments about a movie, based upon our feelings on the novel. It is this overlapping of the creative processes that prevents us from seeing movies as distinct and separate art forms from the novels they are based on.

    Read More

  • Sound and Editing Analysis

    1023 Words  | 3 Pages

    Since the creation of films, their main goal was to appeal to mass audiences. However, once, the viewer looks past the appearance of films, the viewer realizes that the all-important purpose of films is to serve as a bridge connecting countries, cultures, and languages. This is because if you compare any two films that are from a foreign country or spoken in another language, there is the possibility of a connection between the two because of the fact that they have a universal understanding or interpretation. This is true for the French New Wave films Contempt and Breathless directed by Jean-Luc Godard, and contemporary Indian films Earth and Water directed by Deepa Mehta. All four films portray an individual’s role in society, using sound and editing.

    Read More

  • The Ape Man Film Analysis

    879 Words  | 2 Pages

    African Americans were frowned upon as a race from early times, the stereotypical conjectures that are displayed in the film about Africa and blacks during colonialism is very apparent throughout the film, blacks were kept in the background while whites were portrayed as dominant and being able to roam liberally, in my opinion, I don’t believe that blacks could even be called “people” their interpretation in the film lead viewers to think that they were the lazy natives and pygmies. The director cores his focus above all on Whites in the Tarzan films and how they have managed to escape the rigid moral and social limitations of the Metropole, Africa is represented as being an eccentric adventure country where white’s wants and needs are almost always put up on a higher rank. The desire for blacks to get away from their daily life struggles of postmodern America leads them to Africa to escape from the money and material possessions they are quite used to. It was imperative for Hollywood to paint black Africa as an unrestrained location in order to win the support of individuals back in the Americas for colonial expansion

    Read More

  • Why Do People Watch Movies?

    774 Words  | 2 Pages

    Movies take us inside the skin of people quite different from ourselves and to places different from our routine surroundings. As humans, we always seek enlargement of our being and wanted to be more than ourselves. Each one of us, by nature, sees the world with a perspective and selectivity different from others. But, we want to see the world through other’s eyes; imagine with other’s imaginations; feel with other’s hearts, at a same time as with our own. Movies offer us a window onto the wider world, broadening our perspective and opening our eyes to new wonders.

    Read More

More about King Kong: The Film

Open Document