Ape stories are everywhere. They swing from vines, build empires, invade cities, and, when necessary, tear the human world apart. From the primal roar of King Kong atop the Empire State Building to the philosophical musings of Kafka’s ape in A Report to an Academy, the ape reflects us back at ourselves, stripped bare of pretense, caught somewhere between civilization and chaos. The line blurs: where does the ape end and the human begin?
Planet of the Apes stands tall among these tales, a sprawling mythos of masks, dystopias, and allegories. The original film series is the Bible of ape-human relations—Genesis, Exodus, and Revelation all wrapped in Charlton Heston's anguished cry: *“You maniacs! You blew it up!”* The apes here don’t just wear clothes; they embody society’s faults, becoming twisted reflections of humanity’s hierarchies, racism, and nuclear hubris. The Tim Burton remake turned up the weirdness—Mark Wahlberg stumbling through a carnival of prosthetics and muted chaos. And then came the reboot trilogy, gritty and grounded, with Andy Serkis’ Caesar giving us the ape we didn’t know we needed: not just smart but wise, a tragic Shakespearean king. A talking ape. A thinking ape. A dying ape.
Kafka’s A Report to an Academy strips the pageantry from the ape myth. His ape, Red Peter, is no rampaging Kong or tyrannical Dr. Zaius. He’s civilized, articulate, and deeply tragic, an animal that’s become human only to realize that humanity is its own cage. You can escape the zoo, Kafka tells us, but the jungle never really leaves you. It’s not so different from Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue, where an orangutan, mimicking human violence, becomes the ultimate Gothic symbol of misunderstood monstrosity. The ape in Poe’s story isn’t evil; it’s a mirror held up to the Victorian fear of the Other—foreign, exotic, unknowable.
Then there’s Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952). A fever dream of a film, if ever there was one. It’s a late-night collision of Hollywood absurdity: Lugosi hamming it up as a mad scientist, Jerry Lewis clones cracking jokes, and, of course, the gorilla—a man in a suit, hulking and stupid, comic relief in a story that feels like it was improvised by hungover writers. Nearby in the bargain bin is Robot Monster (1953), where a man in a gorilla suit with a diving helmet terrorizes humanity in what may be the cheapest apocalypse ever filmed. The ape suit is a shortcut, a way to evoke primal terror or absurdity without breaking the bank.
Twice Upon a Time meanwhile, drifts in briefly, an animated oddity that plays like a dream you barely remember. The ape doesn’t take center stage here, but the spirit of mischief, chaos, and surreal humor connects it to the broader pantheon of ape stories. These are tales that remind us not to take ourselves too seriously—except when we should.
Kong looms large over everything. The original King Kong(1933) isn’t just a monster movie; it’s the prototype for every ape tale to follow. Kong is the tragic god of Skull Island, a creature caught between worlds. He’s both beauty and beast, villain and victim, torn down by human arrogance and greed. Mighty Joe Young (1949) softened the edges, giving us a kinder, gentler ape, but the theme remained: the jungle collides with civilization, and neither escapes unscathed.
By the time we get to Rampage, the video game and the movie, the ape has gone full circle. George, the giant albino gorilla, is pure spectacle—a cartoon brought to life. The film knows it’s ridiculous and revels in it, with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson playing straight man to skyscraper-sized chaos. The ape isn’t a metaphor anymore; it’s a blockbuster.
Then there’s Tarzan, swinging through the jungle with apes as his family. Tarzan doesn’t fear the apes; he is the ape, or at least their human sibling. Edgar Rice Burroughs’ stories are colonial fantasies, of course, but they tap into a primal yearning: the dream of living free, without society’s rules. The same dream pulses through The Jungle Book, where Mowgli trades wolves for apes and back again, caught in the eternal tug-of-war between the wild and the tame.
Pop culture loves to make apes funny. Grape Ape, the 40-foot purple gorilla, is all slapstick and catchphrases. He’s a joke, a Saturday morning cartoon designed to sell cereal. Monster and the Ape, a 1945 serial, isn’t much deeper—apes as henchmen, villains, comic relief. But even here, the ape carries weight, a reminder of something raw and wild, just below the surface.
In Congo, Michael Crichton and Hollywood serve up high-tech apes: talking gorillas, killer gorillas, laser-wielding explorers. It’s absurd, yes, but also oddly poignant. Amy, the sign-language gorilla, is Red Peter’s cousin—a creature trapped between animal and human worlds, her intelligence both a gift and a burden. And then there’s the dark humor of the killer apes, guardians of lost treasures, reminding us that for all our science, the jungle still wins.
What is it about the ape? Why do we keep returning to this image, this idea? Maybe it’s because the ape is us, stripped to the essentials. The ape is rage, love, fear, and survival. It’s Kafka’s bitterly articulate Red Peter and Lugosi’s lurching gorilla. It’s Kong’s roar and Grape Ape’s goofy laugh. It’s Poe’s murderous orangutan and Serkis’ noble Caesar. It’s a mirror, cracked and smeared, but unmistakably human. Or maybe we’re the ape, staring into the mirror, trying to figure out what the reflection means.
No comments:
Post a Comment