I just watched a National Geographic documentary on Gorillas from the 70's, back when National Geographic actually got political. It was really funny though. They had all this footage of when the US and English societies were first exposed to this massive dark ape through pictures and even film from the 1920's. There were numerous horror films and of course King Kong.
If you know anything about gorillas, you know that they don't attack people unless they're being attacked, but all of the older pictures and footage were of course picturing these violent creatures. But what's more is that in most of them, they had the gorilla taking their women to have sex with them. AMAZING! HILLARIOUS! The white man's fear of huge black sex extends into the animal kingdom! They never said it in the documentary but it was obvious from the footage. This is such a pop psychology dissertation waiting to be written, if it hasn't already.
You have to think, 1920, women just got the right to vote. Jazz is luring white women in just about every major city into the heart of black neighborhoods. And suddenly everyone knows about an even BIGGER, even BLACKER creature, and all the movie people can think about is how it will take their white women.
Or who knows, maybe women were like "hmmmm...." You never know.
Posted by bluprnt at March 7, 2005 02:17 PM