Can "Tarzan" be saved?

I read recently that a major director (Stephen Sommers?) is interested in reviving a live-action "Tarzan". Frankly, I don't know if it can be done. The problem is that "Tarzan" is the ultimate statement in the "Nature" over "Nurture" argument. At the time it was written, I think 95% of the human race assumed it was all Nature. Breeding. The basic thesis: "An English gentleman, even raised by apes, is still an English gentleman."

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Only in the 20th Century did this really start breaking down, and suspicions that we are far more vulnerable/susceptible to imprintation begin to creep into the mythology. So far as I can see, running back to Shakespeare, the Bible, and ancient history, the winners won because God made them better, the losers lost because they were of inferior breed.

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Don't get me wrong--I loved Tarzan when I was a kid. But then, I was desperate to figure out what the hell it meant to be a "man." Not having my father, or any uncles or grandfathers around to provide role models (I did have a great-uncle, who was a fine man, but I don't remember ever having so much as a single private conversation with him) I was floundering. I wanted the respect of men and the admiration of women...and I was just a pot-bellied little nerd, a green monkey egghead growing up in what my sister refers to as "Northwest South Central Los Angeles", and fit in nowhere. I never did figure out the "male-female" or "black-white" thing, so decided to just concentrate on being a human being. That one seems to have worked out fine.

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Back to the subject. I was desperate enough to ignore the rather vomitous racism in the Tarzan books, including one of the all-time most offensive comments in print: "white men have imagination, black men have little, animals have none." Thanks, ERB. I remember another bit where he said that a group of Africans were "unusually attractive...almost Caucasoid in appearance." Wow!

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How about in the Jungle Tales of Tarzan, where he fell in love with an ape. Was he ever attracted to a black girl? No. Gee. What's being said here?

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And still, I loved Tarzan. Still, I devoured them, so desperate was I for role models. And I retain affection for the original Tarzan films, the Ron Ely television show, and feel a bit of sympathy for people who want their cultural heros.

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The problem, of course, is that that core belief system: "blood is everything. Culture is nothing." underlies every movement, every word, every frame of every Tarzan film, and trying to pretend otherwise is absurd. And it creates an apparently impossible dilimma: is it even possible to update a concept whose basic premise, even if never stated, is so antithetical to such a large chunk of the population? To, in many ways, the American dream, or the human dream of freedom itself?

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Remember what I keep saying: the natural tendency of human beings is that 10% disconnect. People who say "I don't notice race" are exactly as believable as people who say "I don't notice gender." Oh, please. Liberals, I think, sometimes err on the side of wanting too much social engineering. I suspect that they are correct that Welfare caused some damage to the black family. On the other hand, Conservatives tend to be oblivious to the damage caused by States Rights policies when the states were supporting, or at the least turning a blind eye to homicidal levels of racism. And "color blind" policies simply don't take into account the fact that, if people of good will "stop noticing" race, about 10% of the population will gladly notice it for them. And if EVERYONE stopped noticing it, the unconscious tendencies would still tilt things in the direction of the majority. Note the automatic tendency to

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1) deny the racism implicit in sexual images in film, until the statistics make it undeniable. At which point the fall-back position is

2) "It's Hollywood." Which makes as much sense as saying the lack of color among Senators is "Washington", the lack of color in Science Fiction or comic books is "New York" or that lack of color in Country-Western music is "Nashville". In other words, the natural human tendency to try to explain differences in human behavior on the basis of "they are different from us."

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In other words, trying to isolate the problem to a "them" (Hollywood, New York, etc.) is the exact same thinking that produces a "Tarzan" (different breeds produce different results). On the other hand, it is possible to take the "programming/nurture" argument too far as well. The middle ground is the actual territory worth fighting over.

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It is the unconscious assumptions: that most people want to believe that their family, their school, their religion, their country is best, that makes this stuff so difficult. We are attracted to mythologies that reinforce our world view, and the beliefs and values that support it, most of which are unconscious. I've seen at least a dozen variations on "Tarzan"--the white child raised by wild animals becoming Lord or Lady of the jungle. Isn't it curious that those animals never raised and adopted a black child? Wow. You'd think that the odd contortions that the authors and filmmakers had to go through to put a white child in such a situation would have, in at least one case, motivated them to take the simple path, and just have a little black baby taken. Unless of course, that would have violated something very very basic that they needed to say. Something that their audiences needed to hear.

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So embarrassing is this stuff that when Disney made their Tarzan, they didn't have a single black man or woman in the entire film. Of course, neither did they in "Lion King", or any theatrical Disney film made in the 20th century. I know people who worked at Disney, and they've verified that it was a VERY racist environment. Apologists won't want to believe this. After all, Disney is one of the core American mythologies. Of COURSE it couldn't be racist. Such exclusion was accidental. Or...maybe they were worried about those easily offended black folks picketing, and decided not to take the chance.

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Of course. It's "them." Always "them." Never "us." Right.

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Back to Tarzan. Can he be saved? I mean, if America had been just as interested in seeing stories of black children raised by animals becoming great heros, or black men becoming the leaders of savage white tribes, then race wouldn't be a factor here, and instead we'd be looking at mythologies of the "outsider" and of natural nobility, or human resilience and courage and capacity. Parables of great value to our children and culture. Trust me: the reason I was attracted to Tarzan wasn't any unconscious urge to believe whites are superior to all other breeds.

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Those who say: "well, gee, why don't you just write something like that, Steve?" Aren't paying attention. Such stories HAVE been written. They don't get published. And if they are, they aren't purchased by the mostly-white SF/Fantasy audience. It simply doesn't feed their deep emotional needs.

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Now, in the "Lion's Blood" universe, you BET there are such stories. And when white people complain about them, you just bet that blacks are just as oblivious to the damage they cause, and the bigotry they represent.

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Back to Tarzan. Will we ever see a successful Tarzan film or television series again? I suspect so, but I'm not sure quite how to do it. If the culture finally allows Will Smith to get laid without his movie tanking ("Ali," anyone?) then maybe the entire context will have changed sufficiently, and a bit of politically incorrect mythology can be viewed as just one position in a spectrum of possibilities, rather than the unconscious yearning of an entire population segment which yearns for the days that they could consider themselves enlightened when they allowed darker-skinned folks to consider themselves "equal." Gee, thanks.

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I see Sommers (or whoever it is) either being oblivious to these questions, and accidentally producing a grotesque mess that alarms test audiences and gets hacked to pieces...

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Or he tries some "revisionist" nonsense, trying to sandwich in a "spiritual guide" black character or "sidekick" or artificially cultured black character (like Ernie Hudson in "Congo" ) to compensate, and falling on his face.

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The trouble just might go too deep to fix. Which is a shame. Like I said, I loved "Tarzan." Too bad that in the 100 years since his creation, there still hasn't been enough cultural change to allow the balancing cultural images that would make the Ape-man merely entertainment instead of a deep and damaging statement of the secret need to believe "we" are better than "they."

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If Obama wins the presidency, and has a successful tenure, I'd predict that within one generation, it WOULD be possible to bring Tarzan back. Until then, I consider it roughly as likely as a successful re-make of "Gone With The Wind."