A White man, who was raised by apes and also communicates with other animals, goes back to England and integrates into English society in no time. He then comes back to Africa to “save” his jungle home because they are all helpless and archaic. That’s a brief narration of the latest reboot of the Tarzan movie.
Tarzan movies are adaptations from the original Tarzan of the Apes book series, the first of which was written in 1912 by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The books were released during a period when colonisation and slavery were rife across the world and when women didn’t have the right to vote in America. Edgar Rice Burroughs was reportedly racist himself and Tarzan was meant to be a projection of that. The validity of this is somewhat uncertain. Still, Tarzan was one way through which the West promoted an image of Africa; unending jungles, uncivilised barbarians and savages who worshipped animals and did the every bidding of the white man. Making movies out of those books is a kind of celebration of its central themes. Themes that do not belong in modern day society.
Inculcating a true-life story of King Leopold’s destruction of the Congo, and the championing of Congo people’s human rights by American activist, George Washington Williams (played by Samuel L. Jackson), into the latest movie seemed like an attempt to soften the blow of the racism contained therein. Well, it didn’t.
Firstly, the movie is still condescending. In this latest Tarzan movie, Tarzan (played by Alexander Skarsgaard) was reluctant to come back to Africa (despite it being called his ‘home’) after spending some 10 years in England. But eventually, George Washington Williams convinces him to return. So, in a nutshell, a white-man comes to save Congo from a white-man. But it is Hollywood. Twists on twists. Africa doesn’t really get its own say.
Imagine if there was a movie where Kunta Kinte came back to Africa and gathered an army to attack the West, or the slaves of the Amistad ship took over the ship and came back to Africa. Right? It appears that this will only happen in our imaginations as white people always have to save black people, promoting some sort of neo-colonisation narrative.
Secondly, the movie seems to trivialise serious issues. Though King Leopold did what he was accused of doing in real life, even a thousand times more (he had killed millions of Congolese people by the time Belgium left Congo), this movie seems to trivialise the devastation caused by Western colonisation, and not just Belgium, in Africa. Many Western countries still put Leopold’s shenanigans in Africa as an anomaly, when all of them should actually be placed in the same basket. Cecil Rhodes and the German genocide in Namibia are real examples of what “White supremacists” can do when adequately motivated.
So maybe the Tarzan movie should have used an anonymous African country like Marvel’s Wakanda, instead of being particular to Congo. Africans know better, the people from the West are more or less all the same. A British ape-man coming to save Africa from the Belgians? Sounds like the modern-day guys with White Saviour complex. Please!
The only positive from the Tarzan movie is the character played by Samuel L. Jackson. George Washington Williams, in real life was an African-American black rights activist. He brought charges against King Leopold of Belgium after witnessing, first-hand, the carnage wrought by his soldiers in the Congo, albeit not in the company of Tarzan. He wrote an open letter to the Belgian King, while also calling the attention of the whole world. In this movie, however, he was made to look like every Hollywood archetypal black man sage to the white hero. The true life hero was relegated to the background for an artificial one. It may have been better if George Washington Williams was not added at all. He is the real hero. We heard you, Hollywood, the first time and many times after that; you can stop re-making the Tarzan movies now.
