The Politics of Kong
Having said all the below about Kong, let me now say something about Kong and politics.
First, the movie now has a clear environmental subtext that, I suspect, it didn't have in its previous incarnations: a plea to treat beautiful, rare animals with respect, and not just shoot them to death. (New Jersey bear hunt, anyone?) In making Kong so realistic, so human, Peter Jackson really makes us care for the animal. And so it is impossible not to watch the film and think, Why must we slaughter such a thing of beauty? Why do we have to travel to foreign lands, scary though they may seem, and kidnap their treasures for the crassest kind of exploitation, which leads ultimately and inexorably to their destruction?
In this sense, Kong could also be seen as an argument against globalization.
There is another, less positive political subtext to the film: Increasingly, Peter Jackson has a race problem.
There is one token African-American character in the movie: Evan Hayes, who plays the first mate of the Venture. But there are some terrible anti-black stereotypes: the hideous savages who populate the walled village of Skull Island, and the step-n-fetchit dancers of the Broadway show featuring a captured Kong.
Then throw in the fact that Lord of the Rings was an entirely white film, and the only characters of color were the ghastly, bestial Orks, and you now have four straight Peter Jackson movies in which white people face off against savages, who are either literally or figuratively dark-skinned humans.
Granted, Jackson is working from materials that embodied the racial attitudes of their eras. But I'm not sure that's reason enough to simply reflect those ideologies without commenting on them. If I were African-American, I think I'd have a bone to pick with Peter Jackson.
