King Kong in popular culture

King Kong is one of the best-known figures in cinema history. He and the series of films featuring him are frequently referenced in popular culture around the world.Erb, Cynthia, 1998, "Tracking King Kong: A Hollywood Icon in World Culture", Wayne State University Press, ISBN 0814326862.] King Kong has achieved the stature of a pop-culture icon and modern myth.Jones, Preston Neal, 2002, [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_g1epc/is_tov/ai_2419100676 King Kong] , "St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture", St. James Press, ISBN 1558624058.] Gunn, Dave, [http://www.davegunn.com/kk.html King Kong (1933)] .] King Kong has inspired advertisements, cartoons, comic books, films, magazine covers, plays, poetry, political cartoons, short stories, television programmes, and other media. The forms of references to King Kong range from straight copies to parodies and humorous references.

King Kong in 1930s and 1940s popular culture

The 1933 release of "King Kong" was an immediate hit at the box office, and had a huge impact on the popular culture of the 1930s. It was the first film to play in two of New York City’s largest theatres at the same time, and the first in the 1930s trend for horror films. The combination of advanced special effects and primitivist content in the film made it popular among American and European intellectuals, especially the surrealists. Ray Bradbury remarked that when "King Kong" was released, “a mob of boys went quietly mad across the world, then fled into the light to become adventurers, explorers, zoo-keepers, filmmakers.” There was a version of King Kong in the 1933 animated Mickey Mouse cartoon "The Pet Shop" (also known as "Mickey and the Gorilla Tamer"). In the cartoon, the ape falls in love with Minnie Mouse and climbs to the top of a stack of boxes while holding her. Mickey and a group of birds, imitating the biplanes at the climax of "King Kong", defeat the ape.Glut, Donald F., 2002, "The Frankenstein Archive: Essays on the Monster, the Myth, the Movies, and More", McFarland & Company, ISBN 0786413530.] In the 1933 animated Mickey Mouse short film, "Mickey's Mechanical Man", Mickey's invention, a robot, is engaged in a boxing match against an ape known as "Killer Kong."

In 1938, "King Kong" received its first re-release, although some shots, such as King Kong removing parts of Ann Darrow’s dress, and his chewing and stomping various extras, often in graphic close-up (via use of full-scale mechanical head and foot props), were removed because they were now considered unacceptable under the Production Code.Morton, Ray, 2005, "King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon from Fay Wray to Peter Jackson", Hal Leonard, ISBN 1557836698.] "King Kong" was again re-released in 1942 and 1946. Despite its success, King Kong was not yet as important a part of popular culture as it would become in the future.

King Kong from the 1950s to the 1970s

The film was re-released in 1952, becoming one of the media events of that year. "Time magazine" named it “Movie of the Year”. The film’s studio RKO tried an experimental reissue of "King Kong" in the Midwest United States in 1952. In an unprecedented move they committed most of "King Kong’s" promotional budget to television spots. The re-release was an enormous success, with the film attracting triple the usual business in its markets. This showed that television was a powerful tool for promotion. "King Kong" generated more box office receipts than the original 1933 release had. Theatre owners named it Picture of the Year. It was at this time that King Kong acquired its reputation as a popular culture phenomenon. The two most significant spinoffs of King Kong in this period were "Mighty Joe Young" (1949) and "Godzilla" (1954). Godzilla was inspired by King Kong’s popularity in Japan. Godzilla revived and reconfigured parts of the King Kong story more powerfully than any other spinoff has. RKO theatrically re-released "King Kong" for the last time in 1956.

"King Kong" was sold to television after the conclusion of the 1956 release. One channel in New York showed the film seventeen times in a single week, with each showing topping the ratings. From then on, the film was a television mainstay that captured many new fans.

There is a reference to the real-world revival and massive success of "King Kong" in the 1950s in the 1959 movie "A Summer Place". In the movie, two teenagers, Molly and Johnny, tell their parents that they are going to a classic movie showing of "King Kong", when they are actually going to an abandoned lookout. Molly calls "King Kong" “one of those wonderful old horror numbers.” Johnny frets that if he doesn't watch the movie, he might not be able to answer his parent's questions, but Molly tells him, "It's kind of sad. If anybody asks, just tell 'em about the end. That's the part everybody remembers."

King Kong reached the height of its public visibility in the twentieth century in the 1960s and 1970s, as part of a nostalgic trend to 1930s Hollywood. "King Kong" was becoming a cult film with nostalgia value. During this period the character and story of King Kong was most frequently used as a parody in popular culture. The frequency of its use as a parody at this time shows how significant it had become in popular culture. In the 1968 film "Yellow Submarine", the characters look in a room where a monster ape smashes through a window to get at a screaming woman on a bed. "Do you think we're interrupting something?" George nonchalantly comments of it, to which John replies, "I think so."

In the mid-1960s RKO began to license a series of King Kong-related products in response to a heavy demand from the public. These products included comic books, games, models, and posters. In 1969 most of the censored shots were found. In 1971 a version of "King Kong" with these long-missing portions returned to their proper places was released to art houses.

References to King Kong in popular culture have been widespread since the 1960s. The references have different tones, with some being parodies while others are parodies or oppositional critiques. Some of these references are fleeting (for example, Frank Zappa named one of his more complex compositions with the Mothers of Invention after Kong), but nevertheless are evidence of King Kong’s importance in popular culture. King Kong has been cited in films such as "Morgan!" (1966), "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" (1975), and "Amazon Women on the Moon" (1987). In "The Rocky Horror Picture Show", the song "Science Fiction/Double Feature" pays homage to King Kong with the lyric: "Then something went wrong for Fay Wray and King Kong ... they got caught in a celluloid jam." At the end of the film, Rocky carries Dr. Frankenfurter on the RKO logo, replicating what King Kong carrying Fay Wray in the climax of King Kong.

In 1965 "Monocle", a political satire magazine, cohosted a publisher’s party at the Empire State Building with Bantam Books, who were reissuing Delos W. Lovelace's novelization of "King Kong". A panel of "Monocle" satirists was due to give an ironic commentary on "King Kong", followed by a screening of the film. One of the titles on the satirists’ program was “King Kong to Viet Cong: Thirty Years of Gorilla Warfare”. Andy Warhol, who was not on the guest list, used the occasion to generate publicity and create a performance by complaining to the press that "King Kong" should be screened with his own film "Empire" (1964). Warhol was permitted to show three minutes of "Empire" after "King Kong". "Empire" was then criticized in the press for being too dull and being upstaged by "King Kong".

By the 1970s the character of King Kong was constantly referenced in cartoons and jokes. In a 1972 "New Yorker" cartoon, a man at a cocktail party atop the newly constructed World Trade Center comments that he is impressed that it was "finished so quickly and without incident," while King Kong climbs up the building below him. It was at this time that the film began to be studied by academics and film theoreticians, who found hidden subtexts and symbolic meanings in the film. However, Merian C. Cooper maintained that the film was nothing more than a simple adventure story.

After the highly promoted but vastly inferior 1976 remake of "King Kong", Elliot Stein wrote a nostalgic fan homage essay to "King Kong" called “My Life with Kong” in "Rolling Stone" magazine. Stein was one of the most famous of the “Kongophiles” along with Forrest J. Ackerman and Jean Boullet. In the essay Stein talks about the contexts in which he has seen "King Kong" during his life, including in the 1930s in New York picture palaces like Radio City Music Hall, and the RKO Roxy and in Paris with Jean Boullet in the 1950s. There was an art deco retrospective of "King Kong" at the Radio City Music Hall in the 1974 and a "King Kong" homage was staged for the Telluride Film Festival in the 1970s. King Kong was also mentioned by name by Kermit the Frog in lyrics from the song "I Hope that Something Better Comes Along" from "The Muppet Movie": "She made a monkey out of old King Kong/I hope that something better comes along."

Additionally, King Kong is one of the epithets Redd Foxx's character, Fred G. Sanford, from "Sanford and Son" used referring to his sister-in-law Esther.

King Kong from the 1980s to the present

"King Kong" was the first film to feature a giant monster running amok in civilization (the silent "The Lost World" was actually the first--although it featured a rampaging "Brontosaurus" rather than a non-science-based monster--but was rarely seen after its first release until the video and cable-TV booms of the 1980s), there are echoes of the original King Kong film in every giant-monster film that has been made since 1933. These include "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" (1953), "Godzilla" (1954) and "Jurassic Park" (1993). The dinosaur scenes from "King Kong" are referenced or mimicked in the three "Jurassic Park" films (especially the second film, "" (1997). In the third act of the film, a creature (a tyrannosaurus rex) is brought to civilization from a remote island where it runs amok in a city (the ship that transports the beast is even called "The Venture", which is the name of the ship in "King Kong"). Kong is even mentioned directly in the first one: as the tour group approaches the massive Jurassic Park gate that is reminiscent of the gate in "King Kong", Jeff Goldblum's character asks, "What have they got in there, King Kong?" In the third film in this series, a spinosaurus vs. tyrannosaurus rex fight is similar to the Kong/rex battle in the original and the second remake.Hirschman, Elizabeth C., 2000, "Heroes, Monster & Messiahs", Andrews McMeel Publishing, ISBN 0740704850.]

One of the most frequently used images of King Kong in popular culture is the scene where King Kong and Ann Darrow are on top of the Empire State Building. This image has been copied or parodied in cartoons, comic books, horror films, and television commercials. A popular television spoof was the segment 'King Homer' from "The Simpsons" episode "Treehouse of Horror III", in which the King Kong story was retold featuring "Simpsons" characters, with Homer as Kong, Marge as Ann Darrow and Mr. Burns as the Carl Denham analogues. The spoof follows the plot of the 1933 film closely; however, it ends with Marge marrying King Homer after he collapses in exhaustion, failing to climb beyond the second story of the Springfield State Building. King Homer also has a cameo in the music video for "Deep Deep Trouble" from The Simpsons Sing the Blues CD, and years later, makes another appearance in the opening couch gag of "Jazzy and the Pussycats." Homer grabs Marge from the couch and scales the Empire State Building, all while fending off 1930s-style airplanes. The film was referenced again on "The Simpsons" in the episode "Monty Can't Buy Me Love", where Mr. Burns captures the Loch Ness Monster and brings him back to America to entertain an audience; however, instead of the Monster going berserk during its debut, Burns himself is startled by the flash photography and causes the carnage. [http://www.snpp.com/episodes/AABF17 "Monty Can't Buy Me Love"] episode capsule at The Simpsons Archive.]

King Kong is often used in commercial culture, for example in advertisements for Coca Cola and Energizer Batteries. A New York insurance company used clips from the film to persuade people of the hazards of city life. A two-part Energizer Battery commercial had the 1933 Kong himself contracted by a rival battery corporation (SuperVolt) to get rid of the Energizer Bunny for them. The commercials were done in black-and-white, and used cleverly edited 1933 Kong sequences (possibly combined with new computer-generated Kong shots). The concluding second-part had Kong cornering the Bunny on the roof of a New York City building, complete with biplanes flying in the sky. His foot in an open window interrupts a couple that resemble Ann Darrow and Jack Driscoll having a romantic moment. The woman, extremely annoyed, slams the window on Kong's toes, making him lose his balance and grip, sending him falling.Sweet, Leonard, 2001, "Soultsunami: Sink Or Swim in New Millennium Culture", Zondervan, ISBN 0310243122.] In 1990 Kongfrontation became one of the original rides at Universal Studios Florida.

The film character was the inspiration for the 1981 Nintendo video game "Donkey Kong" and subsequent spin-offs. In the game, the hero must rescue his girlfriend from the eponymous ape. The maurading ape climbs a huge structure after kidnapping the woman, as in the film. The game's creator Shigeru Miyamoto, intended the name "Donkey Kong" to mean "stubborn gorilla." MCA/Universal attempted to sue Nintendo for copyright infringement in "Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Nintendo Co., Ltd.", claiming that the game infringed its copyright for the film. However, they lost and had to pay Nintendo $1.8 million in damages when it was discovered that King Kong was in fact in the public domain at that time and that MCA/Universal knew this when they filed the lawsuit. They did not own the copyright to "King Kong" and had not trademarked the name "King Kong". They had even argued in the past that the name "King Kong" was in the public domain in Universal City Studios, Inc. v. RKO General Inc., et al.DeMaria, Rusel, and Wilson, Johnny L., 2003, "High Score!: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games", McGraw-Hill Professional, ISBN 0072231726.] Kline, Stephen, Dyer-Witheford, Nick, and de Peuter, Greig, 2003, "Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing", McGill-Queen's Press, ISBN 0773525912.]

See also

*"King Kong" - 2005 remake of the original film
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References

Further reading

*Erb, Cynthia Marie, 1998, "Tracking King Kong: A Hollywood Icon in World Culture", Wayne State University Press, ISBN 0814326862.
*McCutcheon, Camillel, "Review of "Living Dangerously: The Adventures of Merian C. Cooper, Creator of King Kong"," "Journal of Popular Culture" 39.4 (August, 2006), 687-688.
* [http://members.tripod.com/~megalania/kongrex1.html Megalania Dinosaurs In Popular Culture - "King Kong".]