So as I was doing the research for the King Kong episode I stumbled across this article which
I won't link here for, you know, reasons, not the least of which it's like 10 years old.
But it was like this pearl-clutching thing in light of the then-newly-released King Kong movie,
and it was about Adrian Brody's character and how
we used to have manly men, urgh!
But now we have THIS and he's like this effete sensitive intellectual writer,
and he's not manly at all. Ugh!
Where did all the real men go?
And while that's, you know, shitty,
it did make me start to think about how these movies present masculinity,
and not the Kong version of masculinity but that of his rivals because it varies a lot.
So, 1933, 1976, and 2005.
We have three very different characters who exist in contrast to King Kong as Ann Darrow's real love interest.
Kong changes really not all that much between these three versions,
and Ann doesn't change a whole lot, either. The Anns get more depth as incarnations progressed,
become more sympathetic to Kong, and occasionally really turned on by Kong.
But you know she's always an aspiring actress, always a bit of a demure pleaser,
always...
[montage of screaming Anns]
But the Jacks change a lot.
His personality changes, his job changes,
the reason he's even on the boat in the first place is completely different between each movie.
And that's interesting because A,
this story does not have a lot of variation between incarnations, and B,
King Kong (the story) is effectively a love triangle,
meaning that our human love interests, our Jacks, he's um...
he's the Peeta, yeah.
30-ish years between huge remakes, and this is if we ignore the non-exclusively-American productions
which are interesting in their own right,
but for the sake of this video I'm focusing only on the variations of the original Jack Driscoll,
as we take a look at the civilized masculine that contrasts our beast, this is the Jacks of King Kong.
"Beauty and the beast."
So in the 1933 version, our chief players are our aspiring actress/damsel,
the uncivilized beast, what kidnaps her, the Hollywood hotshot, and Jack Driscoll.
He is the first mate and he hates women.
No, no really, they actually say that.
"Why, Jack, you hate women."
He doesn't like them on the ship, see. He thinks they're a nuisance all getting in the way with their lady bits.
"Oh, you're all right, but, but women just can't help being a bother."
But this was all just a front, really.
Like all toddlers, Jack was really just protesting too much because he actually kind of liked her.
"I'm scared for you. I'm scared of you, too. Say...
I guess I love you."
That is such a tremendous f*cking jump to- actually,
actually no, I take that back that might be the realest statement anyone has ever made about love in a movie.
I take it back.
While Carl Denham drives the plot, and Jack is Ann's love interest,
neither have anything really to do with each other.
So Jack, having nothing to do with the actual plot,
his sole function in this movie is to act in contrast to Kong as the-
Ann's love interest, the obviously desirable male alternative.
"This is no place for a girl."
And while this trope of the character never really went away,
we still see this guy today in some forms.
He is a huge contrast to Brody's Jack, so much so that he needed to be parodized in the remake.
"I guess you don't think much of women on ships, do you?"
"No, they're a nuisance."
That was the only way to contextualize the way he treated Ann. To look back at the '30s and go,
'Oh, you. Oh, backwards you.'
Thank God the '70s came along.
Speaking of which,
"Jack Prescott, I'm from Princeton, Department of Primate Paleontology-
'Department of Pri- you lying hippie!"
Jeff Bridges plays Jack Prescott,
winner of the Worst Beard Ever Award, and he's an environmentalist,
and that, you know, is not easy to do well.
I'm not sure it has ever actually been done well in a movie.
He has a much more concrete reason to be here. He stows away because he's a primate paleontologist,
so in that way he has an actual connection to Kong and the plot that...
never really goes anywhere, except in the form of him talking down to every f*cking person.
"He's probably telling us we've contaminated their magic."
Wow, buddy, you're just an expert in everything, huh?
He doesn't speak the language of the tribe, for instance, but he could just intuit what they say with astonishing
accuracy, because he gets it, man.
"He wants to make a deal, six of them for Dwan."
You know, he's not like 'the Man', he gets it.
"When we took Kong, we kidnapped their god. A year from now that will be an island full of burnt-out drunks."
Wow, fuck you.
See, the movie frames him like he's this Cassandra, he's the one that's always right, because he gets it, man.
But nobody ever listens to him, even though he is often a font of the worst ideas imaginable,
and in the rare instance that somebody does listen to him,
"Let him climb to the top of the World Trade Center."
What.
See, because 70s, this movie has a confused relationship to the brand of feminism that
was big in pop culture at the time, and therefore Dwan has a confused relationship to this chucklef*ck.
But I think he's meant less to be appealing
to Dwan or any woman in the audience, presumably,
and more to be a reflection on how some righteous dudes saw themselves.
"You took an advance."
"Oh, I just donated that in your name to the ASPCA fund for sending Kong home."
Because they get it, man. They get it.
"Even an environmental rapist like you, even you..."
[Lindsay laughs] Oh man, you were the very worst.
No wonder the 80s were the way they were if you were the act we had to follow.
Moving on.
"How'd you think this would end, Carl?"
In a pre-Lord of The Rings version of this movie, Jack was going to be
one of the fighter pilots that shot Kong down. How's that for symbolism.
Instead, Jack Driscoll is a writer instead of a sailor or an environmentalist,
and I don't think you can really pin that on the fact that it was 2005 and men have to be sensitive now.
Jack Driscoll could have been a variety of characters depending on the filmmaker.
Like, imagine if it had been Michael Bay that remade King Kong, and Jack could have been like this
insecure, objectifying, possessive, entitled little asshat man-child.
Or McG could have made this movie,
and he could have been played by any one of these guys that nobody can tell apart.
It could have been anything. And so Peter Jackson being the guy that made it,
sensitive writer is what we got.
The character of Jack has really been split in two. Adrien Brody plays Jack Driscoll,
and then there's an actor, in the movie-within-the-movie that plays a Jack-like character,
who is basically a pastiche of OG Jack Driscoll.
"No, they're a nuisance."
Jack Is the movie-within-a-movie's screenwriter. Unlike the previous two films, Ann knows Jack's work,
and knows who he is before she meets him.
And she also admires him greatly beforehand.
"Some guy, Dry-scol."
"Driscoll."
But that's kind of it.
She admires his work but she doesn't really have that much in common with him as a person.
None of the Anns really have anything in common with any of the Jacks,
so there's this sort of dichotomy between
'what I can offer you' versus 'what Kong can offer you'.
In effect, Kong Is indeed the id, he is emotion,
sometimes in a sexual way. And Jack is intellectual stimulation...
some of the time.
That deep connection that '05 Ann develops with Kong is because
they're just both so damn lonely. With which Jack, he... isn't, not really.
Jack already has a love in his life and that's his work.
"I'm in love with it."
He does take inspiration from Ann for his work,
and she admires his work, but it doesn't really go deeper than that.
"I'm writing it for you."
"Why would you do that?"
So when Jack rescues her from Kong, she's almost disappointed.
I mean, sure, civilization is nice and all,
but the real emotional connection she develops in the film is with Kong, not with Jack.
This is a complete 180 from the original where it's totally one-sided.
But on the other hand, in that one she's with Jack because hey, why not?
But in the end, do they even end up together?
You know, we don't really know.
The Jacks are always playing a sort of contrast to whatever Ann is feeling about Kong,
be that emotion fear, or
arousal, or friendship.
Given that the '76 version is by far the shakiest of the three, I'm not sure what Jeff Bridges being a smug
obnoxious hippie brings to the table as a contrast to Dwan's confused sexytime feelings about Kong.
Maybe it's because this pretentious beardo would cause any vag to calcify into dust,
so course Kong looks like a sexy alternative.
"Lady God, preserve me."
Fuuuuuck youuuu!
But I don't think any of these movies are trying to present some form of idealized masculinity,
because none of the Jacks really get the girl. OG Jack... kinda does, maybe.
He loves Ann because the movie said so.
Jack Prescott isn't with Ann at the end because, I dunno, celebrity or something.
And Brody Driscoll Jack, it ends with a platonic hug.
He cares, sure, but they kind of seem to be over each other
before the whole New York rampage even takes place.
Like, they weren't even talking.
So what I take from this is that we aren't changing this character for changing the characters sake,
but where the Ann/Kong beauty and the beast dynamic
is a lot more timeless, the more normalized 'I'm a man and you're a woman' dynamic
has shifted a lot in the last 80 years.
And so who knows what we will be seeing in remakes of the Hunger Games 30 or 40 years from now.
What will Peeta look like then?
Hm.