Tarzan may be among America’s classic fictional
characters, but he’s not beyond reproach. Like so many well-worn tales, Edgar Rice
Burroughs’Tarzan was borne of a vastly different time more than 100 years ago, when narratives
rooted in colonialism, white saviors and African
stereotypes were the norm. Throughout the decades, Tarzan also became a staple of
Hollywood - there have been 52 authorized lms
and seven television series that have told the
tales of the King of the Jungle. For a bygone era, he’s the model romantic adventurer. Today, he’s a blemish on the history
of literature and film. "The Legend of Tarzan ,” out Friday, is the first big-budget studio attempt to take on the character in the modern CGI world. Not
only does the Warner Bros. lm show feats of derring-do that not so long ago could only be
imagined, but it also endeavors to spin a more
contemporary story for today’s sensibilities. As with Hollywood’s other recent adaptations
of beloved tales stories with outmoded values,
the “Tarzan” film makers did the delicate dance
of trying to both preserve its original spirit
while also correcting or even discarding its problematic origins. Their approach was to
infuse the story with historical perspective, then
bake it all into an action-adventure worthy of
the superhero generation. Though there are those who would sooner see
Tarzan left for the ages, the character’s roots are
so deep that they’ve become archetypal. “Edgar Rice Burroughs just tapped into a primal
myth of humanity,” said Scott Tracy Griffin,
author of “Tarzan: The Centennial Celebration”
and the forthcoming “Tarzan on Film.”“He is an
orphan who is stranded and must find a way to
his manhood and to reclaim his legacy.” Alexander Skarsgård, the latest leading man to do the Tarzan yodel, noted too that
“people have always been very fascinated by our more animalistic side and the notion of the
noble savage.” He also acknowledged those troubling origins. “At the time it was written, the way people in Western Europe and in America viewed
indigenous people was quite horrific and it was
quite common. It was widespread, the notion that they were an inferior race,” Skarsgård said. “It was very obviously important to steer
away from the notion of like the white man
coming down to Africa to save all the black
people because they can’t save themselves ...
the movie is about them kicking the colonizing
force out of the country.” This lm introduces Tarzan at mid-life - already
married to Jane (Margot Robbie) and living in
England as Lord Greystoke - long past his vine-
swinging days. When he receives an invitation
from King Leopold to visit the Congo and see
the Belgian leader’s work there, it’s George
Washington Williams (Samuel L. Jackson) who
convinces him to go and find out what’s really
happening to the native people. The injection of
Williams - a real-life historian
and Civil War veteran who exposed atrocities of
the Congo - into the Tarzan mythology helped
director David Yates ground it in a historical
context. It also helped them turn away from
some of the story’s less palatable elements. “It wasn’t difficult to jettison those very old-
fashioned aspects of the story because it doesn’t
belong to our century,”Yates said. Jackson sees this Tarzan as purely naturalistic; a
character whose unique worldview transcends
political mores. “Even though the enslavement is there and you see it and he’s there to right that injustice,”
he said. “He’s part of a world where he is
integrated into that society and he understands
his place in it ... It’s a story of somebody who’s
environmentally correct and humanly correct
with that particular world. Tarzan has been around so long that adjusting
to the times has been as integral to his longevity
as hanging vines. “Producers have been able to tap into whatever
is going on in society and put Tarzan into that,” said Griffin. In the 1950s, there was a clear
Western inspiration in the films, which gave way
to a James Bond sensibility in the 1960s, he said. Even Disney had a take, although that 1999 animated lm just sidestepped native
populations altogether. “The Legend of Tarzan” is
certainly something new, and perhaps the most
aggressive effort to right the wrongs, while still
keeping Tarzan in the zeitgeist. Yet there are those who believe Tarzan should
be left in the past. “In some ways it would be like trying to remake
‘Gone With the Wind’ now,” said Todd Boyd,
professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. “It’s just a
very old set of images rooted in an old history
that I think is really hard to redeem ... You can
certainly dress it up with technology now. You
can also cast it in such a way that it’s more
diverse. But I just think that some things are
perhaps beyond redemption.”
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