For the sake of full disclosure, I have been a big fan of the “Planet of the Apes” film series for quite some time. Now, I was not a fan of the series from the first time I saw one of the movies. As a kid, I thought the films were stupid and the costumes too unbelievable to be given anything beyond laughter. However, as I grew older, entered adulthood, and matured, I started to look at the series differently. I started to look a little deeper at the series for its commentaries on: 1.) war, 2.) anti-war protesters, 3.) racism, 4.) what happens when people become drunk on power, 5.) the wasting of crucial resources unnecessarily, 6.) fighting against progress, 7.) maintaining status quo for selfish reasons 8.) peace 9.) civility to others, 10.) hunting as a sport, 11.) the treatment of “animals” … and on and on it goes. Recently, I was reading an article posted on Black America Web that discussed what the writer felt was the racist nature of the “Planet of the Apes” series. Now, this writer (Gregory P. Kane) is not the first person to think of the series as being racist. I’ve heard and read of other people who see it as racist too. A lot of people have used the film series to put down black people (for those of you who recall it being used that way in the classic Spike Lee film, “Do The Right Thing”).
Here are some of the chief points made by the writer:
1.) He mentions that, in the original film, the human astronauts land on future Earth and there are few (if any blacks, Latinos or Asians) in the area. It is hard for me to comment much on this since, admittedly, I didn’t pay much attention to that aspect. Next time, however, I will. If that is true, then that does seem odd (from a casting standpoint).
2.) In one of the sequels, “Beneath the Planet of the Apes,” there is a black man and this writer says he is listed as “negro” in the film credits. Obviously, by current standards, that is not politically correct and would draw all kinds of fire. I get the writer’s point about insensitivity and don’t necessarily strong disagree, however, I cut some slack since this was an early-1970s film. That is interesting and something I had not paid attention to in all of the times I have seen the film. I guess the closing credits generally are not that important to me, but perhaps they should be a little more important.
3.) The writer asserts that there was a “racial hierarchy” with orangutans, chimpanzees and gorillas. Now, the writer sees the orangutans (the lightest colored) at the top, the chimpanzees (a little darker) next and gorillas (the darkest) as the lowest. I don’t know that the orangutans were considered so much smarter than the chimpanzees, but certainly they had more power and probably were a little smarter. The gorillas were not dumb, however, they were driven by a xenophobic, war-happy obsession. The writer sees the racial hierarchy, but I also see the old people (orangutans) fighting against progress to maintain status quo, the chimpanzees wanting to do the right thing and rationalizing and the war-thirsty gorillas being too obsessed with war to realize they were driving civilization toward extinction.
The social commentaries are critically important in a series that examines how we handle knowledge, how we treat each other and how we treat the world. People who criticize the movie as racist remind me of the one character Martin Lawrence played in the movie “Boomerang” when he thought the game of pool was racist. The pool table was green and represents the Earth. The white ball is the dominant ball and systematically wipes the earth clean of all the colored ball and only wins when it drives the black ball completely off the Earth. The film may not be politically correct in the minds of some people (particularly by today’s standards), but that does not make “Planet of the Apes” racist.
BlackAmericaWeb:
http://www.blackamericaweb.com/?q=articles/news/baw_commentary_news/4551/1
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