The McClaren and The Ape

I'm afraid that illness and an attempt to update The Sleaze have kept me from posting for the past few days. But now I'm back. This afternoon I decided that I'd rather watch King Kong on Channel 4 than endure another agonising England football performance. Not only that, but it was the 1976 version I decided I'd rather watch - that just shows how depressing I find the prospect of watching any England team managed by Steve McClaren. Having said that, the 1976 King Kong is actually not that bad. OK, I know that Kong himself is pretty disappointing, being portrayed by a man in a tatty looking monkey suit wandering around some unconvincing miniatures (which are very poorly matched to some great location shots). As for that giant rubber snake - why? But the ape mask used for close ups is good, as are the giant mechanical hands that grope the heroine. And it has a great cast: Jeff Bridges proving academics could be heroic, not just geeky, Jessica Lange and Charles Grodin, to name but a few. Best of all is the script, which wittily updates the whole thing the 1970s and uses the story as an allegory for multinational oil corporations' exploitation of the environment. Great stuff. But then there's that ape suit...

Amazingly though, despite the man in a monkey suit, the film succeeds in eliciting considerable sympathy for Kong. The difference in emphasis between this film and the original on this point is interesting. In the 1933 original Kong wasn't deliberately played for sympathy. In common with the most films of the period, he was just a monster, whose destruction audiences were expected to applaud. But, in common with many movie monsters, much of the audience identified with him - he was a misunderstood guy thrust against his will into a world he didn't understand, exploited and then crushed by the system. In the 1976 version they emphasised this aspect of Kong even more. He quite overtly loves the heroine, protects her and rescues her, but still loses out to some other guy. There really is no justice in this world. Actually, that's probably why I've always had a soft spot for this version of the story. I seem to spend large parts of my life in Kong's situation. There are days when I'd dearly love to climb to the top of a tall building, beat my chest and bellow my defiance at a world I increasingly feel out of sympathy with. Like him, I'd like to be left alone on my Skull Island, free to rampage around unchallenged. Perhaps I should construct a detailed scale model of the town I live in, then dress up in an ape suit and stamp all over it - I can imagine how satisfying that would feel. Mind you, I still wouldn't get the girl, but at least I'd be able to indulge in some wanton destruction and, just briefly, be the master of my own domain.

As an ironic coda to all that, I see that England won 3-0. Mind you, it was only against Israel. They've still got another opportunity to cock up next week against Russia.