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ABSTRACT
The Planet of the Apes franchise, born of the racially charged allegorical novel La Planète des Singes (1963) by Pierre Boulle, has long skirted the line with its fevered use of the perennial comparison between apes and Black people. While previous scholarship has examined the political significance of the earlier films, this study seeks to compare and update those readings for the latest franchise (2011-2017), to add a theological lens given the final film’s insistence on employing Christological symbolism, and to track the persistence of White supremacy in the films’ representational predilections. These films betray anxieties about White racial devolution and domination by non-Whites, a strong mistrust of forceful Black radical responses to oppression, as well as the necessity of explicit and central portrayals of White goodness and innocence.
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This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1 Sheridan, “Photo Surfaces Online of NJ Students Mocking George Floyd Death with MAGA Hat, Ape Mask”.
2 Hund and Mills, “Comparing Black People to Monkeys Has a Long, Dark Simian History”.
3 Goff et al., “Not Yet Human".
4 Guerrero, Framing Blackness, 43.
5 Ibid., 8.
6 See for example the work of Christoph Meiners (1747–1810) and Johann Blumenbach (1752–1840) on the designation “Caucasian,” or of Samuel George Morton (1799–1851), phrenologist (Painter, The History of White People, 86–90, 191).
7 Haraway, Primate Visions, 11.
8 This is a problematic association, which has resulted in not only the denigration of human beings, but also the abuse and exploitation of non-human species.
9 Muchembled, A History of the Devil, 33.
10 Ibid., 26.
11 Ibid., 33.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
14 Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 37.
15 Cave, “Officer Darren Wilson's Grand Jury Testimony in Ferguson, Mo., Shooting”.
16 Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 401.
17 Ibid., 422.
18 Greene, Planet of the Apes as American Myth, 21, emphasis in original.
19 Bishop, “‘Several Exceptional Forms of Primates’,” www.jstor.org/stable/25475141.
20 Boulle, Planet of the Apes, trans. Xan Fielding, 29.
21 Smith, “The Racial Politics Behind ‘Planet of the Apes’”.
22 Loza, Speculative Imperialisms, 117.
23 Greene, Planet of the Apes as American Myth, 106.
24 In the shooting script, this line was “I, a descendant of slaves and savages,” which is more in keeping with Boulle's text, which reveals all of ape culture as having descended from the culturally and intellectually superior human example.
25 Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972).
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid.
28 As Isiah Lavender III discusses in Race in American Science Fiction, “Though this issue [of contagion] goes beyond the black/white binary, it is most often construed and discussed in terms of black/white relationships” (Lavender, Race in American Science Fiction, 156).
29 Hamilton, “‘Human No like Smart Ape’”.
30 It is significant that the ape civilizations presented in the films are primitivist, aping stereotypes of non-White civilizations, in particular visions of African and indigenous American populations. There is a limit to the civilizing project where the apes are involved, which speaks to a degree of non-mutability for Blackness.
31 “Universe: Koba,” 50 Years of Planet of the Apes, http://www.planetoftheapes.com/universe/characters/koba.
32 Steve Zahn plays “Bad Ape” in War, which character spotlights human abuse of apes – the name “Bad Ape” is a result of being repeatedly reproved by humans – and provides a comic contrast with Koba, who remains an uncomfortably dark presence in the film.
33 Greene, Planet of the Apes as American Myth, 84.
34 Ibid.
35 I do not wish to suggest that the Planet of the Apes series has the same destructive legacy as Birth of a Nation (1915). However, there is significant sympathy between the two as regards fears of violent Black supremacy.
36 The diagonal cross itself can be used to recall Christ, as the shape is the same as the Greek chi, which is the first letter in xpristos (Christ).
37 Boulle, Planet of the Apes, 250–251.
38 War for the Planet of the Apes (2017).
39 Ibid.
40 Mt 4:1-11; Mk 1:12-13; Lk 4:1-13.
41 Mk 1:12-13 (KJV).
42 War for the Planet of the Apes (2017).
43 Rev 21:6, 22:13.
44 War for the Planet of the Apes (2017).
45 Lloyd, “The Negative Theology of James Baldwin,” 178.
46 Mk 1:13.
47 I think most obviously of Uncle Tom and Eva of Harriet Beecher Stowe's iconic novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.
48 Lloyd, “The Negative Theology of James Baldwin,” 180.
49 Browning and Bever, “‘Ape in Heels’”.
50 Lorde, “The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House,” 111.
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RL Watson
RL Watson is Assistant Professor of English and African American Studies at Lake Forest College, where she teaches courses in writing and African American literature. Watson's research treats racialized and racializing representations of Black Americans in American culture. For more information about Watson and her nonfiction and creative projects, visit abolitionunity.com.