an awesome film of a dreadful book

[deird1]

Watched Disney's Tarzan (the one from the 90s). It was excellent.

Then googled the original book.

...I am never, ever touching the original book. It is horrifyingly racist.



I told my husband that the book was racist. He said "Yeah, probably", thinking I meant racist-because-it's-from-the-Victoria-era-so-of-course-it-is. I said "No, REALLY..." and explained that:
1) The book was about the nature/nurture debate.
2) The author deliberately took Tarzan away from his parents as a baby, so that "nurture" wouldn't apply.
3) The author deliberately made Tarzan an English noble because he "selected an infant child of a race strongly marked by hereditary characteristics of the finer and nobler sort". So that his "nature" would be as good as possible.
4) The point was to show how Tarzan would be superior to everyone because his nature was so wonderful, even though his nurture was horrible.

SO HORRIBLY, HORRIBLY RACIST, GUYS. Like, worse-than-Lovecraft racist. *boggles*

Comments

[katherine]

Bonus, gleaned from the first few pages of Jungle Tales of Tarzan is how very into the apes Tarzan is depicted as...