Wonder Woman’s Oscillating History in Comics

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Cinema, Creative Writing, Gender wars, Memorabilia, Popular Culture, Society & Culture

After Wonder Woman’s creator Bill Marston dies in 1947, Robert Kanigher takes over the writing duties, the first of many subsequent writers to take on pop culture’s most famous female superhero. DC Comics wastes little time in ringing the changes with Wonder Woman, both to her physical appearance and to her abilities, disposition and purpose.

There are several reasons for the change. One motive is simply commercial, Wonder Woman like her male superhero counterparts, experiences a fall-off in popularity after the war. Another relates to expectations of gender roles in America. So much of America’s manhood is away during the world war on the front line engaging the enemy. Born of necessity, American women move into the work force, invading traditional male domains of employment as never before. With the war’s end, men return to their jobs relegating thousands of women back to unpaid work in the home. There is a re-solidifying of the traditional gender roles. A casualty of this is Wonder Woman herself. In Marston’s hands she reflects empowerment, ie, freedom from male domination. The feminist overtones she embodies are a challenge as the US attempts to re-establish the status quo ante order [‘The Fitful Evolution of Wonder Woman’s Look’, (Diana Martinez), The Atlantic, 07-Jun-2017, www.theatlantic.com].

Superhero Nazi hunters
Wonder Woman’s superhuman exertions and physicality—as with everyone else in the superhero comic universe—have an aptness during WWII. The superheroes in the comics spearhead the fight against the Nazis, promoting a patriotic agenda and helping to boost morale. When the war is won, this agenda loses its relevance for the American readership [‘Women of Comics: Objectified, Sexualize and Disempowered’, (Nia Aiysha), Wild Black Orchids, 07-May-2016, www.wildblackorchids.wordpress.com].

Making the iconic feminist warrior a bit less super
In wanting to rein in Wonder Woman’s powerful persona DC Comics are responding to prevailing (male) society’s anxieties about women’s independence. By 1950, the toning down is well underway, WW’s crime-fighting exploits are taking second fiddle – in Sensation Comics #97 she is the editor of a newspaper lonely hearts column❋. During the decade WW becomes a reluctant superheroine, love-struck and longing to settle down with her beau Steve Trevor [‘Publication history of Wonder Woman’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org; Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World’s Most Famous Heroine, Tim Hanley (2014)].

Wonder Woman is not just a feminist, she’s also a sexy feminist! Accordingly, there is a lot of scrutiny on her salacious attire as well by the “morally self-appointed” in society. Eventually, the raunchy bathing suit and sexually-confident red boots will be traded in for a more demure look. Psychologist Fredric Wertham’s full-on crusade against the deleterious effects of comics on children in the early 1950s includes WW in its cross-hairs. WW’s sexually provocative bondage fetish (involving herself or other females) leads Wertham to ‘blacklist’ the depicted character as a promoter of lesbianism (which he took as evidence of misandry)(Martinez), pressuring DC Comics to remove Marston’s message of WW as a harbinger of matriarchy (Hanley).

The Amazonian princess returns to ‘civies’ – “Emma Peeled”
In the 1960s other comic book action heroines come forward such as secret agent Modesty Blaise. Reflecting the early rumblings of what would evolve into the second wave feminism of the Seventies, Blaise exhibits Wonder Woman-like “badass fighting capabilities” to triumph in a male world. At this time however WW loses that same original verve✪, getting a Sixties ‘mod’ makeover which transforms her into an Emma Peel clone (from the cult British TV series The Avengers), complete with martial arts moves, jumpsuits and Carnaby Street attire〥 [‘Four-Colour Yesteryears: Wonder Woman – the Emma Peel Years’, (Rob N), Paradox Comics Group, 22-Aug-2009, www.paradoxcomicsgroup.com; Hanley].

1970s, the women’s movement and empowerment
Gloria Steinem and the burgeoning women’s movement comes into the story at this time. Steinem, dismayed at DC Comics’ relegation of Wonder Woman to a “powerless 1950s car hop”, lobbies DC to restore WW’s superheroine stature. Steinem puts WW on the cover of the first edition of Ms. magazine in 1972, tagging it “Wonder Woman for President”. [‘How Gloria Steinem Saved Wonder Woman’, (Yohana Desta), Vanity Fair, 10-Oct-2017, www.vanityfair.com]. WW in Ms. becomes a kind of masthead to promote sisterhood and equality among women (the magazine depicts WW confronting store owners who deny their female employees equal pay and defending abortion clinics against male thugs [‘How A Magazine Cover From The 1970s Helped Wonder Woman Win Over Feminists’, (Katie Kilkenny), Pacific Standard, 21-Jun-2017, www.psmag.com]. Steinem and Ms.’ agitation on behalf of WW forces DC to restore her special powers including the “Lasso of Truth” and re-draw her in her original voluptuous form.

With the critical spotlight turned on DC’s portrayal of Wonder Woman, DC made further concessions to the comic. Diversity was introduced —a nod to the Black Power Movement in the US and perhaps belated recognition of a lack of ethnic diversity in its comics—with the inclusion of Nubia, WW’s African half-sister (Martinez). The perception of Wonder Woman as a feminist icon is given a further boost along by the cult success of the 1975-79 television series. WW, played by Lynda Carter, embodies the qualities of strength, fearlessness, wisdom and determination, restored in the comics post-1972✧.

PostScript: The Wonder Woman comic books over the past 40 years has seen the WW character and image undergo sundry transitions, a procession of “conflicting and seemingly incompatible versions” of WW – alternating between ramped-up raunchiness and less overt sexuality, between a muscular Amazonian physicality and a “heroin chic” fashion model (Martinez).

◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘

❋ in other Fifties comics Wonder Woman or her alter ego Diana Prince appears as a model and a film star

〥 WW becomes younger and thinner too. She also gets labelled as a “female James Bond” during this period

✪ DC Comics’s hegemony in the superhero comic popularity stakes in the late Sixties is seriously being challenged by Marvel Comics, a factor in the decision to revamp WW along with the entire ‘stable’ (Rob N)

✧ subsequent interpretations of Wonder Woman on the screen follow, the most recent in 2017 (with a sequel slated for release this year) sees WW reconnect with her Amazonian roots

Wondrous Origins of Wonder Woman

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Biographical, Creative Writing, Gender wars, Leisure activities, Literary & Linguistics, Media & Communications, Popular Culture

In a way the Wonder Woman story starts in Medford, Massachusetts, at Tufts University, in the 1920s. William M Marston, a young progressive and unorthodox psychology professor, teaches his own DISC theory＊ to his students. One particular female student takes a shine to Marston’s DISC ideas and to the professor himself. Next thing we know Marston immerses himself in a ménage a trios with the student (Olive Bryant) and his (initially quite reluctant) wife Elizabeth. The polyamorous relationship◵ allows Bill to explore a latent interest in BSDM and arrive at the conclusion that women are the “love leaders” of society, predicting that women would “take over the rule of the country, politically and economically, within the next hundered years” [Tim Hanley, Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World’s Most Famous Heroine, (2014)].

77A36E3D-14F0-4440-B414-94E14F750EF7
(Source: www.money.org/)

44052FA3-EEF3-4E01-BE82-C3F2CD1619A0

⍋ 1st sighting of  the pioneering super-heroine: Marston uses the pseudonym “Charles Moulton” for the Wonder Woman comic books

Marston over the years tries his hand at many things in addition to psychology —inventing a systolic blood pressure test (which contributes to the development of the polygraph); writing screenplays for early silent films; authoring self-help books—without ever really attaining a measure of lasting success in any. Marston’s venture into creating comic books in 1940 turns that trend around. Always looking for a new business opportunity, especially after finding himself on the outer in academe, Marston finds a new way to champion his faith in female superiority by creating Wonder Woman, the first super-heroine in comics.

⍒ Wonder Woman on the lie detector

926D94F4-A08A-47C1-B807-CC9D82E9CAD7

 

Marston’s ‘superwoman’
Having successfully pitched the idea to DC Comics boss Max Gaines, Marston’s Wonder Woman debuts in 1941 in All Star Comics #8, with cartoonist HG Peter supplying the pencilling which have a touch of art nouveau about it. Marston embodies WW with all the attributes and values that added up to his idea of perfect femininity (based seemingly on an amalgam of the brace of women in his life, Elizabeth and Olive). The make-up of WW’s character reflects Marston’s fascination with Greek mythology. She is depicted as an Amazonian princess◘ , as “strong as Hercules”, “wise as Athena” and “beautiful as Aphrodite”. Garbed in a sexy but patriotic suit of star-spangled red, white and blue, her accoutrements are distinctively martially potent – including the “Lasso of Truth”, a device to compel people to tell the truth (an idea germinating from Marston’s lie detector prototype). WW wears indestructible bracelets which deflect bullets, a golden tiara which doubles as a projectile and an ‘invisible’ jet to whisk herself away from danger [Wonder Woman Psychology: Lassoing the Truth, edited by Travis Langley & Mara Wood (2018)].

1BEAC74A-880F-48C2-A248-FBA8A98E3194

Wonder Woman, a comic book gender transgressor
In the comics of the 1930s prevailing cultural norms are reinforced,  superheroes are male by gender and violent in method – the stereotypical depiction of women was commonly restricted to evil seductresses, the girlfriends of heroes (eg, Lois Lane) or their ‘helpmates’. Wonder Woman represents a radical departure from the norm, her shtick is fighting fascism in America wherever she finds it – using her brains rather than the heavy-handed brawn exhibited by Batman, Superman and co. [‘A Psychologist and A Superhero’, (Margarita Tartakovsky), Psychology Central, updated 15-Mar-2019, www.psychcentral.com].

FE67E09D-D0DF-4A36-A810-A32B4BCA78F4

Wonder Woman, “deer-hunting” ⍋

Comic bondage and a moral backlash
Marston is able to indulge one of his most cherished psychosexual beliefs through Wonder Woman, that “women enjoyed being bound”. In the comics it appears as a standard contrivance, we find WW being tied up by villains as some point or other in the story line. Sometimes WW herself ties up women, and to accentuate the kinkiness  of her character, dresses them in deer costumes for a mock cervid hunt through the forest⁌ [‘Wonder Woman (comic book)’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. The BSDM preoccupation reflects a personal fetish of Marston’s but also can be linked back to the powerful influence the suffrage, feminist and birth control movements has on him (pioneering birth control activist Margaret Sanger was Olive Byrne’s aunt) ⌖. Wonder Wonder is an instant hit for the comic book-reading public (eventually reaching a weekly readership of five million), drawing the opprobrium of America’s moral guardians who object to the torture motif running through the stories, also considering WW’s outfit to be far too skimpy [‘The Surprising Origin Story of Wonder Woman’, (Jill Lepore), Smithsonian Magazine, October 2014, www.smithsonianmag.com].

 ⍒  Justice Society of America

76019C52-8686-4BBC-9DCF-1B378E8066CA

At DC Comics Wonder Woman is invited to join the Justice Society of America (DC’s superhero team in the “Golden Age of Comic Books” as the period was known). WW’s elevation is hardly a step forward for gender advancement however as her designated role in the JSA is that of secretary for the male superheroes, while the ‘boys’ get on with the heroics of protecting the world from the designs of global criminal masterminds [‘The Truth About Wonder Woman’, Robert Kirkman’s Secret History Of Comics, (US documentary)].

Marston doesn’t get to appreciate the success of Wonder Woman for long, he contracts a form of cancer and dies in 1947, still in his early fifties (for the last two to three years he has an assistant, Joye Hummel, who helps ghost-write the WW stories when he is too ill). With the reins of the Wonder Woman comics passing from its originator to new hands, the iconic super-heroine’s persona and fortunes would undergo a number of transformations over the decades to follow.

Initial sketch of WW by HG Peter (1941) ⍒
(Source: Smithsonian Libraries)

13F5694B-D4AC-4F9E-94D3-F3C5CE98AA1D

︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵

＊  Marston believes that the behavioural expression of emotions could be divided into four primary types – Dominance, Inducement, Submission and Compliance [‘William Marston’, www.discprofile.com/]

◵ Elizabeth and Olive each have two children to Bill and everyone live under the same roof

◘ like Superman, Batman, etc, WW has a civilian alias – Diana Prince

⁌ such scenes may also have inspired by Byrne giving Marston a window into the activities of her sorority at Tufts University – “baby parties” where dominatrix women bind and discipline submissive sorority members [‘Curious Traditions of Times Past: Baby Parties’, (Yim Walsh), Tufts, 18-Sep-2014, www.dca.tufts.edu]

⌖ from this exposure Marston learns that the breaking of chains is “a powerful feminist symbol of emancipation” [‘A look back at Wonder Woman’s feminist (and not-so-feminist) History, (Michael Cavna), Independent, 30-May-2017, www.independent.co.uk].

♋️ ♋️ ♋️

The Moral Guardians’ War on ‘Pernicious’ Comic Books

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Creative Writing, Literary & Linguistics, Media & Communications, Performing arts, Popular Culture, Regional History, Social History, Society & Culture, Visual Arts

As all of us are only too aware, COVID-19 has cut a swathe through public gatherings, large aggregations of people are a “no-no” in 2020. Across the globe all manner of events have been on the receiving end of a different sort of cancel culture treatment. The superhero-studded world of comic book conventions has not been immune to this contagion. Comic-cons everywhere, including the San Diego Comic-Con International, America’s oldest comic book convention, have been red pencilled in this year of the plague. But if we turn the clock back some 70 years we might observe a time when the existential threat was directed at the product itself, the actual comic books.

D9432C0A-AF9B-45C7-8920-DBF592A432CE

(Photo source: www.theverge.com/)

There were no organised comic-cons in the more cautious and conformist 1940s and 50s, but this in no way equated with a lack of popularity of comic books. In fact the Forties had been a Golden Age, especially for American comic books, Comic strip creators were riding high with a slew of superhero characters—including Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman and Captain America, the Avengers and Captain Marvel—proving lucrative for companies like Detective Comics (DC Comics), Entertaining Comics (EC Comics) and Timely Comics (Marvel Comics). By mid-decade comic books were the most popular form of entertainment in the US (with 80 to 100 million copies being sold per week!) By the late 1940s comic books were well and truly being marketed towards adults as well…”fed by the same streams as pulp fiction and film noir, titles (began to tell) lurid stories of crime, vice, lust and horror” [David Hajdu, The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America, (2008)].

♦️ Wonder Woman (Sensation Comics, 1942)

25899A62-7630-41AD-BCE2-8D166BDDE997

‘Seduction of the Innocent’   
Dark clouds appeared over the comics industry’s blue skies in 1954 with the publication of Seduction of the Innocent by a Bavarian-born neurobiologist Fredric Wertham. The book was “a full-throttled attack on the lurid contents of various crime, horror, and even super-hero titles, (with an emphasis on) graphic illustrations of wife-beatings, sado-masochism, and gruesome murders”⁕ Sean Howe, Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, (2012)]. Wertham’s inditement of the American comics of the day was that they corrupted impressionable youth, inveigling them into fanaticising about evil, leading them on a ruinous path to criminal behaviour, etc.[‘History of Comics Censorship, Part 1’, CBLDF, www.cbldf.org/].

♦️ Crime SuspenStories, 1950

5E200594-6FEC-4854-8110-07016D7FD7BC

1940s, North and bonfires  
Wertham was not the first critic to take aim at the US comic book industry. In the view of CBLDF✥, since the 1930s “the comics medium has been stigmatized as low-value speech”. In 1940 conservative commentator Sterling North urged parents and educators to guard against the influx of “mayhem, murder, torture and abduction—often with a child as the victim” in contemporary comic strips. North also decried the incidence of “voluptuous females in scanty attire, machine gun (-wielding hoodlums) and “cheap political propaganda” in the comics. The effect on children, he went on to say, of these “badly drawn, badly written and badly printed” strips was “a strain on young eyes and young nervous systems” as well as constituting “a violent stimulant” to them [North, Sterling. “A National Disgrace”. Childhood Education. 17.1, 1940: 56. Print.]. During WWII religious and patriotic organisations conducted public burnings of ‘disapproved’ comic books in American neighbourhoods – in ironic juxtaposition of the war being fought overseas concurrently against Nazi Germany (’Comic Censorship, Part 1’).

♦️ Dr Wertham, researching

A2E5A7E1-99ED-4FF0-B25B-B7E1E0B26817

“Pop culture McCarthyite”  
But it was Seduction of the Innocent that struck the strongest chord in a 1950s America “looking over its shoulder” for real or imagined enemies of society in the grip of a hysteria heightened by McCarthyism. It triggered a public outcry, prompting an investigation into the industry by a Senate sub-committee. Publicity from the hearing was damning and the fallout was devastating. Comic books were denounced by Wertham and other moral crusaders as contributing to juvenile delinquency⚉. At the height of the moral panic, comic book publishers were sometimes treated as though they were mobsters, and the cartoonists, as if they were pornographers [‘The Caped Crusader’ (Jeet Heer), Slate, 04-Apr-2008, www.slate.com; ’Comic Censorship, Part 1’].

The emasculated comic book  
Threatened with both public and government censure, the comics industry choose to self-regulate, introducing the Comic Code Authority, “a censorship code that thoroughly sanitized the content of comics for years to come”. The new code (something analogous to the film world’s draconian Hays Code) was taken to ridiculous lengths, it forbade comics from showing zombies, vampires, ghouls and werewolves; words like ‘horror’ and ‘terror’ couldn’t be mentioned in the story lines; nor could criminals be portrayed sympathetically and the institution of marriage could not be seen to be disrespected (Howe). 

♦️ The imprimatur of the self-censor

0477A3BC-05AF-41EC-A5C4-8BD384226B19

Comic book publishers were forced to produce ‘purified’ comics suitable for a younger market—more infantile and tamer stories, squeaky-clean but ‘dopey’ heroes replacing the previous super-overachievers—in short, “safe fantasies” for the youngest readers (’Comic Censorship, Part 1’).

The economic and human toll
The new reality of the world of comic books decimated the industry’s hitherto prosperity…between 1954 and 1956 the number of titles produced was cut by more than half – from 650 in 250 over that two-year period!✧. By summer 1954 15 comics publishers in the US went belly-up. EC Comics, up to then one of the market leaders, discontinued all its comics lines…its much-vilified publisher William Gaines switching production solely to the satirical Mad magazine. Over 800 jobs in the industry vanished more or less immediately (Howe; Hajdu). Many talented inkers and pencillers left the industry for good, many for economic reasons but others due at least in part to the stifling of their creative artistic output.
 
2E2BDF15-C7E5-4E06-937C-F45EB49E685E

Endnote: Demise of adult comics
Both Wertham and North in their hatchet jobs on the comics genre made the error of completely disregarding the significant adult readership of comic books. The recovery of the industry, the winning back of that readership, took many years…it didn’t really happen until the emergence of ‘Underground’ comics in the 1960s with publications like Zap Comics and comic artists like R Crumb§ [‘History of Comics Censorship, Part 2, CBLDF, www.cbldf.org/].

♦️ Detective Comics, 1945

0880118B-F1FF-437F-92A3-EE28D0D17163

PostScript: The Wertham thesis unpacked
After it became accessible in 2010 Wertham’s research on comics books was investigated and his conclusions found largely baseless…Wertham was said to have manipulated data, overstated, compromised, and fabricated evidence. A further weakness of his work was that he used non-representative samples as the basis for his conclusions. Scorn was also poured on Wertham’s contentions that the comic character Superman harboured Nazi SS tendencies, that the Batman/Robin relationship had homoerotic overtones, and that Wonder Woman was a lesbian role model (Wertham saw this as wholly undesirable)[‘Fredric Wertham’,Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org; Heer]. 

________________________________________________

⁕ that serious comics of the period were laden with violence, misogyny and racism, could not be disputed (Heer)  
✥ Comic Book Legal Defense Fund  
⚉ a sense of elitism also coloured Wertham et al’s  dislike of popular comics. Wertham considered their consumption blocked children from an appreciation of literature and fine arts  (Hajdu; Heer) 
✧ over 100 pieces of anti-comic book legislation came into effect in the Fifties (Hajdu)
§ the fashionability of adult readership was further advanced by the advent of graphic novels

Tarzan, the Enduring, Politically-incorrect, Pop Culture Myth of a White Saviour in a Black World

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Cinema, Creative Writing, Literary & Linguistics, Memorabilia, Natural Environment, Popular Culture, Racial politics, Society & Culture

⇩ Start of the Tarzan pulp fiction phenomenon

2CFFCD21-92B3-448D-B44C-002354849965When testosterone-charged visitors to coastal Belgian towns began strolling around the shops and cafes bare-chested in 2015, locals objecting to this aesthetic blight on the landscape took to labelling the offending blow-ins “Tarzan tourists”. References to that archetypical, mesomorphic white hero of amorphous jungle habitats, Tarzan, have permeated popular culture for over a century. Since the time pencil-sharpener salesman Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB) turned his hand to writing his first story in 1912, the aura of Tarzan, carefully cultivated by the author into a cultural icon, has extended from pulp fiction, to various media including comic strips, films (over 90!), radio shows, TV series, Broadway musicals, computer games and a raft of commercial merchandise𝓪.

5352F7A8-E520-4EEC-BF5A-FC536D24D17C

Celluloid Tarzan – from urbane gent to LCD savage
The phenomenal success of ERB’sTarzan of the Apes and follow-up pulp novels provided prime adventure material for a rapid transition into cinema, starting with a silent movie in 1918. Later sound film interpretations, especially those with former American Olympic swimming champion Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan, departed radically from Burroughs’ original conception of the heroic jungle adventurer as a cultured, multilingual, erudite aristocrat (John Clayton II, Viscount Greystoke). Weissmuller’s “dumbed-down” depiction of Tarzan was as an innocent and noble savage, the “strong and silent” type given only to monosyllabic utterings (“Me, Tarzan, you, Jane”).

⇩  ERB at home in Tarzana, California

63A4BBEE-26A8-410A-88C9-37216ACCAB58

White skin, white supremacist
As successful as the books and later franchises have been, Tarzan’s character has engendered a persistent stream of controversy. ERB’s creation, from the start, was an obvious target for accusations of racism – a white boy/man𝓫 thrown into a dangerous and alien environment (the “dark continent”), who manages not only to survive but to triumph over hordes of dark-skinned peoples and over numerous wild animals. Tarzan emerges from the pages as a “consummate colonial-era adventurer” – “a white man whose novel civility enabled him to communicate with and control savage peoples and animals…using appropriate technology” to help natives who “cannot solve their own problems” [RJ Gordon in Tarzan was an Eco-Tourist … and Other Tales in the Anthropology of Adventure, (edited by Luis A Vivanco & Robert J Gordon), 2006]. The world that Tarzan creates in the jungle is in effect a “white supremacist Eden parable”, the books and films completely omit the point-of-view of the indigenous people who live in the African jungle (or the Amazonian rainforest𝓬) ‘[‘The Only Good Tarzan is a Bad Tarzan’, (Aaron Bady), Pacific Standard, 08-Jul-2016, www.psmag.com; ‘From Tarzan to Avatar: the problem with “the white man in the jungle”’, (Steve Rose), The Guardian, 06-Jul-2016, www.theguardian.com].

313F2D70-2DAF-44B9-99E5-FE4D4443688C

⇧ TV Tarzan (loin-clothed Ron Ely) in Mesoamerican climes  (Source: www.nbc.com)

A white world of comfortable racial assumptions Tarzan’s brand of chivalrous “white masculinity” precludes him from engaging in sexual violence against women, but he is utterly implicated in the negative racial stereotyping of Africans, an explicit feature of the books – black men are described as “lithe, ebon warriors, gesticulating and jabbering”, Arabs are “surly looking”. Without holding back, ERB tells us, Tarzan is “a killer of many black men”, revelling, shockingly for modern sensitivities, in the act of ‘lynching’ blacks [Gail Bederman, quoted in ‘Tarzan’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

The mystique of Tarzan: Green mascot, eco-warrior and proto-expat
Part of Tarzan’s durability as a cultural icon might lie in his versatile utility. It has been noted that Tarzan possesses an “ability to adapt to the zeitgeist of different eras”. In seamlessly managing an environment that is unnatural and unfamiliar to him, he demonstrates a flair for “ecological sustainability”, we are shown the ape-man’s apparently impeccable “green credentials” [‘The Untamed Image of the Perfect Savage’, (Bram Wicherink), Efnofoor, vol. 22, no. 2, 2010, pp.90-97. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25758188. Accessed 10 July 2020]. For Paul Theroux, who had hands-on experience of being part of the ‘invasion’ of Africa by Peace Corps Volunteers in the 1960s, Tarzan is “in the jungle, but not of the jungle”…therefore he was the “first expatriate”𝒹 [Theroux, P.  “Tarzan Is an Expatriate.” Transition, no. 32, 1967, pp. 13–19. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2934617. Accessed 10 July 2020].

⇩ The first screen Tarzan, Elmo Lincoln, 1918

F20A5A23-70EB-4539-8680-8E9FE521CFDB

Tarzan as metaphor – defender of masculinity
The period in which ERB wrote the first Tarzan books (just before, through and after WWI) saw the emergence of a challenge to the hegemony of white masculinity – from the Suffragette Movement…according to Robert Gordon, Burroughs’ creation of the all-conquering jungle superhero constituted a buffer against that perceived threat. This held sway again in the 1960s and 70s when the advent of women’s, LGBT and civil rights movements loomed as a threat to (white heterosexual) masculinity. Tarzan, as “the archetypal white-manhood fantasy” represented a “refuge of sorts for white audiences”. What they could observe in the story of Tarzan was an ideal of manliness, a he-man proving himself physically in the most testing of circumstances [Gordon; ‘Me, Tarzan. You, Really Still Doing This?’, (Devon Maloney), Mel, 11-Jul-2016,  www.melmagazine.com.

PostScript: An attempt at a politically-corrected Tarzan
The talkies motion picture era has seen a string of mostly forgettable actors taking on the role of Tarzan, as well as a TV series or two and even Disney animation versions of the vine-swinging king of the jungle. In recent decades the Tarzan phenomenon has appeared to be running out of steam, although a recent entry, a 2016 screen production, The Legend of Tarzan, sought to present a Tarzan with ‘woke’ politics and more psychological complexity. Tarzan is this time avowedly anti-colonial, taking to task the odious slave-based Congo empire of Belgian king Leopold II, and displaying his capacity for “racial sensibilities” in the endeavour. Resurrecting a Tarzan who is more nuanced is still in itself problematic for its contemporary tone-deafness –  “propagating…a white saviour narrative during the charged era of Black Lives Matter” is not the most prudent or politically savvy card to play [Glenn Kenny, ‘The Legend of Tarzan’, (01-Jul-2016), www.rogerebert.com]. The hero’s mate Jane departs from her character’s standard “eye-candy” function and exhibits a “feisty proto-feminist” defiance and the film gives a nod to environmental and conservationist concerns. Unfortunately the movie got at best only mixed reviews and basically bombed at the box office [‘The Legend of Tarzan’ Falls Well Short of the Tree Tops’,  (David Edelstein), Vulture, 01-Jul-2016, www.vulture.com].

03E191DC-66D5-42F1-B7A5-C5D1B76A3F7F

Ft’note: Tarzan, very much “all-American”
Oddly, in all the graphic representations of Tarzan—in films, on book covers and illustrations—he is presented as clean-shaven, always sans beard, somewhat of an anomaly considering he is almost always off the grid, cut off from all the usual paraphernalia and comforts of life.  

8D3AB049-36C5-4CFB-8A7E-8BE1C461F391

 ⇧ Just your average Middle American family

____________________________________________

𝓪 Tarzan was “the first fictional character to be multi-mass-media marketed…the growth of a veritable Tarzan industry, with “Tarzan Clubs” rivalling the Boy Scouts (Gordon). But not just boys, famed ethnologist and world chimpanzee authority Jane Goodall was captivated by the mystique of Tarzan, his impact on the primatologist’s childhood imagination “set her on a path to Africa to work with wild animals” [‘How Tarzan created Jane Goodall and how Goodall then repaid the favour’, (Shawn Thompson), The Ethical Ape, (2013), www.news.mongabay.com]  

𝓫 in the books Burroughs explains that the name given the eponymous hero, ‘Tarzan’, means (in African “ape language”) “white of skin”  

𝓬 occasionally for plot variety the setting for Tarzan’s adventures diverts from the customary (vaguely) African location to Latin America and India

𝒹 apparently he was the inspiration for future  adventure junkies – for many restless souls in the West who flocked to join the Peace Corps in an Africa emerging from colonialism, as well as for later devotees of the ongoing craze for adventure tourism (Gordon)