Beorn
02-11-2009, 02:55 PM
‘Planet of the Apes’ May Be a Classic, But It Was Racist'
Date: Thursday, December 18, 2008, 3:36 pm
By: Gregory P. Kane, BlackAmericaWeb.com
http://www.blackamericaweb.com/files/images/1218.pic10.article.JPG
Not all anniversary observances are worth celebrating, and the 40th anniversary of the release of the film “Planet of the Apes” may be one of them.
But celebrating there has been. It started on the Fox Movie Channel on Thanksgiving Day with marathon showings of the 1968 film starring Charlton Heston and its four sequels. The whoop-a-thon has continued this month, with more showings of POTA and its sequels on several premium channels, as well as Fox.
There’s the obligatory pithy commentary, of course, about the film and its impact and its originality and its legacy. All the commentators so far have been white, which may be why not one of them has addressed, much less answered, this question: Isn’t "POTA" one of the most racist films ever made?
I’m not sure if the producers, director and screenwriter (who was “Twilight Zone” creator Rod Serling, who had some pretty liberal creds) intended it that way as a commentary on racism or race relations in 1968, but the racism - much of it subtle - abounds in the film.
Take, for example the Charlton Heston original. Three astronauts land on a planet - unknown to them, they’ve gone through a time loop and landed on Earth in the year 3978, thousands of years in the future - where civilized apes rule, and humans are hunted like animals. One of the astronauts is black, and I guess black folks circa 1968 were supposed to be grateful for that. But there is not one black human in the future Earth. And the setting is what’s left of New York City in the future, mind you.
All those black folks in New York today, and NOT ONE survived in the future? Oh, and there are no Latinos or Asians either. Every one of the future humans - the ones who survived - is white.
Subliminal wishful thinking on the part of the film’s producers? Or were they just too darned cheap to hire black, Asian or Latino extras for the film?
Or was it just latent racism making itself manifest? There is one black future human - one of a group of mutated humans - in “Beneath the Planet of the Apes,” the second film in the series. He’s played by black actor Don Pedro Colley. Here’s how Colley’s character was listed in the credits: “Negro - Don Pedro Colley.”
I kid you not. And this film was released in 1970, when the term “Negro” was pretty much passé. Even if it weren’t, producers of “Beneath the Planet of the Apes” didn’t think enough of black people to even give the “Negro” a name. Because here’s what I remember from the days when we were called Negroes: ALL of us had names.
The apes in the films have names, but they also have something else: A racial hierarchy. The blonde-haired orangutans are at the top, ruling the roost. Next in line are the chimpanzees, depicted in the films as having brown hair and light-skinned faces. At the bottom are the gorillas, who have black hair and - yes, you guessed right - black-skinned faces.
The orangutans are the smartest. The chimpanzees are rather bright, but clearly no match for the orangutans when it comes to smarts. The gorillas - i.e., black folks, if we are to interpret what the producers are trying to tell us - are real idiots, only providing the muscle and the brawn in the ape world.
Yes, "POTA" is classic sci-fi, one of the best in the genre. But in all the years the film has been discussed by critics, pundits and fans, no one has ever explored the racial angle. Not Serling, the liberal. Not Heston, who was a conservative in his later years but who made much of his support for the civil rights movement, especially his appearance at the 1963 March on Washington.
Three years later, Heston appeared in the film “Khartoum,” playing British Gen. Charles “Chinese” Gordon. British actor Laurence Olivier played Mohammed Ahmed, Gordon’s protagonist in the war between Sudanese Mahdists and the British in 1880s Sudan.
More than showing his smiling face at the 1963 MItarch on Washington, black folks needed Heston to tell producers of “Khartoum” that the role of Mohammed Ahmed should have gone to Sidney Poitier, William Marshall or some other capable black actor of that era. Mohammed Ahmed was no tanned Arab as Olivier portrayed him in the film. I met one of Ahmed’s direct descendants in 1996; the brother was darker than I am.
And after patting himself on the back for his “friend of the Negro” creds throughout his life, Heston not once addressed the racism in one of his most famous films.
Source (http://www.blackamericaweb.com/?q=articles/news/baw_commentary_news/4551/1)
Date: Thursday, December 18, 2008, 3:36 pm
By: Gregory P. Kane, BlackAmericaWeb.com
http://www.blackamericaweb.com/files/images/1218.pic10.article.JPG
Not all anniversary observances are worth celebrating, and the 40th anniversary of the release of the film “Planet of the Apes” may be one of them.
But celebrating there has been. It started on the Fox Movie Channel on Thanksgiving Day with marathon showings of the 1968 film starring Charlton Heston and its four sequels. The whoop-a-thon has continued this month, with more showings of POTA and its sequels on several premium channels, as well as Fox.
There’s the obligatory pithy commentary, of course, about the film and its impact and its originality and its legacy. All the commentators so far have been white, which may be why not one of them has addressed, much less answered, this question: Isn’t "POTA" one of the most racist films ever made?
I’m not sure if the producers, director and screenwriter (who was “Twilight Zone” creator Rod Serling, who had some pretty liberal creds) intended it that way as a commentary on racism or race relations in 1968, but the racism - much of it subtle - abounds in the film.
Take, for example the Charlton Heston original. Three astronauts land on a planet - unknown to them, they’ve gone through a time loop and landed on Earth in the year 3978, thousands of years in the future - where civilized apes rule, and humans are hunted like animals. One of the astronauts is black, and I guess black folks circa 1968 were supposed to be grateful for that. But there is not one black human in the future Earth. And the setting is what’s left of New York City in the future, mind you.
All those black folks in New York today, and NOT ONE survived in the future? Oh, and there are no Latinos or Asians either. Every one of the future humans - the ones who survived - is white.
Subliminal wishful thinking on the part of the film’s producers? Or were they just too darned cheap to hire black, Asian or Latino extras for the film?
Or was it just latent racism making itself manifest? There is one black future human - one of a group of mutated humans - in “Beneath the Planet of the Apes,” the second film in the series. He’s played by black actor Don Pedro Colley. Here’s how Colley’s character was listed in the credits: “Negro - Don Pedro Colley.”
I kid you not. And this film was released in 1970, when the term “Negro” was pretty much passé. Even if it weren’t, producers of “Beneath the Planet of the Apes” didn’t think enough of black people to even give the “Negro” a name. Because here’s what I remember from the days when we were called Negroes: ALL of us had names.
The apes in the films have names, but they also have something else: A racial hierarchy. The blonde-haired orangutans are at the top, ruling the roost. Next in line are the chimpanzees, depicted in the films as having brown hair and light-skinned faces. At the bottom are the gorillas, who have black hair and - yes, you guessed right - black-skinned faces.
The orangutans are the smartest. The chimpanzees are rather bright, but clearly no match for the orangutans when it comes to smarts. The gorillas - i.e., black folks, if we are to interpret what the producers are trying to tell us - are real idiots, only providing the muscle and the brawn in the ape world.
Yes, "POTA" is classic sci-fi, one of the best in the genre. But in all the years the film has been discussed by critics, pundits and fans, no one has ever explored the racial angle. Not Serling, the liberal. Not Heston, who was a conservative in his later years but who made much of his support for the civil rights movement, especially his appearance at the 1963 March on Washington.
Three years later, Heston appeared in the film “Khartoum,” playing British Gen. Charles “Chinese” Gordon. British actor Laurence Olivier played Mohammed Ahmed, Gordon’s protagonist in the war between Sudanese Mahdists and the British in 1880s Sudan.
More than showing his smiling face at the 1963 MItarch on Washington, black folks needed Heston to tell producers of “Khartoum” that the role of Mohammed Ahmed should have gone to Sidney Poitier, William Marshall or some other capable black actor of that era. Mohammed Ahmed was no tanned Arab as Olivier portrayed him in the film. I met one of Ahmed’s direct descendants in 1996; the brother was darker than I am.
And after patting himself on the back for his “friend of the Negro” creds throughout his life, Heston not once addressed the racism in one of his most famous films.
Source (http://www.blackamericaweb.com/?q=articles/news/baw_commentary_news/4551/1)