Current Forum: Session 9: Horror and Race	Read 10 times 	
Date: 19-Mar-2001 15:25:31	
Author: HODGE, NICHOLAS G. <ngh5150@mailer.fsu.edu>	
Subject: Race and gender 	
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       The conventions of horror, (i.e. Snead's) clearly work to reinforce ideologies of race and gender in the film King Kong. Snead argues the three most important ways of reinforcing an 
ideology of race in films are mythification, marking, and omission. While these three terms are applicable to many genre's, horror films make the terms all the more recognizable, 
particularly mythification. Mythification is particularly recognizable in King Kong because images of white heros, like Jack, are juxtaposed carefully with images of debased blacks and the monster who achieves identification with blacks through their religious ceremony, and psychologically suggests the imagined threat white America has of black sexual prowess. It is no accident that like slaves, Kong is brought to America on a ship in captivity, and once he achieves his freedom, it is precisely his freedom, which presents itself as a real threat to 
civilization. The psychological subtext asks readers to conflate Kong's freedom and the resulting disaster for civilization with the freedom of blacks and an imagined disaster for civilization. The psychological subtext is further reinforced by Snead's "omission," in that blacks are not seen in civilization as threatened by Kong; instead, blacks are "omitted:" there are no blacks in crowd scenes, for example (at least none I could see). 
       Likewise, by presenting the "monster" as a "threat" from which a white woman must be rescued, a white, Western ideology of gender is reinforced. Darrow's character works to reinforce both gender and race ideologies: she is over-valued by the blacks the whites encounter (they offer six black women for her) and she is that which is desired by both the real threat (Kong) and the imagined threat (black sexual prowess).
       Perhaps working against Snead's reading is the fact that most of us come to feel a kind of sympathy for Kong, but perhaps this is a modern ideology reading the film. We do know that once Kong is dead, while we may be saddened by his demise, the threat has been alleviated, and it is in the alleviation of the threat that the more insidious nature of the subtext asserts itself: if Kong's threat can be alleviated, why, the text begs, could the imagined threat of black sexual prowess not be eliminated? Of course we have seen that ideology before, most notably in WWII Germany.