Unspeakable Horror!

Earlier this month Theofantastique published an interview with Joshua Bellin about the King Kong films (you can read it here).  For the last several years, Bellin's book has been a huge inspiration to me in the writings I have done for this website, and also because I created an essay unit in my writing class that is based on his chapter about King Kong in Framing Monsters.  First, the students read Bellin's chapter, then we watch the original 1933 King Kong, followed by watching clips from the 2005 version of King Kong.  We discuss the various ways that Peter Jackson adapted the original story for a contemporary audience, and the significance behind the changes to the new version.  Basically, we discuss all of the issues that Bellin brings up in Theofantastique's excellent interview.  The students write an essay comparing and contrasting the two versions.

An alternative cover which features the "black beast" towering above the snow globe like King Kong.Central to the discussion of the two films is the portrayal of Kong himself and what does Kong represent (the changes to the portrayal of Ann Darrow, the natives of Skull Island, and Denham are all significant as well).  I love Bellin's chapter because it so convincingly and thoroughly makes a balanced argument that Kong represents the racism of the 1930's.  Kong becomes a monstrous, nightmarish embodiment of the black beast stereotype that is mad for a white woman (Ann Darrow) and causing chaos and destruction.  You have to read Bellin's chapter to get the full scope and intricacy of the argument, which connects Kong to the discourse of racism in the 30's and the horror of lynchings. 

In early 2007, Darren Davis, the publisher of Bluewater Comics, suggested that I write a one-shot for Vincent Price Presents in which people are unknowingly trapped in a snow globe.  As I was brainstorming ideas for this, it occurred to me that there might be something standing next to the snow globe in an antique shop, and then I had a vision of one of those grotesque blackface statues (which I learned about from Spike Lee's satire Bamboozled) towering over the snowglobe like a twisted god.  The comic book "Whistle to Open Worlds" was a combination of Bellin's brilliant chapter, the two King Kongs, Lee's Bamboozled, and of course my love of werewolves.

Like Lee's Bamboozled, at the heart of this comic book is satire.  It is a satire because it uses the black beast stereotype, which was part of the racist discourse that contributed to thousands of lynchings, and morphs it into a werewolf motif.  This is absurd and filled with irony.  One of the blog reviewers for this comic (one of numerous critics who were baffled by the meaning of this comic) referred to the monster as a "were-African-American," which is actually pretty accurate.  If the purpose of satire is to use irony to mock human folly, then this comic book is using the black beast stereotype of the past in an ironic way to mock racism and American "whiteness."  The comic book is supposed to be a kind of surreal social commentary.  The "whiteness" of the snow globe represents the fantasy-America of racist ideology, which is "cursed" by the encroachment of the black beast, which towers above the snow globe like King Kong above New York and actually possesses white members of the town like the curse of the werewolf.  Perhaps this message gets a little convoluted, despite the bookend narration by Vincent Price which ostensibly attempts to explain the message of the comic book.  It always seems more interesting to me to make the message a little mysterious, but so far the response to this comic has been "What the Fuck!?" as opposed to intellectual curiosity.  I actually expected it to be very controversial, but since its release last November, it doesn't seem that anyone noticed!

To complicate matters further, the protagonist is an African American quantum physicist who, like Dorothy (or Ann Darrow for that matter), is transported to a strange new world.  In this case, the new world is the "white" fantasy world of the snow globe, where the monster is a fiction of racist discourse.  The quantum physics is primarily a frame to move the story forward, incorporating the idea that there might be numerous dimensions.  The snow globe is like another dimension.  Like Dorothy's tornado, Andrew is transported to this world through a plane crash, and he is left immobilized in a wheelchair.  He is taken care of by a strange old man named Mr. Ives, who becomes "possessed" by the Shadow Man when he is transformed into one of the black beast monsters.

The scene of Mr. Ives transformation and subsequent destruction by the townspeople is probably the most disturbing thing I've seen in any of my comic books.  It is a werewolf-like transformation, but the "beast" is characterized by the blackface stereotype.  Artist Rey Armenteros did a brilliant job here.  He incorporated the old racist stereotype characteristics into a beast that is part werewolf and part King Kong (see the alternative cover).   Once Mr. Ives becomes the beast, the townspeople form a lynch mob and destroy the beast, which (like the werewolf) turns back into Mr. Ives when it is killed.  This scene is also informed by Bellin's analysis of King Kong: he argues that Denham's crew is like a lynch mob when they go to retrieve Ann Darrow from Kong's clutches.

A central idea to the story is that the blackface monster is in fact a shadow figure of the townspeople (shadow figure in the Jungian sense), a product of their own racist American fantasy.  The Shadow Man is a product of racist discourse, a blackface figurine given demonic prominence.  So, the "curse" of this monster is a product of their own psyche, a projection (hence the shadow figure), and I believe this is an accurate portrayal of racism itself.

There are lots of additional details in the story that complicate things further.  For example, a Little Red Riding Hood Reference, the whistle, and the quantum physics, but I think everything fits together with "fairy tale logic," which is of course not logical at all, but creates a kind of coherent nightmare world where everything fits together, even if it doesn't really make sense.  Like Kong Kong, for example.  There are lots of things in King Kong that don't make sense either, but it all works in a kind-of nightmare, fairy-tale way. 

To conclude, the purpose of the story is pure satire, to use irony and horror film motifs to mock racism and the racist history of America, and also perhaps to comment that we are still "haunted" by our horrific racist past. 

I want to thank Joshua Bellin for his fascinating chapter on King Kong, which has provided boundless inspiration for me and also provided my students with a fascinating interpretive controversy.

I also want to emphasize the brilliance of Rey Armenteros' art in this comic.  He creates a very creepy snow-globe world.  He brings the characters to life with engaging faces and body movements.  And he really understands the irony and political message of this story, and he brilliantly creates the blackface monster.  It would never have worked without his creative collaboration.

You can view the entire comic on wowio (below), or you can purchase the comic from TFAW for a limited time (click the cover image in the right-hand panel, or go to the comics page).