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Abstract: The project of critical anthropology may be furthered by the incorporation of the popular film into the anthropological study of myth. A structuralist analysis oí King Kong (1933) reveals it to be exemplary of a body of contemporary myth. Made and explicitly set during the Depression, the Depression itself in the form of the monster is ultimately slain by the organized forces of industrial technology. Monster movies collectively represent various threats to the survival of industrial civilization, and in the vanquishing of the monster, the supremacy of the technological and ideological infrastructure of modern of life is reaffirmed and valorized.
Keywords: critical anthropology, myth, monsters, popular cinema, King Kong, monster films
Résumé ; Il est possible de faire progresser le projet de l'anthropologie critique en incorporant les films populaires dans l'étude anthropologique du mythe. Une étude structuraliste de King Kong (1933) révèle que le film est exemplaire d'un corps contemporain de mythes. Réalisé et délibérément situé pendant la grande crise économique, c'est la crise elle-même qui s'incarne sous la forme d'un monstre qui est finalement terrassé par les forces organisées de la technologie industrielle. Les films de monstre représentent collectivement des menaces diverses pesant sur la survie de la civilisation industrielle, et dans la victoire contre ces monstres, la suprémacie de l'infrastructure technologique et idéologique de la vie moderne se trouvent réaffirmée et valorisée.
Mots-clés : anthropologie critique, mythe, monstres, cinéma populaire, King Kong, films de monstres
The anthropological study of myth might be properly opened up to include for serious consideration as true myth certain of the more prominent and influential narratives of the mass cinema. The diverse forms and enthusiasms of the commercial cinema constitute branches of an active, ever-proliferating and ramifying mythic realm of the present day. Like more traditional myth, the stories of the mass cinema are shared public discourses having the power to live all at once, but separately, in the minds of the members of a social collectivity. The genre film inscribes multitudinously key representations of an "envisioned cosmic order," generating models of and models for reality (Geertz 1973:4). Entailing important disciplinary and ideological dimensions and active in the construction of social consensus, cinematic works also oversee and proclaim cultural change, encoding revised charters of the self...