The meta of the year
So I saw the big three-hanky tearjerker movie today. Bawled like a big baby. Such a sweet love story.
Yeah, yeah, you all know I mean King Kong.
Boy, I haven’t seen a work of art this meta since I quit reading intentionally meta-tastic fiction after my comp lit degree. Wow, meta. Hugely meta. This movie didn’t miss a single chance to comment on itself, right down to completely undercutting its own final line. There’s simply no way to believe a single word that character says by then. He could say his own name, and I’d run to the court records looking for stolen identities. And, of course, we’ve had ample evidence contradicting the line.
Linguists both pro and am should see this movie; I contend that language and sincerity are the flip-bits that turn Kong and Denham into opposites. Even the Skull Islanders (as David well knows, though I was right about his lack of a credit) have language—though all in all, I think I agree with Jackson that the most one can do with that portion of source material is use it as little as possible.
(The ultimate source, of course—the book, not the 1933 flick—is stunningly racist from soup to nuts.)
I liked it. As many others have said, I could have used a bit less of the creature-feature, but Jackson is a creature-featurer from way back, so if that’s the price of a smart script otherwise, I’ll pay it.