Yesterday a New York Times article (Julie Salamon, 7/30; Arts Section) suggested that prime-time network programming -- with its increase in non-nuclear families -- is reflective of the changing shape of the American household. That is all well and good.
But to catch a glimpse, not only of who we are, but of what we hope and fear, skip primetime and go straight to science fiction. Seated in a dark theater, barraged with huge and terrifying shapes, you enter into the collective dream of the American psyche. And this summer's dream is positively simian. Now we all know that Planet of the Apes is, at one level, about race. But when movie-makers offer up apes that move like real apes, when the audience is alive to issues of animal cruelty and environmentalism, the barriers between racialization and speciation become more than a little confused. But I don't have time to get into that. So let me leave you with this. Go. Go and take your children, your neighbors, and their children. And on the way out tell them this: "The most important thing about this film is that for once the homely but brainy-dark haired girl does not turn out to be a beauty [ape-woman, Helena Bonham Carter] and SHE STILL GETS THE GUY."
Where was Tim Burton when I was in high school?
Last Modified: August 1, 2001
Jacqui Sadashige sadashig@sas.upenn.edu