If pirates are the new zombies robots monkeys, where does that leave ape men and jungle boys? They’re things of an absurd past, apparently.

At Slate.com, Stanley Crouch watches the six films in The Tarzan Collection, and finds Edgar Rice Burroughs’ creation lacking:

Tarzan has no codes and understands none. He doesn’t comprehend money or safaris intent on bringing back riches. As Jane says of him, “You see, Tarzan has no objectives; he just goes somewhere because he wants to.” He has an unpolluted consciousness in which everything is upfront and clear as the summer sun. Underneath it all, of course, is a sense of sex and love that cannot exist in Europe with the same kind of freedom. That might well have been the attraction of the series for adults: Jane and her guy were making the beast with two backs unencumbered by the vestiges of the Victorian age. Always seeming fresh from an assignation, they were close to nude, they lived off the land, and the animals loved and obeyed Tarzan—especially herds of elephants and gaggles of chimps—stopping whatever they were doing to run off and arrive at the command of his yodel. If not, they were dispatched by Tarzan in hand-to-claw combat.

Meanwhile, at Ye Olde Comick Booke Blogge, Jake turns a discerning eye toward Jimmy Olsen’s jungle escapade in Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #10:

Jimmy and Clark are trying to track down, photograph, and write a story about the Jungle Boy, if he exists at all. They set up camp and Clark goes out on his own to search for the Jungle Boy, asking Jimmy to keep an eye on the camp and make sure nothing bad happens to their stuff.

Want to take a wild guess what happens?

Jimmy opts instead to take a nap and be molested by monkeys. I’m obligate to point out–as one of the foremost feminist comic blogs on the net–that if Jimmy was a girl, this would be the retconned origin story for why she became a superhero.

Sure, you laugh, but I bet Tarzan has been molested by monkeys on more than one occasion. The beast with two backs, indeed.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 27th, 2006 at 12:43 pm and is filed under Comic Books, Movies, Pop Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.