King Kong´s Penis Redux

 

"Fay´s attitude toward Kong´s penis is a ticklish problem. On the one hand there is the purely bestial part of it (the lesser part, we might say). On the other, there are several metaphorical tensions. Let us take them in order. Fay, the rather ordinary virgin of the masses, is terrified of Kong´s penis, which is huge. No normal girl wants to make love with a giant gorilla (yet, how often will a woman describe her lover affectionately as a “big gorilla” or a "hairy ape”?). But Fay, the woman of wisdom through nightmare, is aware that the loss of Kong´s penis, although it would probably have killed her as it thrilled her, is tragic. It is a loss that will haunt her all her life. She grows from one woman into the other as she sees Kong change from monster supreme to victim supreme. Kong beings as horror and ends as martyr, and in the process his penis is humanized (tenderized). The impossible union between Fay and Kong is symbolic of mankind´s fatal impasse, the dream of paradise lost irrevocably. However, this particular symbolic inference is complicated by several other factors, notably the idea that Kong is the black man violating American womanhood and the idea that Kong is the emerging (and rampant) Third World nations. With the first we suffer from colossal penis envy and ego collapse, for we sense Fay´s attraction in spite of herself. In the latter, we have violated Kong´s sanctuary and brought him back for profit and display, and now he threatens (literally) to screw us. Kong is the classic myth of racist and imperialist repression and anxiety. Carl Denham is the white entrepreneur par excellence. Like Rappaccini in his noxious garden, he fosters evil into being.

(…)

King´s sex organ (seen, dreamed, inferred, or guessed at) is indicative of our fear of his creative energy. Our destruction of him is confession of our limited imagination. His death will weigh on us more heavily than his life and it is part of his power that he will be continuously resurrected (by us, in fact) (…) In this respect, we can say that Kong leaps sexually erect into New York city´s streets directly from our nightmares of guilt. We have created him and can no longer awaken from him. (…) We are ambivalent about her and Kong. Hence a frequently suicidal madness that engulfs us. Given time, Fay in her understanding might well have come to love Kong physically, might well have accommodated herself (as the sex books tell us) to Kong´s penis. But there is no time. Kong is killed and split into millions of Kongs. And they are coming at us without quarter.

What is needed to free Kong is for Fay Wray to give herself sexually to Kong out of love and trust. That alone would allow Kong to break through. That she does not do it is part of the tragedy of the story. Although Fay Wray does arrive at a deepness of womanhood at the end, it is a deepness with nowhere to go (…) She is the living memorial of the tragedy of loss. But just what would Kong have been freed into? (…) I don´t think that Kong would turn into a handsome prince as a result of union with Fay. Nor do I think that he would turn into, say, a dwarf or a pumpkin, though the ramifications are increasing. Perhaps he would just expire beautifully, or disappear, and it would all be with the seed (so large) he would leave in Fay. Jesus, son of Kong! Or something like. Fay, then would become the bearer of mankind´s redemption. A chance to regain Paradise. For sure Adam in the Garden is not so remote from Kong. Would not he, too, have been inarticulate with confusion and rage in the New World? Would not he, too, have been cornered atop the Empire State Building for daring to walk the streets with his penis erect? His affront to civilization would never have been tolerated (...) Kong is godlike in in his unprogenitured existence. We cannot say Kong, son of. We can only say Kong is and Kong was. And therein lie much history and sorrow”.

K. Bernard, "King Kong: A Meditation"