(host) It's one of movies' most iconic moments.

King Kong Perched precariously

on top of the Empire State Building.

-[suspenseful music] -[King Kong roaring]

In what would become an international phenomenon,

"King Kong" revived a struggling studio

and birthed a canonical monster

that has endured for almost a century.

King Kong, as both a character and a film,

is commentary on greed, social economics,

and a disturbing snapshot

of racial politics in America

at the start of the 20th century.

I'm Dr. Emily Zarka, and this is "Monstrum."

Quick recap of the 1933 film:

Carl Denham, a filmmaker desperate

for his next box office hit,

hears rumors of a mysterious deity called Kong,

living on a secret island in the south seas.

Determined to make the rumored monster

the antagonist of his next film,

Carl heads out with a hired crew to capture Kong.

One member of the group

is an out-of-work actress named Anne,

played by iconic Hollywood beauty Fay Wray.

On the island, the group interrupts the ritual sacrifice

of a woman to the fabled Kong.

The natives, angry at the interruption,

and inexplicably captivated by Anne

decide she would be a more fitting tribute.

The foreigners attempt a hasty retreat to their boat,

but Anne is later kidnapped

and the natives string her up as an offering.

An infatuated Kong carries Anne off with Carl

and the crew in pursuit.

The rescue party discovers not only the massive gorilla

but living dinosaurs on the island.

Cut to a battle between Kong and the Tyrannosaurs Rex.

During the fight, it becomes clear

that Kong isn't a threat to Anne.

He's actually her protector,

but despite Kong saving Anne from the dangers of the island,

he is captured by the search party

and, ever the colonial fantasy capitalist gentleman,

Carl absconds with Kong back to New York City.

He opens a show featuring Kong

as the eighth wonder of the world.

[show music]

(Carl) Ladies and gentlemen, look at Kong,

the eighth wonder of the world.

[triumphant music]

(Emily) And as you can guess, this does not go well.

Kong escapes his chains

and captures Anne, whom he believes to be in danger.

He wreaks havoc upon the city

and famously climbs the Empire State Building

before being shot down by the military...

[suspenseful music]

falling dramatically to his death.

The airplanes got him.

Oh no, it wasn't the airplanes.

It was beauty killed the beast.

(Emily) The movie was produced by two filmmakers,

Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Shoedsack.

Cooper claims credit for crafting the original story.

One of his inspirations was a friend's unsuccessful attempt

to display two Komodo dragons at the Bronx Zoo.

Another was watching a plane

flying over New York City skyscrapers.

And Cooper drew heavily from a 19th century travel log,

"Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa."

The book includes a recounting of a gorilla

who supposedly took a female villager into the jungle.

Monster horror films from the time,

like "The Gorilla" and "The Ape,"

featured gorillas violently murdering humans.

There's also "King of the Kongo,"

which probably isn't a coincidence

that the title resembles the "King Kong" namesake

four years later.

This one involves ivory smugglers and a giant gorilla

who at one point threatens the protagonist with a gun.

A quick aside here--

though gorillas are rarely aggressive,

popular Western opinion at the time stereotype the species

as rampaging violent untamable beasts,

and Cooper leaned into this trope.

He even wanted to use real gorillas

in the attack shots in the film.

Oh, and have the gorilla get into a fight

with a Komodo dragon,

which I guess kind of made it onto screen

in the T-Rex versus Kong battle.

And that was only possible thanks to Willis Harold O'Brien.

He was the stop-motion

and special-effects pioneer behind Kong,

while Marcel Delgado

was the sculptor behind Kong's famous form.

O'Brien might actually be responsible

for making Kong a giant.

He sized the creature up in an early concept portrait,

making Kong's first encounter with Anne more frightening.

While pre-production of the film staggered along,

hindered by a rotating door of script writers

and financial setbacks, RKO Radio Pictures

was headed for bankruptcy

after a string of box office busts.

They needed a hit and needed it fast,

so they put everything they had into "King Kong"--

marketing the film's groundbreaking special effects

and over-the-top plot

as a spectacle that had to be seen to be believed.

Kong himself was also a spectacle,

a terrifying monster on a rampage of destruction.

Ads of Kong on top of the Empire State Building

shocked the public,

and one trailer featured only a giant menacing shadow.

And it worked.

All ten shows a day were sold out

during opening weekend in New York City

in the middle of the Great Depression.

Record-setting attendance was followed by glowing reviews

that praised the film's technical achievements

and thrilling plot.

It made about $2 million worldwide

upon its first release

and single-handedly saved RKO from bankruptcy.

The harsh truth is that "King Kong"'s success

highlights the Western tendency

to fetishize and exploit foreign cultures.

"King Kong"'s influences give us a perspective

into the history of conquest and colonialism.

Both filmmakers, Cooper and Schoedsack,

previously worked on films documenting wildlife

and human inhabitants of exotic locales.

And jungle adventure films were a popular genre of the time.

These movies set in-- you guessed it--the jungle,

show predominantly white characters

exploring a faraway land.

A classic example-- "Tarzan of the Apes,"

and its many, many, many sequels and spinoffs.

Tarzan himself became king of the apes

and embodied the noble savage trope.

Then there's 1922's "Jungle Goddess,"

which featured a kidnapped white woman

who becomes the goddess of an African community.

Overall, there's a lot of racist

and colonialist tropes in this genre.

The white adventurers face threats

from stereotypically-portrayed natives

who are constructed as uncivilized, violent,

and obsessed with white female beauty.

But another nefarious influence on "King Kong"'s story

may have been the faux documentary

racial exploitation film "Ingagi."

In the film, African women

are offered as sexual sacrifices to gorillas,

essentially pornography that grotesquely demonized

interracial relationships.

The 1930 film would be pulled from theaters

under the Hays Code,

but not before reaching box-office success.

It was one of the highest grossing

Hollywood films that year.

This financial success likely fueled RKO Radio Pictures'

investment in "King Kong"'s creation and distribution.

They just needed to monetize racism in a less obvious way.

Considering the overt racism

at the time "King Kong" was produced,

Kong's place in the dark history

of dehumanizing people of color is undeniable.

Comparing people to and portraying them as gorillas,

monkeys, and orangutans was a common practice at the time,

and these undertones in the film

would not have gone unnoticed by moviegoers in 1933.

The so-called savage ape, dark and menacing,

obsessed with the beauty of a white woman

he seizes for his own

was a pretty transparent metaphor for racist fears.

There's also the fact that Kong's physical journey

from his native land to the U.S. to be exploited for profit

aligns with the narrative of enslaved people.

King Kong appears at a time when civil rights deprivations

were fueling cause for equality in housing,

employment, and education.

"King Kong" can be read as a metaphor

for how Black men were treated

and are still treated in America

as both glorious spectacle and violent threat.

Kong evokes the dangerous exotic other,

but he is also a sympathetic character

that the audience is meant to identify with.

Kong triumphantly clutches

the top of the needle in one hand

-and Anne in the other. -[Anne screaming]

He has not just conquered the city, but the world.

At the time, the Empire State Building

was the tallest building in the world.

He towers over the symbol of modern civilization.

Cooper stated that part of the creature's inspiration

came from a desire to place a symbol of prehistoric life

in the modern mechanized world

and have a modern weapon, the airplane, kill him.

In a press release for the film, he said,

"Why not place him at the pinnacle

"of the tallest building,

"symbol in steel, stone, and aspiration,

and pit him against modern man?"

Of course, as a foreigner on U.S. soil,

Kong's triumph is short-lived.

A revived RKO Radio Pictures

followed up the success of "King Kong" with a quick sequel,

"Son of Kong," released just nine months later.

But then no new contributions

to the franchise until the 1960s.

Sure, there were re-releases that drew big crowds

and established a global audience,

but nothing new was added to the story for almost 30 years.

And when those changes came, they would be pretty big ones.

He wreaks havoc upon the city

and famously climbs the Empire State Building

before being shot down by mm-the military.

Sorry, it's okay, I'll do the whole paragraph again anyway.