Kong: Confronting The Gorilla In The Room (CELLULOID SECESSIONIST)

It is tempting to dismiss “Kong: Skull Island” as nothing more than hairy action-adventure mind candy for the movie-going masses. All criteria are in play. Mysterious cloud-enshrouded island? Check. Giant CGI-inspired gorilla? Double check. Inevitable helicopter/monkey confrontation? Roger that. Guns, fire fights, chest thumping? Triple check. Hot chicks and dashing dudes? Make it so. As a predictable Hollywood set piece, “Kong” delivers thrills, mayhem, and surprises in equal measure. Truth be told, I was pleasantly surprised, right down to Kong himself, who is rendered surprisingly, well, human, a gargantuan study in emotional range and depth.

More provocatively, a closer read of Kong reveals deeper mysteries. In fact, with a bit of probing and dot connecting, we might read “Kong” as a cautionary tale, a parable for our own time, our 21^st century Age of Atomic Geoengineering, and the global dominance of the U.S. of Empire. Let’s set the stage. As “Kong” begins, a quick World War II opening sequence introduces the Gorilla. Remember, in popular memory, Americans consider World War II as the last ‘good war’ – one with clearly discernible white hats (the Allies) and black hats (Euro-Nazis and the Japanese Empire). “Kong” then fasts forwards and unfolds during the early 1970s, as the Vietnam War winds down, and a secret US government search for a mythological island full of monsters and mystery cranks up. Cue an all-star cast, including Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, Samuel Jackson, John Goodman and John C Reilly.

“Kong” as cautionary tale – really? Yes. Backstory. By the 1970s, the Atomic Age of Geoengineering was in full swing – two Atomic bombs had destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in August 1945, inaugurating thousands of geological and atmospheric tests over the next several decades. The US government’s goals? To 1) secretly and aggressively test A and H bombs in the US desert and the world’s oceans, 2) conduct global weather modification experiments, and 3) pursue secret projects to “weaponize the weather” through scientific application of technology to nature– the creation of artificial earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts emerged as new weapons in the US quest for global “full spectrum dominance.” From 1965-1975, Vietnam proved a country-wide testing ground for these US experiments, marked by the wholesale obliteration of the Vietnamese jungle (and people) through an aggressive toxic chemical deforestation campaign (20 million gallons of Agent Orange and other chemical agents, to be precise), a “kill everything that moves” policy of total warfare (See investigative journalist Nick Turse’s new book of the same title), and a prolonged campaign of weather modification (code named, yes, wait for it – “Operation Popeye”) to create storms that flooded the Ho Chi Minh trail and destroyed north Vietnamese supply lines.

Interestingly, “Kong” taps into this real-life and largely forgotten zeitgeist within moments of our research team’s arrival on Skull Island. The giant gorilla quickly dispatches an entire squadron of US army helicopters, and we soon learn that the island is full of creatures much scarier than Kong. The team’s scientists quickly fade into the background, and (surprise!) the soldiers step to the fore to bring the fight to “the enemy.” A multiracial exploratory team, meanwhile, discovers a lost indigenous civilization with deeper, more primal wisdom, natives harboring a World War II veteran (a surprisingly charismatic John C. Reilly) who wants nothing more than to return to the U.S. to watch the Chicago Cubs win the pennant and consume copious amounts of hot dogs and beer.

How “Kong” plays out I leave for you to discover. Suffice to say, the American age of innocence is over, and the gorilla in our 21^st century living room is now a US Empire bent on full spectrum dominance of the entire Planet and outer space by any means necessary. In this way, “Skull Island” metaphorically mirrors our own time, as our Skull Island survivors struggle to determine if they should try and finish Kong for good, or escape from Skull Island while they still can. In the “art mirrors life” arena, “Kong” is surprisingly fresh, whether you are looking for escapist entertainment or a parable for our own civilizational moment. “Monsters DO exist,” to quote “Kong,” but they often appear in guises that may surprise US.