Tree Surfer

Is a human any different than an animal? This is the question that drives the various incarnations of Tarzan, including the original novel, but it gets lost in the shuffle in Disney's 1999 animated version of Tarzan. It's tragic, too, because this movie is really firing on all cylinders. Glen Keane had returned after an absence of three films to create one of the strangest and most remarkably animated Disney characters, Tarzan himself, and the lushness of the forest backgrounds is breathtaking. But Phil Collins' singing narration is a pale substitute for the characters singing in previous films of the Disney Renaissance and in general the film is lost in the shadows of three predecessors--The Jungle Book, The Lion King, and Pocahontas--for different reasons. Worst of all, in a story that should ruminate on primal urges, it lacks sexual chemistry between its leads.

That's in spite of the fact that Tarzan is so remarkably animated. Supervising animator Glen Keane drew inspiration from professional surfers and skateboarders to depict a Tarzan who races along bare branches, hunched over, more than he swings from vines (though there is vine swinging, too).

Like previous film incarnations of Tarzan, there's no explanation for his loincloth or his lack of a beard, and to this Disney adds inexplicable dreadlocks. But, okay, a man's hair that's never been washed might mat together strangely (though we see him jump in the water plenty of times). The original book, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, does explain the loincloth and lack of beard--when Tarzan encounters human tribes living nearby, he desires to establish his own humanity by imitating their tendency to shave and wear clothes--he takes a loincloth from a man he kills. Of course, Disney's film can't have this because they chose to completely avoid black characters and black actors. And this is how attempts to avoid racism so often end up perpetuating weird racial neuroticism. Edgar Rice Burroughs' original novel, 1912's Tarzan of the Apes, has some dated racial ideas and language and even features Tarzan developing a prejudice against black people but the novel itself is not a racist screed. The stridency with which some scholars deride its perceived racism is of course the same kind of outrage that makes producers at Disney paranoid to this day. Since the rules put forward by such commentators are inconsistent and have no intrinsic logic, the only hope Disney might have to placate them is to avoid issues entirely, which of course can be used as grounds for complaint, too.

In the book, the only people Tarzan meets as he grows up are people with whom he and the apes are in conflict and, it being west Africa, the people Tarzan encounters are black. The handful of shipwrecked white people are nicer to him so it's implied he perceives a fundamental difference between black and white people. But crucially, this is something Burroughs describes Tarzan as growing away from.

Tarzan fitted his bow with a poisoned arrow, but D’Arnot placed a hand upon his arm.

“What would you do, Tarzan?” he asked.

“They will try to kill us if they see us,” replied Tarzan. “I prefer to be the killer.”

“Maybe they are friends,” suggested D’Arnot.

“They are black,” was Tarzan’s only reply.

And again he drew back his shaft.

“You must not, Tarzan!” cried D’Arnot. “White men do not kill wantonly. Mon Dieu! but you have much to learn.

“I pity the ruffian who crosses you, my wild man, when I take you to Paris. I will have my hands full keeping your neck from beneath the guillotine.”

Tarzan lowered his bow and smiled.

“I do not know why I should kill the blacks back there in my jungle, yet not kill them here. Suppose Numa, the lion, should spring out upon us, I should say, then, I presume: Good morning, Monsieur Numa, how is Madame Numa; eh?”

“Wait until the blacks spring upon you,” replied D’Arnot, “then you may kill them. Do not assume that men are your enemies until they prove it.”

“Come,” said Tarzan, “let us go and present ourselves to be killed,” and he started straight across the field, his head high held and the tropical sun beating upon his smooth, brown skin.

And then, later:

“Monsieur Tarzan has not expressed himself,” said one of the party. “A man of his prowess who has spent some time in Africa, as I understand Monsieur Tarzan has, must have had experiences with lions—yes?”

“Some,” replied Tarzan, dryly. “Enough to know that each of you are right in your judgment of the characteristics of the lions—you have met. But one might as well judge all blacks by the fellow who ran amuck last week, or decide that all whites are cowards because one has met a cowardly white.

“There is as much individuality among the lower orders, gentlemen, as there is among ourselves. Today we may go out and stumble upon a lion which is over-timid—he runs away from us. To-morrow we may meet his uncle or his twin brother, and our friends wonder why we do not return from the jungle. For myself, I always assume that a lion is ferocious, and so I am never caught off my guard.

It's not exactly clear if Tarzan includes black people among the lower orders at this point. D'Arnot's idea that "white men do not kill wantonly" is contradicted by the book's inclusion of murderous white mutineers but Burroughs does explicitly espouse a philosophy of breeding, of inherited personality traits, that comes off as more Royalist than racist, though certainly the ideas aren't mutually exclusive.

It was a stately and gallant little compliment performed with the grace and dignity of utter unconsciousness of self. It was the hall-mark of his aristocratic birth, the natural outcropping of many generations of fine breeding, an hereditary instinct of graciousness which a lifetime of uncouth and savage training and environment could not eradicate.

What this puts me in mind of is Oroonoko, Aphra Behn's 1688 novel about a black, African prince whose refined nature is ascribed by Behn to the superiority of royal breeding. So Burroughs' own attitude need not necessarily have been to insist black skin made a person inferior. There are also numerous instances where Burroughs clearly decries the evil of slavery.

The absence of black characters or actors is certainly conspicuous and unnecessary in Disney's film but a bigger problem is a thematic shift from Tarzan as the human whose ingenuity and reason set him apart from his ape community to Tarzan as the funny looking kid who just wants to fit in with the intelligent apes. As is often the case in Disney films, the animals are depicted as being just as intelligent as humans, which works fine in most movies, but in this movie precludes any possibility of Burroughs' original argument having any meaningful place. It's the central, intellectual material the book continually puzzles over--what is Tarzan going to do and why? And what are the implications for human nature?

So that's one fundamental problem with Disney's film. The other problem is the lack of chemistry between Tarzan (Tony Goldwyn) and Jane (Minnie Driver). An instructive comparison could be drawn between this film and Pocahontas. While Pocahontas is certainly not a great film, its lead characters had an abundance of sexual chemistry. It's readily comparable because Disney's Tarzan has almost the same plot--evil colonialists show up, one them meets a sympathetic savage and falls in love, and in the process learns to respect the beauty of nature while the colonialist leader wants only to exploit the land/capture the gorillas. Glen Keane animated Pocahontas and you know he did a fantastic job of making her sexy because of how much prudes complain about her to this day. John Smith, as written, may not be terribly interesting but Mel Gibson's performance is virile and playful in a way that makes him sparkle.

Minnie Driver's Jane is flustered and enthusiastic about exploration but generally kind of sexless. She has a few wink-wink lines about the guy in the loincloth that are redolent of late '90s ironical sexual humour. She might have gained some traction but Tarzan himself is such a wet blanket. Goldwyn's performance is just affable and there's no sense of the instinctive physical attraction that overwhelms him and Jane in Burroughs' book or in previous film adaptations. Maybe this is just too much to expect of Disney but the sexual chemistry between Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan, from the 1930s Tarzan movies, is legendary. And kids watched those movies without being corrupted, one assumes.

It's such a shame because there are signs in this film that Disney was willing to go outside its comfort zone. It actually implies the death of a child and shows the corpses of Tarzan's parents. It's the last film of the Disney Renaissance and the full might of the art department is brought to bear on stunning backgrounds. There are good supporting performances by Lance Henriksen, Glenn Close, and Brian Blessed, the last of whom plays the film's Gaston-esque villain, another humdrum caricature of evil macho men that so much of the younger generation now seem to believe is the whole truth of European history. But it's a fun, campy performance. Oh, well.

Tarzan is available on Disney+.

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This is part of a series of posts I'm writing on the Disney animated canon.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Pinocchio
Fantasia
Dumbo
Bambi
Saludos Amigos
The Three Caballeros
Make Mine Music
Fun and Fancy Free
Melody Time
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
Cinderella
Alice in Wonderland
Peter Pan
Lady and the Tramp
Sleeping Beauty
101 Dalmatians
The Sword in the Stone
The Jungle Book
The Aristocats
Robin Hood
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
The Rescuers
The Fox and the Hound
The Black Cauldron
The Great Mouse Detective
Oliver & Company
The Little Mermaid
The Rescuers Down Under
Beauty and the Beast
Aladdin
The Lion King
Pocahontas
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hercules
Mulan