-K-
PICK YOUR FAVORITE.
Since 1918 there have been fortyeight Tarzan movies. Fortyeight. 40 + 8.
1918 Tarzan of the Apes
Elmo Lincoln
1918 Romance of Tarzan
Elmo Lincoln
1920 The Revenge of Tarzan
(unk.)
1920 The Return of Tarzan
Gene Pollar
1921 The Son of Tarzan
P. Dempsey Tabler
1921 The Adventures of Tarzan
Elmo Lincoln
1927 Tarzan and the Golden Lion
James Pierce or Frederick Peters
1928 The Mighty Tarzan
Frank Merrill
1929 The Tiger Tarzan
Frank Merrill
1932 Tarzan, The Ape Man
Johnny Weissmuller
1933 Tarzan The Fearless
Buster Crabbe
1934 Tarzan and His Mater
Johnny Weissmuller
1935 The New Adventures of Tarzan
Bruce Bennett
1936 Tarzan Escapes
Johnny Weissmuller
1938 Tarzan and the Green Goddess
` Bruce Bennett
1938 Tarzan's Revenge
Glenn Morris
1939 Tarzan Finds a Son
Johnny Weissmuller
1941 Tarzan's Secret Treasure
Johnny Weissmuller
1942 Tarzan's New York Adventure
Johnny Weissmuller
1943 Tarzan's Desert Mystery
Johnny Weissmuller
1943 Tarzan Triumphs
Johnny Weissmuller
1945 Tarzan and the Amazons
Johnny Weissmuller
1946 Tarzan and the Leopard Woman
Johnny Weissmuller
1947 Tarzan and the Huntress
Johnny Weissmuller
1948 Tarzan and the Mermaids
Johnny Weissmuller
1949 Tarzan's Magic Fountain
Lex Barker
1950 Tarzan and the Slave Girl
aka Tarzan and the Jungle Queen
Lex Barker
1951 Tarzan's Peril
aka Tarzan and the Jungle Queen
Lex Barker
1952 Tarzan's Savage Fury
Lex Barker
1953 Tarzan and the She-Devil
Lex Barker
1954 Tarzan's Hidden Jungle
Gordon Scott
1957 Tarzan and the Lost Safari
Gordon Scott
1958 Tarzan and the Trappers
Gordon Scott
1958 Tarzan's Fight For Life
Gordon Scott
1959 Tarzan the Ape Man
Denny Miller
1959 Tarzan's Greatest Adventure
Gordon Scott
1960 Tarzan the Magnificent
Gordon Scott
1962 Tarzan Goes to India
Jock Mahoney
1963 Tarzan's Three Challenges
Jock Mahoney
1964 Tarzan and Jane Regained... Sor of
Taylor Mead
1966 Tarzan and the Valley of Gold
Mike Henry
1967 Tarzan and the Great River
Mike Henry
1968 Tarzan and the Jungle Boy
Mike Henry
1970 Tarzan's Deadly Silence
Ron Ely
1970 Tarzan's Jungle Rebellion
Ron Ely
1981 Gummi Tarzan
aka Rubber Tarzan
Soren Sjogreen
1981 Tarzan, The Ape Man
Miles O'Keeffe
1984 Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes
Christopher Lambert
Fortyeight!
Isn't the reoccurence a bit redundant?
No. Not really. Not unless you think colonialism is redundant.
***
I wish I heard more drums in the night. In Africa. Meaning the natives are restless. I would feel better if we were restless. Much more restless.
The real Africa is life without western morality clouding the issues. Without the eternal heaven hanging over our heads. Without the eternal hell burning our feet. How is it we are always -- in all and every way: physically, mentally, spiritually, realistically, and, above all, imaginatively -- we are always closer to hell than to heaven?
Does god want us in heaven? Why make heaven so hard to enter and so far away from our reality if god really wants us there?
I can not imagine heaven.
I can not imagine anything eternal.
To be is to change. That which is unchanging does not exist. The very definition of what something is is what something isn't. In that sense in order for Christians to believe in heaven, they must believe in hell. Now, did god create heaven and hell or did man?
Africa is hallcinatory.
"You can say that again, old chap."
You again.
"Shall we finish our fifty questions?" Tarzan does not wait for me to answer. "What is an African?" Tarzan does not wait for me to answer. "That's a man who has gone through hell and believes in dying to get to heaven. Isn't that something?" Tarzan does not wait for me to answer. "What is a heathen?" Tarzan does not wait for me to answer. "That's a bloke who refuses to go through hell, would even commit suicide rather than submit, but at the same time he's not dying to get to heaven. Isn't that something?" Tarzan does not wait for me to answer. "What's a bloody revolutionary?" Tarzan does not wait for me to answer. "That's a guy who's living in hell, is willing to kill you to get out, and doesn't believe in heaven? Which one are you?" Tarzan does not wait for me to answer.
Back in the States it's hard not to believe in White people. They're everywhere. They do everything. They have great luck. Like -- this is the absolute last part of the book to be written; everything else is complete except this little section, and yesterday this airforce pilot who was shot down in Bosnia walks out the forest essentially unharmed. This is the kind of shit that makes you think White people are invincible. They trumpet it in all the media. Thanks to CNN we have instant pictures. They start talking about survival training. His radio. His rations. His gun. And above all his belief in God and country. How he never gave up on western civilization. Wow. I wonder if this guy could have survived slavery. Wow. That's a "wow". Surviving slavery. But nine generations later, we are not feted, we are laughed at. And we are also confused. Too confused to answer fifty questions from Tarzan.
And it's hard to believe in Black people.
"I believe in Blacks. That's why I made so many movies. I know your potential better than you do."
"You know us better than we know ourselves?"
"As long as we're talking about the you that I created, of course, I do. But the rub, old chap, is that it's not about you. Tarzan is not about you, even though you may believe in Tarzan. Tarzan is about me."
He sees I don't believe him, no, that I don't understand him. I believe him. If I didn't believe him, he couldn't appear as Tarzan. His naked truths wouldn't be clothed in myths.
"Do you realize that most Tarzan movies are American creations. Yet, you blokes didn't have any African colonies even though you had one of the largest and most influential populations of Africans on the face of the earth. Besides my movies are philosophical. They're about desire and fantasy, and framing reality to conform to said drives. Whites were my audience more than you guys. You guys were... oh what's that term you use in Louisiana for something extra, lagging, napping, oh it's one of those French words?"
"Langniappe."
"Yes, that's it. Langniappe! That you guys believed in me was langniappe. Each of my movies was really designed to justify my need to bugger you. My need not just to conqueror you but to desire you. Me, Tarzan. My movies are the only place where it is respectible to 'go native'. Sure, I'm the king of the jungle, but the point is not only do I own the jungle, I also desire the jungle. The jungle is not my home but I desire the jungle." Tarzan falls suddenly silent. His face clouds.
"Is that why there have been more Tarzan movies than any other single character? I don't think Jesus has had as many features."
"Jesus would never have made it without me."
"What do you mean?"
"It's rather elementary, old chap. You wouldn't, indeed you couldn't believe in Jesus except that I conquerored you. My gun. My bible. My language. My morality. Those are the real drugs." Tarzan holds up the brandy sniffer. Quickly throws back the entire contents. "Besides, don't you understand that Tarzan means one thing to you and another thing to me." Pause. Tarzan looks at the brandy bottle. Pauses. His face brightens. "Enough. It's not good to get drunk in the presence of one's lessers."
Tarzan walks off into the night. He has left a sign on his chair: "The Never Ending Saga -- Coming Soon To Theaters Everywhere. EVERYWHERE!"
-L-
WHAT TIME IS IT?
On our third day in Ghana we traveled to Cape Coast for a week long colloquium which opened with a special candlelight procession to the castle. Because we were so late, after checking into the guest house, we drove straight to the castle and arrived before the program began.
Time is just another means of oppression. Tarzan introduces the concept of schedules, a clock that must constantly be adjusted to the sun, and a calendar that is always falling behind. Every four years they add a day trying to catch up. If we counted like that in traditional society, they would call us stupid. Since they are not stupid, they just say "leap year."
Calendars and clocks are conveniences of government, necessitated by the need to time the arrival of troops, of ships, of supplies.
"Tributes must be paid on..."
"Taxes are due on..."
"You may apply for your license to sell the things you have made between..."
"The plane arrives at..."
"The ship leaves on..."
Show me a government with an army and I guarantee they will have a calendar and clocks.
Calendars and clocks are a hold over from creating a culture in a climate that would kill you if you did not plant at a certain time of the year.
Calendars and clocks are not needed near the equator where the weather is roughly the same year round. You can plant yesterday, today and tomorrow. So, here we are imitating Tarzan with our pieces of paper. Putting numbers next to everything we want to do. A time for this. A date for that. And when we fail to be on time we blame ourselves. But we set ourselves up for our own fall.
Because Tarzan is everywhere, calendars and clocks are everywhere. And everywhere we use Tarzan's calendar and Tarzan's clock, even if we already had one of our own. Even if people keep going the way they did for centuries, rising with the sun and resting with the moon. We can not escape the tick tick tick of Tarzan's time whip. As long as we have to conform to Tarzan's time, we are not free.
***
Ghana teaches you the wisdom of patience, of moving on a human scale, of taking conditions into consideration, of being inclusive. That's what the elastic time concept is about: embracing.
Embracing everyone. Africans know time should be made to fit people rather than people forced to fit time.
When we get to the airport to leave Ghana, we are informed that the outbound flight is delayed four hours. Instead of round midnight, estimated time of departure is now 4:00 a.m. in the morning -- emphasis on "estimated." It seems the plane had to go to London and was delayed in London which meant that it will get to Ghana late, which means that it will leave Ghana late.
And what is wrong with that? What is wrong with dealing with changing conditions. Industrialism was the rule of the assembly line, the time clock, the schedule, and there was nothing human about it. We bent to it, conformed, fought, resisted, submitted, tied our stomachs in knots, made Excedrin rich. Headaches became the order of the day, and we keel over at forty-five, victims of Type A heart attacks and strokes.
At the end of your life, a clock will not be the measurement of your contribution so why let a mechanical object determine how you move about and interrelate with others?
I have never forgotten Malcolm X's admonition to organizers to respect people's time and to try always to be on time in keeping one's word. But I doubt Malcolm would mechanically apply that dictum, especially to the point of being impatient when people exhibit a non-Western sensibility.
Working in cultural production in the Caribbean throughout the '80s taught me to appreciate that the hustle and bustle characteristic of the business world in the USA just doesn't cut it in many places outside of the tyranny of computerized time keeping. My rule of thumb for doing business in the developing world is to plan no more than two appointments a day -- one in the morning, one in the afternoon, and to count myself lucky if I accomplish both.
I know there are those who think I'm simply making excuses for people who would be better off joining the industrial world and learning to be punctual. I know there are those for whom the maxim "time is money" is gospel. But what is time to poor people, people who don't have a chance in the world of making a million dollars in their lifetime? Regardless of what being in the West might teach us, time is not money. Time is simply a measurement of change. Where change is slow moving. Where change is routine, grinding relentlessly the same, day after day after day. Where indigenously determined order is constantly subverted by external authority. In those places, time is, relatively speaking, expendable.
Once immersed into the Third World, time, as both a thing and a concept, becomes subordinate to people. Life ceases to be measured by the ticking of a clock or the speed by which things are made.
Making widgets on time is not living. Relating to others is living.
Loving one's neighbor -- do we even know who our neighbors are? Rearing children. Dancing with friends. Sharing conversation and music. Traveling with a soul mate. Eating fresh food. Learning what one doesn't know. That's living.
In Cape Coast at night we would sit out under the tree and talk. The art of conversation as the main source of adult "entertainment" is passÇ in the contemporary West, and I realized just how unfortunate that was as we sat exchanging ideas, drinking tea, water, juice, and getting to know one another in ways that don't happen at meetings and conferences, or at panel sessions and at formal banquets.
Making quiet love in the morning, aroused by the continuance of a conversation that started yesterday is living. Being artificially aroused to sexual activity by subliminal advertising, or by explicit equations of random copulating with happiness and satisfaction is not living. That's being sexually manipulated.
Once away from the constant stimulus of violence and sex which is the social ambiance of America, after awhile the body adjusts. I could actually hold a conversation with a woman without wondering how it would be to be in bed with her.
We are under an unrelenting mindfuck in the USA, behavior modification so severe that it twists our every perception of what the nature of social relationships ought to be. Because we go through life looking only for what we have been told to look for -- at 9:00 a.m. a meeting with..., at 7:30 p.m. we'll meet for dinner at..., at whatever "tick-tick-tick" time we will whatever... -- we are lost. We find ourselves unable to reach out, unable to communicate with others.
Our ability to see what is in front of us becomes very, very myopic because we spend most of our time looking for the scheduled that is not there rather than appreciating the unscheduled that is always there.
We had gone for a performance at the National Theatre in Accra. When we got there we found that it was really an upscale, Eurocentric oriented, US$50 per person fashion show with music performances interspersed. Rather than waste money, we decided to get something to eat in the adjoining cafe. After eating, Nia and I were sitting and talking. A fellow passed. I said he looked like he was from Trinidad. Something told me to speak to him. I spoke up, but he was already well pass me. He didn't hear me. I hadn't spoken very loudly. Then he came back and sat at the next table from us, talking with some people he obviously knew.
I looked at Nia. I decided to try again. I reached over, "Excuse me. Are you from Trinidad." He was. "How did you know?" One thing led to another. We introduce ourselves and Bob Ramdhanie, Administrative Director of Black Voices, an acapella, female singing group from England, joins our table. We talk. Delightful coincidences abound. I have played selections by Black Voices on my radio program in New Orleans. Bob also knows Marta Vega of the Caribbean Cultural Center. Plus, he was a participant in one of the England based regional meetings of the Global Network for Cultural Equity. I am representing the Global Network at PANAFEST. We begin talking about people we both know in England. Before the night is over, Bob introduces us to F. Nii-Yartey, the Artistic Director of the National Dance Company of Ghana, who in turn invites us to see a children's dance program which we otherwise would not have checked out.
The next evening, Nia and I attend Nii's program which focuses on the world of the children who basically live on the streets of Africa.
The dancing was exuberant, some of it on a par level with any of the professional companies we have seen at PANAFEST. There was a strong element of Western pop dance incorporated into many of the moves. I could not help but smile because what is generally identified as Western or American pop, is actually African American.
Even though much of our culture is presented under the general rubric of "Western" and even though the "star" performers are often Whites, the fact is, at its core, Western musical culture is African.
Part of Nii's praxis of choreography was the stylization of everyday movements. Children as young as five and six years old were performing as though they were professionals. At some point the dance floor was filled with at least forty children creating scenes of chaos, brutality, caring, anger, love. All with a minimum of dialogue. It was smoking.
Suppose I hadn't reached out to Trinidad? My tendency is to remain aloof, but everywhere we went in Africa, people were there, people who, to an extraordinarily large degree, shared our interest in Africa and development. In the West we ride through our lives encased in shells and don't routinely reach out to others.
In the West we are living under threat of a slave culture, a culture which enslaves and arrests the human spirit. We don't trust each other. The person we talk to might turn around and rob us. Kill us. Steal our dreams.
It's not about rejecting Euro-centric concepts of time in an abstract sense but rather about making the embracing of other humans the primary consideration of our living. Choosing to elevate the creation of community rather than the manufacture of things. The patient embracing of each other, in all our contradictory and sometimes inspiring, sometimes disappointing humanity, rather than the artificial adherence to a schedule which forces us to flagellate ourselves with the Western whip of time until our social backs are bloody.
How can we be free if we have neither the time nor the temperament to love and relate to each other?
—kalamu ya salaam