{"id":256916,"date":"2016-07-20T08:34:19","date_gmt":"2016-07-20T08:34:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/letting-tarzan-swing-through-history\/"},"modified":"2016-07-20T08:34:19","modified_gmt":"2016-07-20T08:34:19","slug":"letting-tarzan-swing-through-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/letting-tarzan-swing-through-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Letting Tarzan Swing Through History"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Originally posted at TomDispatch<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

At almost 72, I recently went to The Legend of Tarzan<\/em>, the IMAX version,
\n with a screen so big I almost stepped inside it and a soundscape so all-enveloping
\n that my already pathetic hearing might have been blown away for good.
\n Still, however \u201cimmersive\u201d the experience was meant to be, I found
\n it so much less thrilling than the 3-D of my childhood. I\u2019ll never
\n forget watching Fort Ti<\/a><\/em>
\n in 1953 at age nine and hitting the floor the moment the first flaming arrow
\n headed directly for me.<\/p>\n

As for Tarzan, what were they thinking in Hollywood? I watched bemused
\n as the Ape Man flexed his creaking joints, swung from vine to vine, and fought
\n all manner of friend and foe in an effort to be up-to-date. If you want
\n to see a white savior film that\u2019s more of our moment, check out T<\/em>he
\n Free State of Jones<\/em>, set in the \u201cjungles\u201d of southern Mississippi
\n in the Civil War era, with plenty of Tarzan-style vines to go around.
\n All I can say is that, as far as I was concerned, only the animated great apes
\n \u2013 Tarzan\u2019s buddies and rivals \u2013 showed a spark of real life.<\/p>\n

Still, I wouldn\u2019t have missed the film for the world. After all, it\u2019s
\n the first action movie that \u2013 as you\u2019ll see from TomDispatch<\/em>
\n regular<\/a> Adam Hochschild\u2019s piece today \u2013 has ever based itself
\n in any way on a book I edited, in this case his classic King
\n Leopold\u2019s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa<\/em><\/a>.
\n As a result, I left the theater filled with wild fantasies. (Even editors
\n can dream, can\u2019t they?) I began to imagine Who
\n Rules the World?<\/em><\/a>, Noam Chomsky\u2019s latest<\/a>
\n book, absorbed into a future X-Men: Apocalypse America<\/em>. Or the late<\/a>
\n Chalmers Johnson\u2019s Dismantling
\n the Empire<\/em><\/a> as the basis for the next Jason Bourne romp. Or Ann
\n Jones\u2019s They
\n Were Soldiers<\/em><\/a> at the grim heart of American Sniper: The Next Generation<\/em>.
\n Or, in Tarzan-style, Andrew Bacevich\u2019s writing<\/a>
\n on America\u2019s twenty-first-century Middle Eastern wars as part of a reboot
\n of Lawrence of Arabia <\/em> \u2013 perhaps <\/em>King
\n David<\/em><\/a> of Iraq: The Surge to Nowhere<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Now, let me dream on while you read about Adam Hochschild\u2019s encounter
\n with what might be thought of as the latest version of Planet of the Apes<\/em>.
\n ~\u00a0Tom<\/em><\/p>\n

Me Tarzan, You Adam<\/strong>
How I Met the Ghosts of My Own Work in a Local Multiplex<\/strong>
By Adam Hochschild<\/b><\/p>\n

Some time ago I wrote a book about one of the great crimes of the last 150
\n years: the conquest and exploitation of the Congo by King Leopold II of Belgium.
\n When King
\n Leopold\u2019s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa<\/em><\/a>
\n <\/em>was published, I thought I had found all the major characters in that brutal
\n patch of history. But a few weeks ago I realized that I had left one out: Tarzan.<\/p>\n

Let me explain. Although a documentary film<\/a>
\n based on my book did appear, I often imagined what…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally posted at TomDispatch. At almost 72, I recently went to The Legend of Tarzan, the IMAX version, with a screen so big I almost stepped inside it and a soundscape so all-enveloping that my already pathetic hearing might have been blown away for good. Still, however \u201cimmersive\u201d the experience was meant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-256916","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256916\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}