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Burroughs almost hypocritically talks of, “that arch hypocrite, Leopold II of Belgium, because of whose atrocities they (Africans) had fled the Congo Free State..”. A perusal of the history of colonization shows us that Belgium had occupied a large chunk of Africa called the Belgian Congo.
Belgium was no doubt seen as a threat by other European nations, who were on a similar ‘civilising mission’, and had dispatched many a “Father Constantine” to legitimize their intrusion, lauding it as the ‘white man’s burden’.
In later novels, Russians are villains – e.g. Rokoff and Paulovitch in "The Return of Tarzan" and "The Beasts of Tarzan". Arabs are also demonised in subsequent Tarzan books. In "Tarzan of the Apes" itself, we have the two caricatured characters of Professor Archimedes Porter and his assistant Samuel T. Philander discussing the Spaniards and the Moors; Professor Porter asserts that “Moslemism was, is, and always will be, a blight on …scientific progress…”. Colonisation offers a fig leaf in the form of ‘progress’, and in the process the land and the Bible exchange hands. Political and religious ideology makes its presence felt in Tarzan.
As an anthropologist, Burroughs is pleasantly vague. His apes are carnivorous, and they are able, he darkly suspects, to mate with human beings. Terkoz on seeing Tarzan pursuing him, concludes that, “this (Jane) was Tarzan’s woman”, and rejoices, “at this opportunity for double revenge upon his hated enemy”. Though an ape ‘desiring’ a human mate is obviously an anomaly, what comes across as even more shocking is that he thinks that he can avenge himself using Jane. Terkoz here thinks like the ‘other’ man despite his inferior intelligence – a WASP woman is always ‘desirable’ to the ‘other’. So, are Burroughs’ apes, really apes? The ape “Death Dance”, an imitation of the so called ‘rites and rituals of tribal Africa’ makes one suspect otherwise. The apes seem to be just another extension of “savage tribal” Africa, and consequently, less animal and more “savage”.
As some feminists have pointed out, colonization has its roots in patriarchy. More often than not, women are considered property. If Terkoz considers Jane property, so does Tarzan when he “takes his woman into his arms and carries her into the Jungle”, no doubt to rape her. Once again heredity triumphs, and he behaves like the “perfect gentleman”, and Jane is not molested. But then again, the very notion of chivalry is steeped in patriarchy, wherein a woman becomes someone who is, to quote the sentimental lovelorn Tarzan, “created to be protected, and…he (Tarzan)… created to protect her”.
In "Tarzan of the Apes", Easthope tells us ideologies of empire and race are reinforced with the masculinist ideology of gender. Women are immobile, naturally loving and potentially transcendent, while men are active, aggressive rationalists. We see the traditional gender distinction between the Madonna and the Whore mapped onto the distinction between the ‘civilised’ and the ‘barbaric’. We see two versions of Jane. First as Jane the Baltimore girl; and then the African Jane who watches with “…mingled horror, fascination, fear, and admiration…the primordial ape battle with primeval man for possession of a woman – for her”. In the ‘heart of darkness’ the, “veil of centuries of civilisation and culture”, is swept, “from the blurred vision of the Baltimore girl”. The text envisages a woman as, ‘actively experiencing heterosexual desire’.
While Tarzan expresses one version of feminine sexuality, it simultaneously denies another. Easthope points out that for Tarzan, his ape mother Kala was an object of Oedipal desire - he considered her “kind and beautiful”. Easthope argues that a post-puberty Tarzan should have similarly found either another adult ape, or some African woman attractive. But this obviously does not happen as his ‘race’ can’t be contaminated. By completely denying any desire for the African ‘other’, and instead displacing and sublimating such desire onto Jane and the wish for her as a composite figure between ‘civilised’ and ‘savage’; Easthope feels that the novel contradicts itself at a fundamental level. Sexuality is thus circumscribed by the ‘projections of the white European male mind’.
The object position of all women, especially non-WASP, which the textuality of Tarzan reinforces, is also reflected in the movie-remakes of the book, as well as in the comic strips. As Kovel points out, mass media and the movie industry have had an obvious ‘white male nationalist propagandist character’. No wonder then that in one comic strip called "Legion of Hate", an all woman African nation – called of course a “tribe” – and referred to as ‘Amazons’, forge an alliance with the Nazis only because they are interested in “mating with white men”.
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Pallavi Mogre
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