Tarzan
Tarzan (in English: Tarzan) is a fictional character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Its first appearance was in the pulp magazine All Story Magazine in October 1912, later adapted as a novel (Tarzan of the Apes) and followed by twenty-three sequels, in addition to having It has been adapted numerous times, especially for film and television.
Tarzan Story
John Clayton III, Lord Greystoke, is the only son of a British aristocratic couple abandoned in the African bush at the turn of the century XIX after the mutiny of the ship they were traveling on. After the death of his parents, John is adopted by a herd of gorilla-like apes, the "mangani", they call him "Tarzan", which in magani means "white skin". Tarzan acquired great physical abilities, he could jump from trees, swing from lianas and was capable of facing any wild animal to defend his family from him; likewise, he also inherited a high level of mental ability.
He only comes into contact with humans again when he is an adult. In this period, he learns to speak French and English and visits the civilized world, but turns it down to return to the jungle. In later stories other adventures are told that he carries out, several times discovering lost civilizations.
The plots are sometimes repetitive, emphasizing the heroic and invincible nature of the protagonist, and with a similar stylistic construction.
By its very nature, Tarzan's plot and imagery have a certain tendency to transgress, from the point of view of being a British aristocrat who prefers to live like a savage. This closeness to transgression reappeared with the character of Jane, also a white woman with whom he initially lives and later marries. Curiously, or perhaps not so much, the written story is more transgressive than its later appearance in the field of the image.
For example, in the series of novels, Jane and Tarzan have a son, Korak the Slayer, while on the screen they have no children, Boy would be an adopted son. The son as heir to the characteristics of the father, but without reaching his level, is typical of the author's literature, as can also be seen in his Martian series.
The character in the field of the image has the possibility of going beyond the existing customs until now: he appears with the first two-piece outfit and no underwear under it, worn by Maureen O'Sullivan in Tarzan of the jumpsuits, which was replaced in the third film, Tarzan's Escape, by a longer, one-piece suit, in application of the Hays code. Jane would later appear topless in the film Tarzan, the ape man, played by Bo Derek in 1981.
Interpretations
Herner de Larrea (1974) compiled two lines of thought about the existing ideology behind the character.
Update on a universal myth
One interpretation holds that Tarzan is the modern incarnation of the ancient literary tradition of the "animal-raised hero". Other examples are Romulus and Remus by Virgil (2007), the legendary founding brothers of Rome who were suckled by a she-wolf, and Mowgli from The Jungle Book, written by Rudyard Kipling (1894) also about a boy raised by wolves who gains the ability to communicate with some animals.
The story of Tarzan is reminiscent of what is known as the Myth of the noble savage, already outlined by Tacitus in his book on the peoples of Germany. According to this myth, people who live in isolation and in nature are not contaminated by civilization; thus the boy can develop all his physical qualities thanks to living in said environment, something that a civilized world would prevent. It is also based on non-scientific ideas, more recent than Virgil's work, about evolution and social Darwinism, explored in the popular literature of the period by authors such as Jack London and Robert E. Howard.
A 19th century character
On the other hand, there is the point of view according to which Burroughs' work is typical of his time, with a colonialist vision of Africa, its fauna and even its people. In the various novels, and later other genres, he sees himself as a white man, not only adapting perfectly to a habitat that is not his own, but coming to completely dominate it and be its "natural" king. 34;, despite the advantage of the black race in some physical activities. small-caps;text-transform:lowercase">XIX. A similar vision would be followed by the Belgian artist Herge when he drew Tintin in 1930, who is carried in the scent of multitudes through the Congo and hunts incessantly; It is necessary to note that even the author himself apologized for this story, especially given the cruelty shown to the animals that he kills even with explosives. Later Lee Falk and Ray Moore created The Phantom in 1936, who shares some qualities with Tarzan physical and also being the monarch of the natives with whom the different generations live.
Despite the vision of the Belgian hero, according to which Africa was an inexhaustible territory at the service of the white man, the incipient nineteenth-century protective of Nature thought did emerge progressively. Tarzan shows these shades by being against the indiscriminate killing of beasts and hunting them in hand-to-hand combat, not with traps or other means. This was an idea brought by the Europeans to the Black Continent, that of killing animals as quickly and painlessly as possible, following an incipient ecological thought.
Tarzan in other media
The King of the Monkeys has been taken to virtually every existing medium.
Cinema
The Internet Movie Database lists eighty-nine films about Tarzan from 1918 to 2010. The first of these was a silent film adapted from the original novel shortly after the character's appearance titled Tarzan from the monkeys and played by Elmo Lincoln and Gordon Griffith in the roles of the adult and child king of the monkeys respectively.
With the introduction of sound in the film industry, Tarzan became a thriving franchise between 1930 and 1960. Former Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmüller was the protagonist of this franchise for twelve adaptations, which began in 1932 with the production Tarzan the Ape Man, appearing the, from that moment, unmistakable cry. Weissmüller and his immediate successors in the role portrayed a foul-mouthed, savage Tarzan in stark contrast to the cultured aristocrat of Burroughs's novels. Only in 1959, with the film Tarzan's Greatest Adventure, starring Gordon Scott, did the character return to being the refined English speaker.
On the big screen Tarzan has been played by the following actors:
- Elmo Lincoln, 1918
- Johnny Weissmüller, 1932, 1934, 1936, 1939, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1943, 1945, 1946, 1947, 1948
- Buster Crabbe, 1933
- Bruce Bennett, 1935, 1938
- Glen Morris, 1938
- Lex Barker, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1953
- Peng Fei, 1940
- Tamar Balci, 1952
- Clint Walker, 1954
- Gordon Scott, 1955, 1957, 1958, 1958, 1959, 1960
- Denny Miller, 1959
- Jock Mahoney, 1962, 1963
- Ron Ely, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1970
- Mike Henry, 1966, 1967, 1968
- Steve Hawkes, 1969, 1972
- David Carpenter, 1973
- Miles O'Keeffe, 1981
- Christopher Lambert, 1984
- Casper Van Dien 1998
- Tony Goldwyn, 1999 (as a voice in the animated film)
- Alex D. Linz, 1999 (as a voice in the animated film)
- Kellan Lutz, 2013 (as a voice in the animated film)
- Alexander Skarsgård, 2016
Cartoon
The cartoon Tarzan of the Monkeys, drawn by Harold Foster for United Feature Syndicate, began to be published in several North American newspapers on January 7, 1929. The comic, adaptation of Burroughs's first novel, was completed on March 16 of the same year, and Foster turned down the commission to adapt the second novel. The full-page Sunday strip began publication on March 15, 1931 with art by Rex Maxon.
In 1936 came the big break for Burne Hogarth, whose work on the series introduced a baroque turmoil and dynamism that was unprecedented in other comics of the time. Hogarth took over the Sunday page for Tarzan for a total of twelve years, from 1937 to 1945, and from 1947 to 1950.
In 1972, Burne Hogarth returned to comics and the character that had made him famous with Tarzan of the Apes, a large-format hardcover book published by Watson Guptill in eleven languages, which was considered one of the first graphic novels. It was followed four years later by Jungle Tales of Tarzan (1976), integrating previously unattempted techniques such as occult or negative spatial imagery with Goethe-inspired color themes to achieve visual depiction. harmonious.
Radius
In the United States, Tarzan was the hero of two popular shows: the first between 1932 and 1936 with James Pierce in the title role; the second between 1951 and 1953 with Lamont Johnson in the same character.
In Argentina, at the beginning of the 1950s, Radio Splendid broadcast a series called The Adventures of Tarzan, with César Llanos as the main star, seconded by Mabel Landó and Oscar Rovito.
Television
Throughout the second half of the XX century, Tarzan has seen numerous television adaptations. The first of these, consisting of three episodes filmed in 1958 and starring actor Gordon Scott, who played the character in several films, failed to attract the attention of American television networks and was never broadcast. Almost a decade later, in 1966, a new series called Tarzan appeared on American television for two seasons, with actor Ron Ely in the role of Lord of the Jungle. The character was adapted for a younger audience, choosing animation for this, with series such as Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle (1976-1977), Batman/Tarzan Adventure Hour (1977–1978), Tarzan and the Super 7 (1978–1980), The Tarzan/Lone Ranger Adventure Hour (1980–1981) and The Tarzan/Lone Ranger/Zorro Adventure Hour (1981–1982). After an absence of several years, the character returned with a made-for-TV movie, Tarzan in Manhattan, starring the actor Joe Lara, who would reprise the character in the series Tarzan: The Epic Adventures for one season in 1996. Between the film and the series starring Lara, Wolf Larson starred for three seasons in the series from 1991 called simply Tarzan.
At the turn of the 21st century, the character continued to appear on TV in the US and abroad. Thus, the success of the Disney film dedicated to the character spawned an animated series, The Legend of Tarzan (2001-2003), focused on a mostly children's audience. On the contrary, the series Tarzan starring Travis Fimmel in 2003 tried to adapt the character to the new times, with a more independent Jane working as a police officer and a series of adventures centered in New York.
In addition to these series, Tarzan movies have been regularly reruns not only on American television, but also on networks in many other countries, helping to increase the popularity of the character.
Imitators and Parodies
The great popularity of Tarzan in newspaper strips and comics caused many authors to imitate the character creating various heroes and heroines of the jungle with mixed success. One of his less fortunate imitators was Ka-Zar, whose adventures were written by Bob Byrd and published in 1939 in the eponymous pulp magazine, published by one of Martin Goodman's publishers, better known for being the founder of Timely Comics (which it would later be called Marvel Comics); Ka-Zar would soon become a comic book character and would be reinvented and incorporated into the Marvel Universe in the 1960s. In contrast, Ki-Gor, a character featured in the pulp magazine Jungle Stories, would star in fifty-nine adventures between 1938 and 1954. In 1937 Will Eisner and Jerry Iger created Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, the most famous and successful "jungle girl".
There have also been various parodies of the character, in different formats such as printed comic strips, television animated series or movies. Among them we can highlight:
- the cartoon of 1967, George of the Jungle, created by Jay Ward,
- the 1997 film George of the Jungle inspired by the previous series of drawings,
- the 2003 film George of the Jungle 2 sequel from the previous one,
- the series of cartoons George of the jungle, launched in 2008.
El Magazine, a supplement published on Sundays by El Mundo, indicated in 2012 that the figure of Tarzan if published for the first time would now probably be a female character, placing in cover a photo of Pilar Rubio with a bikini not leopard, typical of the tarzanas, but more similar to that of Raquel Welch in A million years ago . Following the trend explained by the Spanish supplement several characters females appeared developing roles similar to that of the King of the Monkeys. One of these characters, in the pornographic genre, is Jungle Babe, reinterpreted by Mr. X. In this case, the unofficial queen of the monkeys is a lesbian, defender of Nature and with the ability to communicate with some living beings in the jungle. As a more modern element, it incorporates the fight against human trafficking, something little reflected in the different works of Burroughs and his followers.
But the character has also come to imitate or parody other movie icons. This would be the case of James Bond. In the film Tarzan 66 or Tarzan and the Valley of Gold we see a king of the monkeys who travels in a suit and tie by plane to Mexico, in order to help an indigenous people and their cultural heritage, using automatic weapons against helicopters and tanks.
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