The White ape of Barsoom
Edger rice burroughs has often been refered to as writing racist fiction. The natives are all black and savage. However the white man is always superior a super being as such.
In todays standards you can indeed see these lines appearing in his text. That is until you go to Barsoom. No one is the white man without a dash of evil in them except his hero. However he is a man from the deep south who fought for an army who believed in the slavery of others, but even he battles the white men on the side of the red.
The final nail in the racist coffin comes from the fact that the most brutish and evil creature on the planet seems to be the white ape. Killing purely because it can.
So i'm sure ERB can be forgiven for writing stories where racism is viewed by others but not necesarily by him.
posted by Kit Cox | 6:33 AM
4 Comments:
I too have contemplated the racism found in Burroughs works. Sometimes I wondered if there was any connection in his mind between the white apes and Tarzan, the other white ape. Anyway, Barsoom seemed like a refuge from the whole white supremacy thing until...I believe it was Llana of Gathol. Still, he was progressive for it's time. I believe there's a website called superdickery.com that shows what a politically incorrect jackass Superman used to be. If Burroughs was alive today, he'd probably retcon the crap out of his earlier stuff. That said, you've drawn a creepy-ass ape, my friend. I've yet to draw any white apes yet...
I concentrated on the madness of these creatures rather than the gorilla description as i still see gorillas as docile
Word. Though as their teeth suggest, they used to be more carnivorous in their diets years ago. Chimpanzees, however, are F'ing brutal. I saw a few sPecials on the dark side of chimps and Christ on a bike, if Tarzan was raised by those things my resPect for him has doubled. I might draw my white apes as more chimp-like if anything.
I always had it in my mind that tarzan was raised by chimps as much as the films often go with gorrilas.
As for the white apes of barsoom i purely go on the fact that ERB describes them as looking like the gorrilas of earth, i do think they are alot more vicious however.
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