Tarzan.

Tarzan directed by Kevin Lima and Chris Buck (Buena Vista Pictures, June 18, 1999); 1 hr. 28 min,

Old movies about Africa always had black people in them. True to pop culture, either black people were servile gun bearers and porters or they were members of evil tribes hell-bent on killing everyone who poked into their territory.

Whenever the (always) black porters came across signs of the evil tribes, they panicked and ran, deserting their white employers who were made of sterner stuff. Sometimes the servile ones held places of esteem in the heart of the white hunter but, even so, they never achieved social parity. Could any of them be allowed to have passion for a white woman? Unthinkable! We all knew the rules: retaliation would be swift and often cruel.

The Tarzan movies (with forty-seven adaptations, Tarzan is said to be the second most filmed subject in Hollywood history after Dracula) were no exception. Their racism was evident and ubiquitous; the white man's burden was dumped on us in truckloads, part of the everyday racism in our lives.

While the visual effects are outstanding, Disney's new animated Tarzan, produced at its Buena Vista division, is less than a satisfactory or desirable movie. Reviewers babble about the amazing visual effects and the ease and grace with which Tarzan "surfs" the trees, but they miss obvious concerns.

The absence of black people in Tarzan is absurd. (American audiences have tumbled to that. Reportedly, the Disney studio thought they wouldn't notice.) That a movie about Africa should have not invisible Africans but no hint of any Africans suggests a kind of cleansing that only a Milosevic could applaud. We have still too many enclaves (both physical and mental) in which African Americans make no appearance. Tarzan reflects the kind of "ideal" society that many Americans still yearn for: Christian and pure white. Alas, in spite of presumably good intentions, the movie provides the same message.

We all know the storyline. We reasonably could expect that gorillas, no matter how sweet and cuddly, would grunt a lot and be somewhat befuddled by events. In this movie, however, gorillas are linguistically competent and, except for body form, no different from liberal, middle-class humans living in a primitive society. They love and care for their children and, because they are enlightened, can see no essential difference between humans and themselves.

But even if they note the differences, as long as both have hands and hearts, external appearances are insignificant--and they express wisdom about such differences clearly beyond the ability of many in our society. They even have domestic spats about the "child" Tarzan, but classically, at the end of his life, the "old man" comes around and the no-longer-significantly different child inherits the mantle of leadership. Clearly he is superior to all the other pretenders to gorilla chiefdom. But superior in what way? Violence. Only he can deal with the bad people.

While there are no African people in the film, the gorillas take their place. Generally ineffectual, they live in a jungle paradise with only the neighborhood big cat to bother them--sort of like highway traffic, irksome but not enough to get them to move. Into paradise come nasty Caucasians, intent on putting them into cages for transport to Western civilization, obviously for nefarious purposes. (If you don't get this, check on the ante bellum South.)

The two "intellectuals," as incompetent as the gorillas, demonstrate again that in movieland intelligence can't deal with evil. The plan to capture the gorillas and transport them proceeds and would have succeeded--but for the half-man/half-beast who, with the help of his jungle buddies, rescues all. The hapless gorillas are helpless and in need of rescue--and there's Tarzan, returned to his gorilla identity, willing to oblige.

So the movie has its cake and gobbles it up. It avoids the reality of native Africans, the cruelty inflicted on them by Europeans, and the destruction of their way of life. The "gorillas" are kind and sweet, and even the patriarchal (but misguided) Kerchak wants the best for his tribe--uh, no, his clan, no, that's not it ... but you get the idea. Still Tarzan gets the message across anyway: it takes a Caucasian to beat a Caucasian. Indigenous creatures need not apply except under the leadership of the outsider who is stronger and smarter.

Did the Disney studio and its directors and actors consciously decide they would make a latently racist movie? I am unconvinced. Their intentions, I'm sure, not for one moment included a subtler version of the white man's burden. How then did it happen? Easy: it is a reflection of the continuation of racism in the murky underground of how our society thinks about the world.

We have certainly reached the point at which pop culture could never subscribe to overt racist productions; but the next step, to be sure harder, is to get deeper into the hearts of women and men and help them understand the task they must set for themselves. Movies such as Disney's Tarzan don't help.

Bertram Rothschild is a retired clinical psychologist. His e-mail address is bertr@ diac.com.