Planet of the Apes as American Myth: Race, Politics, and Popular Culture

Terrific book and a must-read for any Planet of the Apes fan. The author illustrates the racial politics of the series and how that made it relevant to the audiences of the 60s and 70s. Only drawback is that it was written before the remake, and speculates on a potential remake based on who was rumored to be involved during the late 90s.

Planet of the Apes as American Myth: Race, Politics, and Popular Culture addresses how race relations and wartime politics directly or indirectly affected the development of the Apes movie series - and vice versa. Greene compiles a lot of information concisely into each chapter, delivering arguments in a well-organized chronological progression - according to the Apes titles. His thesis highlights that the underlying message of the Apes films, while thought-provoking, is ultimately negative; it suggests that race conflicts can not be overcome. Paired with this, however, is his statement that the Apes series - as a fictional allegory of our past - can be used as an effective teaching aid for a positive future.

I would only recommend this title to those who are intrigued by the Apes series and think they could withstand 190 pages of analysis, which, at times, can seem to drone on. That being said, I enjoyed expanding my knowledge of the Apes saga. Despite being a bit lengthy, I found the book is quite informative; it introduced me to some movie details that I had overlooked while watching the films as entertainment (a point Greene addresses). It also verified other symbolisms of which I was aware, but may not have fully understood.


Introduction.

Though this section is very concentrated -and therefore a bit tiring to read- it's the most crucial to the book. In it, Greene discusses the relevance of intentions and their consequences to the process of authoring. After much philosophical discussion, he expresses that the Apes series is best reviewed with respect not just to the author (a filmmaker or novelist), but as part of an active relationship between author/artist, book/production, and audience that dynamically changes with time.

Chapter 1. Planet of the Apes

This was my favorite chapter. In addition to comparing the book to Boulle's novel, Greene addresses the casting of Charlton Heston (the "Heston Hero") as an embodiment of Western civilization. This is raised later in the book, too, but as somebody who's unfamiliar with Heston's work, I appreciated the introduction to his cinematic character. Greene also points out how Planet of the Apes was a unique film in that it was incredibly popular - despite its unhappy ending. Greene also discusses the topic of inter-species (interracial) love - a considerable theme in Boulle's book, yet barely approached on screen.

Chapter 2. Return to the Planet of the Apes

While most of the first chapter focuses on Charlton Heston's character as an icon of Western civilization and the US image satirized by Planet, it wasn't until the release of Return to Planet of the Apes that themes of Western Colonialism, the Cold War, and the Vietnam War were completely exhausted. In this chapter, Greene explains the social/political effect on the development of the sequel. In addition, he points out that both Planet and Return are stories that involve conflicts between both apes and humans and internally among apes. (The later movies (Escape, Conquest, Battle) are stories of only inter-species conflicts.)

Chapter 3. Urban Riots and Ape Revolution

This chapter examines how the Apes series approaches issues of race, gender, and species, establishing the bounds by which the films (Conquest, in particular) can be presented as both entertainment and social commentary.

In addition, as the story's relativity to historical context (primarily race conflicts and 'riots' of the 60's) becomes more central to the later movies, the placement of Conquest and Battle within modern society are addressed. (It was helpful to have Greene briefly outline the racially-conflicting state of the nation during this time period.)

While nearly all of the evidence in this chapter can be obtained by closely observing the relationship between actions, races, genders, dialogues, positions, and populations of apes and humans throughout the movie series - with respect to issues of race and gender in (primarily) US history - Greene's summation is conveniently concise and well-presented.


Chapter 4. Ape Has Killed Ape

In Battle for the Planet of the Apes, the blame of the origins of calamitous behavior responsible for world destruction is (in large part) transferred from humans to apes. Greene points out that in doing so, the films establish that history - not genetics (nature) - breeds such "tit-for-tat" violence. Accomplices (MacDonald in Conquest and Battle) help to bridge concerns across the color line in another allegory for race struggles in America (in school systems, primarily).

Fittingly, Greene then turns the title of the chapter around to discuss the proposal and consequences of humans' ability to kill human (and the earth) using the controversially-edited Alpha and Omega bomb.

I enjoyed how the chapter closes out with Greene's noting how "ape" then became a verb - meaning to mimic - in Western society. (The literal and derogatory uses of "ape" as noun and verb are discussed primarily in this and the following chapter.)

5. Conclusion: Television, Comics, Toys and Comebacks

To start, Greene summarizes the placement of the Apes series in modern cinema, noting first that the saga -even now- is praised for its "progressive view towards race relations and racial equality and for the positive images it provides of non-white characters." He re-visits the underlying question of whether or not we're doomed to repeat history in both the original five movies and in the 1974 CBS television series. Most of this chapter is concerned with how race relations are dealt with in this TV series, NBC's 1975 animated series, and in Adventure Comics' 1990-1993 publications - all of which seem to stray farther from the original movie series (and even farther from Boulle's original novel). In fact, I was beginning to tire of reading outlandish plot lines of late-proposed sequels and spin-offs when Greene (thankfully) returned the context to modern cinema on the topic of proposed re-makes of the original Planet of the Apes. Knowing only the Tim Burton 2001 re-make (not mentioned in the book, of course), I was surprised to learn that many famous directors also approached the project, including James Cameron (Terminator, Aliens, Jurassic Park, Congo) and Oliver Stone (Platoon, JFK), both of whom were reportedly considering casting Arnold Schwarzenegger as the lead! I was further intrigued by the fact that Twentieth Century-Fox, in 1988, was considering the production of a sixth Ape film based on a script by a 21-year-old writer-director (Adam Rifkin) that bore some resemblance to Pierre Boulle's Planet of Men.

As a lifelong fan of Planet of the Apes, this welcome socio-political study of the franchise was a welcome read. Certainly there is a lot of racial commentary in the films. This is profound stuff, and I applaud an author who's willing to say so. See more commentary here: Sects and Violence in the Ancient World.

In today’s world of big-budget space opera and comic book movie franchises, it can be difficult to recall just how huge the original Planet of the Apes series was at its peak. Between the heyday of the original Star Trek series and the release of George Lucas’s Star Wars in 1977, five movies, two television shows, and host of comic book series and merchandising were produced about a dystopian future in which apes has supplanted humans as the rulers of the world. Its impact is reflected today in the success since 2011 of a rebooted approach – the second since the original series’ end – the four movies (to date) of which have earned hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office.

While the durability of the original Apes series can be traced to several factors, perhaps the most consistent of these was the allegorical portrayal it offered of contemporary America. At a time when Americans were dealing with conflict at home and abroad, the stories told in its movies and television shows offered a pointed commentary about the problems facing the nation, and what the choices it faced might mean for its future. Eric Greene’s book offers an analysis of this examination, one that charts how the discourses in the films paralleled the political debates of the time, particularly those concerning race and the ongoing American involvement in the Vietnam War. While acknowledging that some of this was unintentional, he details how such commentary became more overt and specific as the series continued, turning into a pointed critique of the intersection between race and power in postwar America.

To a degree, the social commentary was wired into the series’ DNA. As Greene notes, the original source material, Pierre Boulle’s 1962 novel Planet of the Apes, was itself a satire that addressed the relationship of man with nature. This element of the story was embraced and refined by the original film’s scriptwriters, Rod Serling and Michael Wilson, who introduced the theme of nuclear destruction and played up the juxtapositions between ape and human society. The casting of Charlton Heston as astronaut George Taylor further helped to convey these themes, as his well-developed film persona of a white male hero in racialized struggles against non-white hordes made his presence in the film an effective means of underscoring many of themes the filmmakers developed. Yet the decision to make these political themes secondary to the entertainment value of the movie ensured that they remained subtle enough not to dominate the story.

Intended as a stand-alone film, the unexpected success of the original movie nevertheless quickly spawned a sequel. Though a variety of ideas were proposed for what became known as Beneath the Planet of the Apes, the producers ultimately went with a treatment drafted by Paul Dehn, who went on to become the main writer of the subsequent films. With the Vietnam War at its peak, an antiwar theme emerged as the militaristic gorillas and conservative orangutans overrule the objections of the pacifistic chimpanzees and undertake the conquest of the “Forbidden Zone” containing the mutated descendants of humans. While the planet’s destruction in a racial apocalypse at the end of the movie seemingly precluded further sequels, the success of the second film ensured the continuation of the series for an additional three movies. Here the decision to shift the setting to the near-present brought the political elements to the forefront, as modern-day humanity now faced head-on a forecast of their domination by apes. These allowed the filmmakers to consider (in Escape from the Planet of the Apes) the fate of strangers in a racially foreign land, the prospect (in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes) of race revolution in urban America, and the fears of whites (in Battle for the Planet of the Apes) of Black Power and reverse racism.

Despite the negative critical reviews and the relatively low gross of the final film, the overall popularity of the franchise led CBS to commission a television series that premiered the following year. Greene summarizes how the show continued the tradition of using the premise as a vehicle for commenting on American society. And while it and a subsequent animated series were canceled after the production of only a handful of episodes, the use of the concept as a metaphor was well entrenched in American culture. The emergence of the franchise as a cultural trope – for better and for worse – is among the best evidence of the value of Greene’s examination of the commentary it offers on contemporary America. Though his text is somewhat repetitive in places, it nevertheless is a valuable study of an iconic cinematic franchise that both fans of the series and students of the era more generally should read for the insights it offers on its subject.

Too academic. Kinda dull.

Greene argues that the subtext of the Apes movies is race, both within the evolved ape cultures (gorillas as black Americans, orang-utans as ruling whites, chimps as a kind of "Jew") and in the human/ape relations. In Planet, apes treat humans as savages; in Conquest, apes are slaves who rise up against their human masters. And so on. The writing's a bit dry, but it's a very interesting look at the series. Regrettably it stops before the Tim Burton reboot and subsequent sequels and prequels.

Eric Greene maps out the subtextual trajectory of the Planet of the Apes series in his insightful book-long essay: “Planet of the Apes as American Myth.” He begins by describing the colonial, anti-Heston, Vietnam, racial, hierarchical and human-ape connections in the original “Planet of the Apes” (1968). Then the Vietnam, colonial, racial, youthful, genocidal, religious and cynical traits of “Beneath the Planet of the Apes” (1970). Then the lightened (due to the contemporary setting) but still present shift from sympathetic apes to humans and fatality in “Escape from the Planet of the Ape” (1971). Then the Watts riot-recreation, reverse-slavery, oppressed becoming oppressors (twice), Moses-parallel, slavery-imagery, Black-identification and morality or edited ending in “Conquest of the Planet of the Apes” (1972). Finally, the reverse-racism, Cain parable, previously dismissed connections between humans and apes coming to fruition, education controversy and Black Power controversy in “Battle for the Planet of the Apes” (1973). This is a fascinating read, which will intrigue any fan of the Apes series or cinema, beckoning them to rewatch the series and discover its hidden pleasures.

A very detailed look at race in the Planet of the Apes franchise. Greene has some really fascinating points and avoids generalizations and blanket statements by examining each film individually in addition to the franchise cultural impact as a whole.

As he noted from Planet to Battle, the subtext is as decidedly different since America changed from 1968-1974. The films get progressively less subtle with Conquest being an obvious metaphor for the Watts riots, which as a middle-aged honky, I never noticed.

Personally, I thought the first one was more a religious satire but that's just the ex-Catholic with a Roddy McDowall crush talking. What? He was Peter Vincent in Fright Night. The guy was a national treasure.

I have no idea if Eric Greene is even still with us, but I would love to know what he thinks of the new Apes movies, most of which are as intellectual and philosophical as their predecessors. (Not you, Tim Burton's crappy 2001 remake!) Anyway, if you like scholarly readings of sci-fi (and who doesn't) this is your book.