Wal-Mart, Planet of the Apes and Racism

Wal-Mart's recommendation of films about race alongside Planet of the Apes has thrown newspapers and blogs across the world into a tizzy. I don't get it. The primary theme of The Planet of the Apes movies and shows is race relations. It's not Eyes on the Prize, but the subtext is very shallow. It's entirely appropriate to recommend films about race next to Planet of the Apes.

It's not at all racist to suggest that the apes in the film represent African Americans - they absolutely represent African Americans. The movie was made in 1968, during the height of the civil rights movement. Race was on every American's mind. Angela says: 'I am not 100% sure that people "see" that film as a "race film".' I say people who don't are living under a rock. The last image of the film is The Statue of Liberty, which is one our lasting symbols of freedom and resistance to oppression, and especially slavery. In Tim Burton's (underrated!) Apes remake, the last image is of the Lincoln memorial.

Of course, if they don't, and if the film was intentionally placed next to movies about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Dorothy Dandridge with bigoted intent, that's bad. But I doubt it. All big e-commerce sites have Amazon-like recommendation engines that analyze consumer browsing and purchasing habits, and that's where the association came from. There's no "racist programmer" to be fired. The style, production and social commentary of the Apes series may leave much to be desired, but love it or hate it, the movie is about race. It's not at all outside the realm of possibility that Walmart customers buy movies about Civil Rights and Planet of the Apes in the same shopping carts, whether they're racist assholes who think Black people are monkeys or they're college professors who are examining images of resistance in popular culture.

Comments

[adriana]

I agree that Planet of the Apes is a film about race to the extent that it employs racial stereotyping to advance a narrative about white power (this is also true of King Kong). It is true that Tim Burton's remake of Planet of the Apes inverts the racial subtext of the original (in the new version, Charlton Heston plays an ape), but this example is part of a different discussion altogether. I'm not sure that the system of categorization that Wal-Mart employs is that nuanced but I couldn't even say since none of the articles I've read mention what other searches brought up. Did Project X, for instance, bring up a recommendation for Eyes on the Prize? If most movies featuring simians bring up recommendations for documentaries about noted African-American leaders then, yes, Wal-Mart is racist.

Regardless, the depiction and exploration of race/ethnic relations on mainstream TV and film remain very questionable: Peter Jackson's treatment of King Kong, where Melanesian actors replace the African-American cast of the original, and the stereotyping of African-American and Latino actors on SNL are two examples that come to mind.

[ezra]

It will be interesting to see, as more of our culture's editorial roles are taken by machines (like the collaborative filtering that powers Amazon, NetFlix, Google, etc.), how criticism reacts, and where we'll place the blame for editorial choices that are seen as being driven by a political agenda (or lack thereof).

Traditionally, if you made an anthology of 20th century American poetry, and left out Langston Hughes, you'd be called racist [1]. But if you search for "20th century American poetry" on Google, and don't get a link to Langston Hughes, is someone exercising a racist selectivity? And if so, who?

[1] (A fabricated example.)

[David Jacobs]

That's really the heart of the matter - should we sanitize machine created "opinions" from being offensive and/or revealing, and why? Why did Wal-Mart feel the need to create a straw man (the "racist programmer") when clearly this recommendation was based on the aggregate behavior of literally millions of shoppers? Why did people reflexively blame Wal-Mart, and not Wal-mart shoppers?

[V.E.G.]

It was an unfortunate twist to compare some movies to the other movies that was offensive to African-Americans. Interestingly, the person in a monkey-like suit, big foot, is played by, ironically by an African-American Kevin Peter Hall. Unfortunately, Hall is no longer living. He is a very tall man. Hall's remains were cremated per requst.