What I Think King Kong is About (Having Never Seen King Kong)
by Kirsten Reneau
I think maybe King Kong is about the dangers of colonialism, about how people aren’t supposed to be everywhere, how knowing your limitations is a virtue. I think maybe King Kong is about how cruelty always backfires and eventually animals will take over and it will be our own faults and then I realize I’m thinking of Planet of the Apes (which I’ve also never seen). I think maybe King Kong is about me, about how I’ve got an anger in my heart, about how I’d like to make all of New York (where I’ve never been) stand in awe of my enormousness, how I’d rather do that then try Weight Watchers again, try to make myself small and holdable again. Maybe it’s about how women are supposed to fit into the palm of a hand or maybe it’s about how I think I’d like to hold a woman in my hands and know she loves me back - despite my size, despite my rage, despite the fact that maybe we defy the laws of nature and possibly physics. I think maybe King Kong is about defiance in a way that is not necessarily proud, but demands to be seen. I think maybe King Kong is about looking things in the eyes. I think maybe King Kong is about how sad the gorillas in the zoo look when they are alone or maybe it’s about how apes cannot cry, but sometimes they make a noise like weeping. I think maybe King Kong is about how not being understood can make anyone want to destroy something. How Washoe the chimp learned her captors’ language to be heard. How she tried to cry when her baby died but couldn’t make the tears come. I think maybe King Kong is about being enormously, climbing-the-empire-state-building, forcing witness, outstandingly
alone.
Kirsten Reneau is a writer living in New Orleans. Her work has previously appeared in Hobart, Trampset, The Threepenny Review, and others.
