Some monkeys are so much more

During winter break, I went with a group of friends over to the local movie theater to see… During winter break, I went with a group of friends over to the local movie theater to see “King Kong.” I enjoyed the movie, but I wasn’t hooked by the extravagant special effects of the touching love story. I was mesmerized the whole time by a single thought swimming through my head:

King Kong is a penis.

Yes, you heard me right. That titled ape is a great, big, hairy, chest-pounding, overaggressive penis. I saw it the first time he appeared onscreen, and I spent the next three hours gathering evidence to support this thesis.

The way I saw it – and I’m sure there are many different interpretations – was that King Kong represented Naomi Watts’ character’s fear of her inevitable sexual maturity and the upcoming act of intercourse she knew she’d be experiencing with her new love interest, played by Adrien Brody. There were many similarities between Brody and the beast, from their love of Watts to the cuts on their chests. It wasn’t until Watts rid herself of her phallophobia – my new favorite word, by the way – as she finally let Kong die, that she could truly embrace her new lover. This follows in the tradition of many folktales, including “Beauty and the Beast,” that mothers used to tell their frightened daughters before their wedding nights.

If you couldn’t have guessed on your own, this didn’t exactly ignite interest around the table at the diner later that night. Half of my friends stared at me in confusion, while the other half just giggled. One of them then turned to me and said, “Sam, it was a movie about a giant monkey. That’s it.”

The difference was that none of them had taken the literature or childhood studies classes that I had in my three semesters here at Pitt. They could have schooled me on marketing, music, politics or urban studies, but when it came to symbolic sexual maturity, I was all on my own. This added academic knowledge had seeped into my brain and completely changed how I view pieces of art.

Who’s right, them or me? It’s hard for me to believe that the director put all these clues in his movie by accident. That would be like casting Jack Black and only later realizing that your main antagonist is the slob from “Orange County” – nobody would make that big of a mistake. But, at the same time, while I paid 10 bucks to research a possible topic for a thesis paper, my friends were able to sit back and be thoroughly entertained.

Sure, they missed out on what I thought was a deeper meaning, but I’m still not sure which of us had the right approach. Honestly, I don’t think Peter Jackson cares how we take his film, as long as we pay for our admission, and hopefully the DVD and lunchbox later on.

It’s like listening to a John Coltrane solo, a Beethoven symphony or a Trey Anastasio jam. Are the people who spend their time focusing on the minor seconds and major twelfths – I obviously have no clue what I ‘m talking about here – getting more out of the music than those of us who are sitting back and letting the song take us wherever it pleases? Extra knowledge can be interesting, but can also take away from the enjoyment of an experience.

And it’s not as if the holder of the knowledge can help spewing out facts or theories into everyday life. Do you think I wanted to visualize a giant penis jumping up and down and climbing buildings? It added an extra element to the movie, but I was on vacation. I would have been fine just watching a giant monkey beat up dinosaurs or, well, Naomi Watts.

Romantic poet William Wordsworth used to write about the difference between the experience of an adult and the innocence of a child. He contested that people gain knowledge as they grow, finding a deeper understanding of the environment around them. As this experience is gained, a certain innocence – the genius of childhood and the unique perception of the world that goes along with it – is lost. While we learn more, we lose our ability to see things as an innocent child, something that, despite many attempts, can never be recovered.

All my life I’ve been taught that gaining knowledge is an important part of life, but at what point does this knowledge impede on our happiness? I still don’t know how to settle this debate.

“Just go see the movie again,” you say? Fine, but at $10 a ticket, it better be on you. Don’t worry – I’ll buy the popcorn.

Good movie, but could have been an hour shorter. E-mail Sam at seg23@pitt.edu.