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Viewing ‘King Kong’ as a metaphor for WNC mountains
To the Editor:
Several weeks ago (Nov. 17) I wrote a letter focusing on the idea of the “end of Eden” in which I discussed environmental and cultural issues here in the Western North Carolina mountains. There was an enormous amount of response to this letter and its fairly depressing scenerio of the future of homes and habitat here in our region.
In order to temper responses from people who wanted to see the positive side of the coin and to hear what we (the year-round residents) could do to try to turn things around, I wrote a second letter a couple of weeks later (Dec. 1), wherein I proposed, as an antidote to uncontrolled development and the inherent greed and lack of environmental consciousness of the corporations fanning the flames of “progress,” that we flood the human senses and psyche with beauty. I was told prior to the publication of the second letter that my idea was too abstract, too poetic, and that people may not understand what I was getting at. I really couldn’t imagine that anyone would have problems with something as simple and concrete as the notion of “beauty.” We all know what beauty is, right? Apparently not, as the response I received to my second letter was the complete opposite from what I experienced with the “End of Eden” piece. What I got this time was a total lack of response. Not one e-mail. Not one letter. Not one phone call. No one stopping me on the street. Nothing.
Apparently people really didn’t get the “beauty thing.” OK, so this time, let’s try it this way: Go see “King Kong.” I’m serious. Yes, the film “King Kong” that’s currently playing in theaters all over the WNC region. At the core of this recent remake of the old Hollywood classic is the French story of Beauty and the beast. The last lines spoken in the current remake are “It wasn’t the airplanes, it was beauty killed the beast.” In my previous letter I wrote, “We don’t need to fight fire with fire, or respond in kind to the ways of the wicked and the monetarily possessed.” In that sense, we don’t need airplanes and military firepower, nor do we need big bank accounts, to stave off the bestial onslaught of developers and the energy conglomerates with government officials in their pockets. We can use beauty to “kill” the beast. If the idea of beauty is a baffling one to you in this context, then go see the film. It’s all there. The greedy capitalistic drive of the Hollywood film-maker. The glittering diamonds of the New York theater-goers who pay big bucks to see for themselves “Kong: The Eighth Wonder of the World.” And, most importantly, the dynamic of the film’s heroine and the giant ape, i.e., the way that beauty “conquers” the beast.
Let the film-maker be a metaphor for the out-of-state conglomerate developers. Let the diamond-ladened theater-goers be the out-of-state land owners of high-end lots and third homes in gated communities. Let the film’s heroine Naomi Watts be “beauty,” and let King Kong be “the beast,” representing the military-industrial complex and its henchmen in Washington DC. Take particular notice of how, when Kong is deprived of beauty, or when beauty is threatened, he goes into destroy-mode, laying waste to New York City. Compare this to the idea of how clear-cutting our forests or over-populating our mountains and mountaintops with homes “lays waste” to the natural beauty of that place, and can easily destroy resources such as water, soil, and wildlife from erosion and toxic run-off.
In the film, Watts (beauty) tames King Kong (the beast). In the same way, I believe, by flooding the marketplace, the pages of our papers, the airwaves, the museums, the theaters, the shops, the streets and our minds and language with beauty, we, too, can “tame” the more primitive and self-indulgent urges of the beast of progress and ownership. We can, in fact, turn things around.
Thomas Crowe
Tuckasegee
Some questions for a new year
To the Editor:
Can you picture Jackson County tomorrow, a year from now, five years from now? If your memory of Jackson County goes back 20 years or a lifetime or even is shared with generations of the past, how does that memory fit with your picture of the future? Change is inevitable; progress is not. Are the memories that now have no context in our current landscape sufficient as only memories? Was there something beyond memories worth saving? Is what we are losing, what we have lost worth what we supposedly gain?
The turning of the new year offers a time for reflection and a time for predictions. Are the predictions for our future hopeful or do they give mournful pause as we reflect on the losses change has imposed?
Our future is brimming with “big” things; Big boxes, big schools, big gates, big ideas.
Big things leave big footprints, and I wonder if in a place and an environment that is so sensitive to big footprints if big things don’t obscure the little things we have lost.
There was a time when you could wave at every car that passed you by, and your greeting was acknowledged and returned. A little thing maybe, but something that is lost, something to be missed.
Can you picture Jackson County tomorrow, a year from now, five years from now? Do the things you hold as dear still have a place in the picture? Is there room for your community, your neighbor, your children?
In our quest for big ideas, will we have outgrown the need to keep a place for things we hold dear?
Change is inevitable. We must accept that, but should we accept the idea that the things we value must be cast aside in the name of change and progress? Should we accept the idea that we are victims of change that we have no control over it? God forbid that we should change so much as to become unrecognizable to the generations past who formed our memories or worse, unrecognizable to ourselves.
“I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him,” said Abraham Lincoln.
I wonder if the new year offers hope that folks can come to understand what Mr. Lincoln meant.
Mark Jamison
Cullowhee
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