This study will discuss how ideas of race get worked out in an analogy between Africans and animals (primates or other animals) in the 1932 film Tarzan, the Ape Man (directed by W.S. Van Dyke and based on the characters created by Edgar Rice Burroughs) and Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen (first published in 1937). The study will consider the ways the two works show how the relations of whites (colonizers) to Africans are similar to he relations of whites to animals. The argument will be that both works are similar in their views on the superiority of the "civilized" whites and the inferiority of both Africans and animals. Whites in both works, in general, see Africans as beings somewhere between animals and whites. Africans are shown to be slaves, servants, and beasts of burden. They are seen as violent, exotic, often emotionless, immature, stupid beings whose purpose is to serve whites. Both works also portray animals in the same light--exotic, violent beasts of burden whose sole purpose is measured by what they can do for whites. Despite the greater sophistication and subtlety of the writing of Dinesen, compared to the simplistic ideas of the film, both works, in general, assume that whites are superior to both Africans and animals, and that Africans and animals exist in order to serve whites.
In Tarzan the Ape Man, the goal of the whites, especially Jane's father and Harry, the white man who is love with her, is to find the elephant graveyard in order to make money from the ivory of their tusks. They show no concern for or connection with the elephants or, in fact, any of the animals in the film--except in terms of what the animals can do for them. Animals, like Africans, are wild creatures who cannot be understood and who must be now and then frightened into obedience.
Although the film takes place entirely in Africa, only one African--Riano--is even named, and he is a sort of watchdog over the unnamed Africans whom he whip...