Primitive! Passionate! …Bride of the Gorilla…
Deep into the South American jungle when sunlight ceases, is it possible for man to
morph into a gorilla? In the 1951 movie, Bride of the Gorilla, such insanity occurred.
After murdering the wealthy plantation owner – Mr. VanGelder – to pursue his wife,
Barney Chavez is punished by a local witch for the slaughter, in which case he is
transformed into an ugly beast at night. The mockery that exists in the depiction of
Chavez is very similar to the Victorian portrayal of gorillas; they were considered
evolutionarily lower than humans and desired to steal and rape white women. Such
irony is present throughout the film. Chavez is presented in two lights: as a large,
brute male who provides manual labor for the VanGelder plantation and a beastly
gorilla who roams the jungle with the intention of killing other animals and raping
women. The 1951 motion picture representation of gorillas parallels countless
additional representations. For example, in the article You Are Here: Missing Links,
Chains of Being, and the Language of Cartoons by feminist author, Constance
Areson Clark, she discusses the various attitudes of nineteenth century scholars
and Victorian popular culture. In a general reference to primates and specifically
gorillas, she states, “from the very beginnings of European awareness of gorillas
in the mid-nineteenth century, these gentle animals often carried sensational,
even salacious metaphorical freight – and racial connotations – in European
and American popular culture. [Supplemental authors have] demonstrated the
interweaving of racial and sexual themes in ape imagery and [have] shown that
these associations had a long history…” Thus, the negative sexual connotation
associated with gorillas appeared in popular culture films which led to discussion
and publishing by evolutionary scholars.
