Tarzan’s Jane Vs Hunger Games’s Katniss?
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the creation of one of the most recognizable and enduring figures in pop culture history–Tarzan of the Apes. And this month will mark the publication of Jane, the first version of the Tarzan story written by a woman, authorized by the estate of the prolific novelist Edgar Rice Burroughs, or ERB.
Robin Maxwell is the author of several historical novels featuring female protagonists, most notably The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn. Her recruitment to pen a woman-centric spin on the Tarzan saga is clearly an attempt to court a new generation of female readers who have only a limited familiarity, if any, with the original work.
The popular conception today of Tarzan and Jane is unfortunately not so much formed by ERB’s novels as deformed by the old Johnny Weismuller movies of the ‘30s and ‘40s, which falsely portray the Ape-man as more ape than man, and Jane as a (tree)housewife in animal skins. In fact, Burroughs’s Tarzan was an educated English nobleman, Lord Greystoke, and Jane was a bold lady of their African manor.
The books were pulp adventure fare written long before today’s action heroines became as kick-ass as their male counterparts. But Burroughs’s fictional women weren’t mere helpless damsels in distress rescued by brawny he-men. His female characters like Jane and Martian princess Dejah Thoris, featured earlier this year in Disney’s movie John Carter, were not only feminine but, well, ballsy, and worthy adventuresses in their own right.
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Related at PJ Lifestyle:
Hey, I liked the “deformed” Tarzan movies with Weissmuller and Maureen O’Sullivan. I especially liked Tarzan and His Mate where O’Sullivan wore a flanks-baring loincloth (HUBBA! HUBBA!).
You can take your “Greystoke,” and I’ll take the Tarzan we all knew as we grew up, and his delicious-looking Jane.
Oh, and then there’s this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Bc7KDyLV80
I guess I win this debate, right?
I hope they keep Jane’s southern belle background. They usually drop that in adaptions, but I think it makes her more fun.
Oops, just read the reviews and they made her a Brit. Oh well…
Really? In a hundred years we’ve advanced to goofin’ off of actual creativity?
I’m writing a novel of the untold saga of the black cook of the 0-220, “Red Tails” McGee, “Dinosaur Hunter.”
Maureen O’Sullivan, Mmmmmm, Maureen O’Sullivan. Paws ground, snorts, growls. Goes looking for more old Tarzan footage on YouTube.
If it is jello wrasselin’ I’ll watch. Even volunteer for the cleanup detail.
Charlie don’t surf.