The Legend of Tarzan: Doesn't Justify Itself

7:55 PM · Jan 8, 2021 "please stop showing me professor porter nudes"

I mentioned in the last blogpost that one of the shows most similar to Tangled in its story driven "after-happily-ever-after" style is The Legend of Tarzan. And as a kid, I honestly avoided it, despite liking the movie because it felt bigger than it actually was. It felt like something with a lot of story to it and I was pretty surprised to find it was mostly episodic. I mean given what Disney was putting out at the time, it made sense, since not much has had an overarching plot other than Gargoyles... and uh... Doug...

Tarzan was... eh? I honestly don't remember a lot from it. It was certainly engaging, which is a good thing to be, but I was never all that attached to the characters in Tarzan. I found myself more interested in the characters the show introduced, like Basuli, or the Rene Auberjonois guy.

The one exception to this is Porter, who the show kind of makes... a little bit querchy with it?

10:06 PM · Jan 8, 2021 "you are Not Cis"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10:09 PM · Jan 8, 2021 "porter's turning to tarzan for romantic advice"
10:41 PM · Jan 8, 2021 "i always assumed jane's mom was dead but this show is implying her parents divorced"

He's kind of lame, which I think makes him really funny.

Tarzan's biggest take home point for me was its messages, which I assume were meant with the best intentions. There's a lot of themes of environmentalism, dangers of capitalism/colonialism, and respect for fellow man despite their differences.

9:42 PM · Jan 8, 2021 "a two part fracking episode"

But here's the thing. It never really sticks to its guns. This is a Disney show. This is The Legend of Tarzan.

7:52 PM · Jan 8, 2021 "damn tarzan mite be racist"
8:24 PM · Jan 8, 2021 "the whole "i didnt think there were any other people here" thing they do every other ep feels like it'd be a little racist."
8:46 PM · Jan 8, 2021 "hmmm this show is really unfortunate...."
8:50 PM · Jan 8, 2021 "in terms of human legend of tarzan villains are any of them white?"
8:52 PM · Jan 8, 2021 "it feels like legend of tarzan has things to say about things like colonization but then we get like. a bunch of white heroes and ambiguously brown villains, which is uhhhhh"
8:59 PM · Jan 8, 2021 "i've been doing a little reading, a lot of articles discuss how there aren't any black people in the disney movie tarzan, which yeah. it is in africa. so what gives? they also go into the racism of the original tarzan stories which i dont know a lot about outside them"
9:40 PM · Jan 8, 2021 "okay we're on ep 7 and we finally got some alright african rep. i still cant believe tarzan's never met a black person before. i mean he's never met any people before the movie but it's still weird."

Tarzan is kind of inherently racist, is the thing. There's a lot of discussion about it. This article (content warning for brief mention of rape and anti-black racism) is one that talks a bit about the show and that I actively looked up when I was introduced to Queen La, a villain who is deathly jealous of Jane, and the leopard men who serve her (Queen La that is, not Jane). 

8:25 PM · Jan 8, 2021 "why is the city full of furries?"
8:29 PM · Jan 8, 2021 "jane experiences reverse racism"

And it's like hmm yeah they did try with the source material but I don't think you can scrub the racism out of Tarzan. The article above talks about how Disney scrubbed any mention of black people from the film, and the show makes up for it a bit. However, Tarzan still does say he didn't think there would be people here, which is a bit questionable. I don't think The Legend of Tarzan is on Disney+ at the moment so I haven't seen any of the racist content warnings for the show.

Other then the racism, there's also Rene Auberjonois. In the episode "The Trading Post," he starts out as a clueless villain. He's opening up a trading post that forces all sorts of animals to relocate to different parts of the jungle, essentially fucking up the entire ecosystem. Eventually, there's a sort of compromise that allows him to keep up his trading post and keep the animals protected, which... feels too easy. And by easy, I mean an easy way for Disney to say capitalism and colonialism isn't all bad.

There's some intrigue here, but it really doesn't salvage the forgettable nature of the show, or how badly it faceplanted on its themes, or even just the fact that we didn't need another piece of Tarzan media.

Overall Rating for Tarzan: D Tier