---
title: "Was ‘King Kong’ A Metaphor For The WWI Experience Of The American Doughboy?"
description: "I don’t think so. But, hey, I am not a film expert. But someone who is argues that old King Kong was just that: “Helplessly exposed atop the Empire State Building and at the mercy of airborne machineguns, Kong resembles…"
date: "2018-01-31"
modified: "2018-01-31"
authors:
  - name: "Tom Ricks"
    link: "https://taskandpurpose.com/authors/tom-ricks/"
url: "https://taskandpurpose.com/history/king-kong-metaphor-wwi-experience-american-doughboy/"
categories:
  - "Culture"
  - "Entertainment"
  - "History"
  - "Past Conflicts"
  - "World War I"
---

# Was ‘King Kong’ A Metaphor For The WWI Experience Of The American Doughboy?

![](<https://taskandpurpose.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/02/18986831-1.jpg>)

I don’t think so. But, hey, I am not a film expert. But someone who is argues that old King Kong was just that: “Helplessly exposed atop the Empire State Building and at the mercy of airborne machineguns, Kong resembles a doomed soldier caught in the murderous open space of No-Man’s Land.” (P. 220, January issue of “The Journal of Military History”)

Wikimedia Commons

![](<https://taskandpurpose.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/02/image-placeholder-title-1322.jpg>)

There’s more. The expert in question says that “the sometimes visage-shattering wounds that soldiers received from artillery during the First World War helped give rise to the monster-movie craze of the 1930s, with its emphasis on deformity and masks.”

I dunno, maybe he’s right. In a similar case, I’ve always thought that the Jeff Goldblum remake of [*The Fly*](<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fly_(1986_film)>) was really a metaphor for the emerging AIDS epidemic. It came out in 1986, the year the term “HIV” was coined.

![](<https://taskandpurpose.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/02/image-placeholder-title-526.png>)