Tarzan Swings Into The 21st Century

Climb the Empire State Building, grab a vine, and swing over to Paris this summer: The French have discovered Tarzan and are making a big fuss about the ape-man.

No, they are not elevating him to the Légion d’honneur, ala Jerry Lewis, and once again earning the “huhs?” and “WTF”s from incredulous Americans that greeted Lewis’s anointment in Gaul. Rather, the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris is doing something that no other museum in the world, least of all an American museum, has yet to do: Mount a serious exhibition devoted to Tarzan, his importance in popular culture and why.

The mission of the Musee du Quai Branly is the study of the arts and cultures of Africa, Asia and the Pacific, so while an exhibition about the fictional Lord Greystroke in loin cloth created by an American pulp writer, Edgar Rice Burroughs, might seem at first glance an odd choice it is entirely appropriate.

“How pop culture creates a vision of non-Western culture is a serious topic,” museum director Stephane Martin told the BBC in an interview. Of Tarzan he notes “It’s the vision a lot of Westerners had of Africa in the first part of the 20th Century.”

Because the exhibition is in Paris, the sexuality of Tarzan and his relationship to Jane could not be ignored (his relationship with Cheetah the Chimp, thankfully, has been). This is the area where Hollywood veered from the original book.

Stephane Martin believes sex has always key to this story of a son of British aristocrats orphaned after he and his parents were marooned on the coast of West Africa and he was left to grow up amongst the apes of the jungle.

“A strong part of the success of Tarzan was the physical appeal he and Jane had, and also the Africa which it shows - filled with powerful animals and muscular men and near-naked women. It’s pretty sexual for a society not far removed from the Victorians.”

That must have been some ape-father/adopted adolescent human-son discussion about the birds and the bees, lessons unlikely learned by the namby-pamby men Jane knew back home, the key theme being that savage sex is better than polite, civilized sex, a common belief and wish amongst Western men and women, particularly at the time the book was originally published, in 1914, two years after Tarzan made his debut in a Burroughs magazine story, indeed not too far distant from the Victorian era.

The exhibition uses movie clips, artwork, music and text to illustrate Tarzan’s influence upon popular culture, and continues at the Musee du Quai Branly until September 27, 2009.

Considering that I spent far too much time as a kid pretending to be Tarzan, leaping from one piece of furniture to another while wearing only my briefs and with voice on the cusp of mature yodeling Tarzan’s call, I would love to see this exhibit. Of course, with my entourage of imaginary elephants, lions, monkeys, giraffes, and rhinoceroses I may have a problem gaining entry. If that’s the case, I’ll just have to sidle up to the (hopefully) comely lass taking tickets (Isabelle Adjani would be nice) and lasciviously whisper in my most seductive French, “Moi, Tarzan. Vous?”

We have a beautiful copy of the rarest of all editions of the first book in the series, Tarzan of the Apes: The true first Canadian edition, first printing (with canceled title), in the first state binding without acorn above the U.S. publisher’s slug on spine. It is in the publisher’s original dark red cloth with gilt lettering to the upper board and spine, gilt rules at spine head and tail, and a blindstamped panel to upper board.

Burroughs’s bibliographer, Robert B. Zeuschner, in an interview with us, estimates that were likely only 200-500 copies issued of this edition but Carl Spadoni, bibliographer of McClelland, Goodchild & Stewart, reports to us that the true number issued was probably no more than 250.