| Creator Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) |
| Profession Novelist |
| Total Entries 20 |
| Articles Racism and stereotypes: how the Tarzan dynamic still infiltrates cinema Edgar Rice Burroughs – Wikipedia |
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Bearing in mind that Burroughs lived in the “sundown town” of Oak Park, Illinois, it is very disturbing that his Tarzan character chooses to hang his black victims from trees with vine ropes around their necks. A s”undown town” was a place where all blacks had to be out of the town by sundown or they faced severe physical consequences. Lynching was common in America up until the 1960’s. Like many of his contemporaries, writes his biographer John Taliaferro, Burroughs “believed in a hierarchy of race and class. In the Tarzan stories, blacks are generally superstitious and Arabs rapacious.” Burroughs was extremely proud of his nearly pure Anglo-Saxon lineage. In the biography, Taliaferro also uncovers Burroughs’ lifelong belief in eugenics, “the radical fringe of Darwinism” and the notion that undesirable people, such as the ill, the criminal, or the racially “impure”, should be sterilised. ~ Racism and Stereotypes: How the Tarzan Dynamic Still Infiltrates Cinema – Tony Warner for Orlando
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