Ultimatum Orangutan
The original King Kong story was set on an island off Sumatra,
perhaps Nias.
So this is twisted phobia, of what-is-now-Indonesian man and fear
of his usurping of his big, hairy hands on a blonde ingénue,
on the needle of whitecapitalism, the Empire State Building.
I understand visualchimp language.
I know what KK was trying to say
in every edition of that film.
Naomi Watts may not have understood, but for years,
I was obsessed with a painting of a young, brown child
next to a monkey – by abuser Gauguin –
and have stared many hours at that monkey
as stand-in for ‘some-kind-of-brown’ masculinity;
cowed, domestic, speaking across the years,
transcending forms of visual media,
asking King Kong, softly,
‘What is this world we were drawn into.’
I’ll tell you, small animal: a world where, for decades, small children
under a red and white sigil were lullabied: women’s rights’ and labour
organisers were sadists, did unspeakable things dancing sexily in their
communist gear, killed the generals like animals – instead of being told:
generals organised a genocide of people suspected of communism likely
millions of people ended, who were simply feared of usurping
(remember, the film) rounded up for no master other than bloodthirst
(gentle artists among them) who drew their last in 1965-66. Rewind;
perhaps not ‘no master’. Ultimately, nobody’s-real-uncle-by-the-name of Sam sanctioned-slash-planned all of this to open up lands with giant forklift-
hands letting millions of bodies fall to the ground as it was all lifted into
another country entirely – people’s homes and cosmologies in rainforest,
lifted and dropped into the laps of people who cannot pronounce us,
and only the most powerful of those who can, who claim to be of us.
And so many wrestled this machinery with lives paid for for so very long,
– Marsinah at twenty-four, our many-of-stealth – but the sigil-fist.
But the red and white the red and white and blue, it caved us and caved
us and caved us. Many forced to drink from it and many said Tidak (No).
And every year G-30-S 30th September, they’d show the violent film
recreating supposed mutiny, images of blood that snapped
our childhoods in two.
When I speak to people about palm oil plantations
as devastation of Papuans, Dayak, Padang, et al,
invariably, the words ‘palm oil’ make them think
of orangutans. We need to save them. I’ve found
myself thinking ‘Orangutans, and so many peoples
as well’, but this phrase does not fit well on campaigns
against palm oil; and whenever I see a billboard
with an orangutan on it campaigning against palm oil,
I say ‘Yes’, I say ‘Is this what it takes’, and always
I say ‘And so many peoples as well.’
Is it any coincidence that King Kong’s shown up
so much with animals extinct, rising again –
Brontosaurus, Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus –
other twisted notions of the other, crafted into scales and claw?
And I think about a child so small so sad fearful to breathe
from all the blood in the air adult nightmares seeping into her sky
and her books and her friends and just now I remember being her,
am being her,
and am thinking about Donkey Kong as a Super Smash Bros character,
and what colour the thread is between the child
and the pixellated animal who pounds the earth in a piece
of electronics made with metals forged from this earth, and
all through the making of these things the monkey on screen,
the small, sad girl and the screen she refused to open her
eyes for futilely as the story would seep into the schooldays
of her and her friends, there are our words communicating to all
the sentient fellow beings who were placed on this earth
gingerly and asked to go forth in it as though this were not
a frightening thing as though this very act of going forth
did not require a shipful of warm glow around us in order
to survive and how we wish for this freight cargo every day,
creating it preserving it with oral literatures they can’t touch or feel,
with herbal medicines we try to protect from pharmaceutical gloves,
with every day a ticking towards the end of glowing, the end
of holding another who could be person who could be
old growth rainforest who could be King Kong and his tears
who could be Papuan men writing white letters on themselves
in jail, to display for their trial at which they are accused of
treason against Indonesia, that say ****** which means
****** which is what evilinsome calls goodinothers when it wants
to let us know this earth is taken in their movie of the present,
when the earth is yours it is yours yours yours dear protestors,
merauke to sabang, tears when in courtrooms, when witnessed by none,
is yours gloryhumans yours (my dear) sayang, semuanya (all),
(dear lord) ya tuhan, tanganmu (your hands) tanahmu (your earth)
milikmu (are yours). setiap hari (each day) nafas (breath)
adalah doa (is a prayer) yang mengungkapkan (which conveys)
ultimatum kami semua, persetan (ultim...