From King Kong to Koko to the Planet of the Apes series, movies in which apes use a sign language can both portray the power of sign, and perpetuate damaging myths about the languages of Deaf communities.
In this video for the ANU College of Science, Sign on Screen lead Gemma King discusses what happens when we make movies about signing apes. The video was shown at a screening of 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes, as part of the Science.Art.Film. series at the National Film and Sound Archive.
The latest film to depict signing apes is 2024’s Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, in which giant gorilla King Kong communicates in rudimentary American Sign Language with his friend Jia, a Deaf child believed to be the last member of the Indigenous Iwi tribe of Skull Island. The New Empire is a sequel to the 2018 film Godzilla vs. Kong, which also features Jia signing with Kong. When watching these films, consider how they switch back and forth between a progressive vision, depicting sign as a uniquely useful form of transspecies language, and a regressive one, casting sign as a simplistic, even animalistic form of communication.
