2006

Title: King Kong Théorie

Author: Virginie Despentes

The book is a blend of memoir, critical theory, and feminist manifesto. “King Kong becomes a metaphor for sexuality before the separation of the genders politically imposed at the end of the nineteenth century. King Kong is beyond male and beyond female. It is hooked on the link between man and beast, adult and child, good and bad, primitive and civilized, black and white. It is hybrid, before the imposition of the binary. The island in the film becomes the potential for ultra-powerful, polymorphic sexuality. Just what cinema wishes to capture, display, distort, and in the end destroy.” The book is a blend of memoir, critical theory, and feminist manifesto. Despentes discusses a number of episodes in her life, including the reaction to the publication of her novel Baise-Moi and its subsequent film adaptation, which she directed; her time as a sex worker; and her experience being gang-raped at the age of 17 while hitch-hiking across France. The overarching focus of the book has been described as "the ways in which our experiences of gender, power, and control are bound up in the vast, multifaceted ideology of late capitalism and our lives are organized around satisfying, or disappointing, male desire."