Jungle Heroes and Colourism

Most of us young people are pretty much tired of the Tarzan Boy trope being associated with both colonialist and classist depictions, but then again, it shall be noted that ERBU’s canon Tarzan is basically an apeman in all but human looks. 

Unfortunately, there is another, much more disastrous issue entirely, when it comes to casting people regardless of caste, class, ethnicity and skin colour, to play Tarzan/Mowgli/Bomba-like hotties instead. Thanks to various entertainment industries in both South and Southeast Asia being always filled with chauvinistic humans, it is also an increasingly colourist trope associated mainly with paler skinned action heroes beginning on their way to stardom. 

There are a lot of Indian action heroes, from various ethnic groups, who played Tarzan in nearly the past 9 decades alone, although they’re often lighter skinned and somehow less tanned than the actual canonical character, not to mention often having brown eyes, (shivers)! To be fair for the others, the only one who clearly has competed with some of the official Hollywood actors turns out to be Hemant Birje, a moody Marathi has been from Belgaum in northern Karnataka. Ya think Hemant’s skin colour resembles that of ERB’s description more accurately than any other actor before and since? You can thank both him and his much worse casted Hollywood equivalent Miles O’Keeffe for indirectly letting Joe Jusko create his Tarzan design portfolio.