From beasts to heroes: how Donkey Kong embodies the changing role of apes in fiction

In the world of entertainment, apes almost never win. From the imposing "King Kong" to the menacing primates of "Planet of the Apes," the ape has been portrayed as a chaotic, savage, and dangerous force. It's no coincidence that when Hollywood has sought to speak about the fear of the other, of instinct, of chaos, it has turned to the figure of the ape. However, there is one notable exception that has managed to change that narrative. If the ape has traditionally been a tragic figure (the falling gorilla, the imitating ape, the animal that threatens to get too close), Donkey Kong is an affirmative ape.

This character, which has oscillated between antagonism and forced tenderness for more than forty years, reappears today with a new sensibility. Alejandro Fernández, involved in the development of 'Donkey Kong Bananza', the next title in the series for the Nintendo Switch 2 console, points out that "Donkey's evolution, from antagonist to protagonist, is not only a question of personality, but also of image." It's no longer a question of beautifying the character, but of giving him a broader emotional range. Expressive eyes, a frank smile, emotional awkwardness, tenderness and power. Without realizing it, Donkey Kong is being humanized. According to Fernández, this shift began with his appearance in the 'Super Mario Bros.' movie, which is now being transferred to the video game.

Although destruction remains the central mechanic ("yes, Donkey still breaks things," he jokes), now that brute force is intertwined with a narrative that revolves around his relationship with Pauline. "A kind of 'Beauty and the Beast,'" he says, but with a sentimental, "sibling" context. Fernández points out that this evolution doesn't respond solely to technical or aesthetic changes, but to a need to give voice (and contradiction) to a character who for decades has oscillated between the role of brute force and comic relief. "He's a good guy," Fernández summarizes, and with that last word, he dismantles the classic imagery of the aggressive ape.

In 1981, a gorilla screamed inside a Japanese arcade cabinet. Before the story, the character, even before heroes had minimally articulated motivations, appeared a figure who only knew how to resist. The video game was called 'Donkey Kong,' and, despite bearing his name, he wasn't the protagonist, but the threat.

In the official canon, he was named Donkey Kong so that his name could serve as an explanation for his behavior: "Donkey" for stubbornness; "Kong" for the inevitable legacy of King Kong. But he wasn't either. Although he was the villain (he kidnapped Pauline while Jumpman, the future Mario, tried to rescue her), Donkey wasn't entirely disliked. Sergio Fernández, editor of Retrogamer magazine, knows how to identify what was going on with Donkey Kong: "He had something peculiar. Despite being the bad guy, many wanted him to win," he says. That "strange" charisma was key not only to the game's success, but to something bigger: "He helped rescue Nintendo at a difficult time. And that gave him so much clout that he ended up starring in his own saga."

Over the years, Donkey Kong has ceased to be a villain. In fact, he's come to embody a heroic figure, especially since 'Donkey Kong Country,' which Sergio considers one of the key points in his evolution: "It was a qualitative leap and a breakthrough for the industry. Visually, it looked like a 32-bit game, when we were still in the 16-bit era. And in terms of gameplay, it was a very serious alternative to 'Super Mario . '" It was in the '90s that a sort of "cultural rehabilitation of the ape" took place. A new symbolic contract between technology (the video game), narrative (the platform hero), and the animal (the ape as protagonist).

To understand the cultural significance of Donkey Kong's transformation, it's not enough to consider it within the video game ecosystem. It's necessary to frame it within a broader genealogy: the representation of the ape in Western cultural history. Since the beginning of modernity, primates have occupied a particularly uncomfortable place in the human imagination: too familiar to be ignored, yet distinct enough to be turned into symbols of fear, excess, or regression.

In 'Tarzan,' the apes are not individuals, but part of the "wild" landscape, elements that accentuate the heroism of the white protagonist. Tarzan, although raised by apes, triumphs because he manages to tame his animality and reconnect with his aristocratic lineage. Here, the ape is an obstacle in the path of civilization. In cinema, this simian otherness becomes a spectacle. 'King Kong' is perhaps the most paradigmatic case: a colossal gorilla who is torn from his natural environment , brought to New York, and finally killed atop the Empire State Building. Kong is not just a monster: he is an allegory of what happens when the wild enters the heart of civilization.

As film educator Sandra Miret, author of "Damas, Villanas y Lolitas," points out: "the ape is our mirror; we come from them, and we use it to reflect all the evil that is human." The ape in film often functions as a projection surface, a degraded alter ego. Its evolutionary closeness, its almost human gaze, its laughter and crying return to us an image we don't always want to see. "There's a fear of the mirror," she notes, even connecting it to a deep fear of "going back."

This also points to the terrifying #MonkeyHate hashtag, a hashtag that has persisted in the face of internet censorship year after year , with thousands of users sharing videos depicting animal violence. "There are many studies that say we resent monkeys," Sergio recalls, "but video games intentionally look for a friendly monkey." 'Ape Scape,' 'Super Monkey Ball,' and this season's star, Donkey Kong, all fall into the category of endearing, and in the same way, they avoid being swept away by a wave of hatred.

Added to this reading is the racial and colonial dimension of the monkey figure. As Frantz Fanon points out in 'Black Skin, White Masks,' Western racism has "robbed Black bodies of their humanity by animalizing them, symbolically linking them to the savage, the primitive, or the ape-like." This comparison is neither coincidental nor innocent: it is a strategy of dehumanization that remains present in contemporary visual culture. Hence, Sandra Miret speaks of a "racist and colonialized vision" that associates the monkey with negative qualities historically attributed to Black people. "Here's your banana, monkey," Miret recalls, as an internalized racist insult that we see reproduced in different social contexts. "Why is he a villain? Because you don't even question it anymore," she argues.

It's no coincidence that in many of these stories, the apes are the product of human experiments: they aren't born monsters, they are made monsters. This is where Sandra Miret introduces another point: "With veganism and anti-speciesism, we're seeing that we're the savages." Images of monkeys in laboratories, strapped to machines and subjected to cruel tests, give us that uncomfortable look. If science fiction films showed us gorillas with rifles, reality has shown us scientists with syringes.

In all these cases, the ape is a figure of radical otherness: a creature that resembles humans too much to be neutral, but whose difference serves to delimit the boundaries of the human. The ape becomes a limit, a warning, a distorted mirror. As Miret concludes: "We are our own worst enemy. We are capable of creating atomic bombs, and it seems we are already realizing it." This awareness (painful, belated, but increasingly widespread) has also begun to permeate the cultural narratives we consume.

The appearance, then, of Donkey Kong as the "good monkey" in 'Donkey Kong Bananza' is not a future anecdote within the world of video games; it is a cultural shift. Although with a sweetened appearance, the gorilla manages to break the rigid mold of the fixed personality and imposes a reinterpretation of how we represent otherness, instinct, and the non-human. A Donkey Kong who is not a villain breaks with centuries of representation in which the ape is used to draw a boundary that, in 'Bananza,' is blurred. The animal is not a threat, it is a possibility; what was once rejected can now summon sympathy. Perhaps a gorilla in suspenders was needed to remind us that even the most clumsy beast can teach us to be a little more human.