Fucking Tarzan was fighting evil white exploiters of pristine Africa in books back in the early 1900s.
A good white saviour from the evil white people, because the indigenous can’t do it for themselves. Just like in Ferngully and Avatar.
Are there even any indigenous people in Tarzan? I haven’t read the book, but from the movie I only remember his gorilla buddy and the little elephant. I think Tarzan is more about rebelling against civilization in general, instead of colonization in specific (which James Cameron’s Avatar is). It’s very post-industrialization in that sense.
Edit: Whoops, just read the synopsis on Wikipedia. I don’t think Tarzan is the white saviour you’re looking for…
Which Tarzan book did you read the synopsis for? Burroughs wrote 24 of them.
Sorry, it wasn’t as much a synopsis as it was the criticism section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarzan#Themes_of_gender_and_race
Looking at it now, I see citations for the essays, but not for the factual claims made by those essays, so I hope the editor who wrote it didn’t take their word for it.