Aug. 3 (Bloomberg) -- In a world obsessed with rainforests, biodiversity and sustainable development, Tarzan is making a comeback.

By presenting the pop hero in a small yet serious exhibition, the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris has captured the spirit of the age. French intellectuals always have had a soft spot for the American cousin of the philosopher Rousseau’s noble savage. The subtitle of the show is “Rousseau Chez les Waziri,” referring to the fictitious African tribe in Edgar Rice Burroughs’s 1912 novel “Tarzan of the Apes” -- the first of 26 -- that brought the “ape man” into the world.

The show starts with a profile of the Chicago-based author, who had tried a variety of jobs before turning to writing. Although Burroughs had never been to Africa and his description of the jungle is full of howlers, his story about the son of an English lord, who had been abandoned in infancy and brought up by apes, was an instant success.

The show then examines Burroughs’s sources, chiefly H.M. Stanley’s “In Darkest Africa” (1890) and Rudyard Kipling’s “Jungle Book” (1894). Consciously or not, he also revived characters from Greek and Roman mythology -- Hercules, the multitalented strongman, and Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome, who were suckled by a she wolf.

Darwinist Hero

The show alludes to the more sinister subtext of the seemingly innocent adventure stories. Burroughs was an ardent Darwinist and shared the belief of Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, that the theory of evolution implied the possibility that man might direct his own evolutionary future.

In a way, Tarzan is an early specimen of what the Nazis later called the “master race.”

Burroughs was unhappy with the movies that turned his hero into an athletic nature boy. In the novels, Tarzan is an intelligent autodidact who soon catches up on what he had missed in the jungle, ending his life as the aristocrat he had always been, with a farm, a family and a staff of “darkies.”

In the movies, it’s Jane, Tarzan’s girlfriend, who civilizes the retarded savage, just enough for small talk under baobabs and in no way intended as a prep course for a prodigal son on his way back to Europe.

Whether Jane and Tarzan are duly married, became an issue in 1961 after a teacher banned two Tarzan books from a school library in California, arguing that their child was illegitimate. The uproar did wonders for the marketability of the aging hero, who had lost much of his appeal.

Johnny’s Medals

Excerpts and stills from the 50 or so Tarzan films are one of the highlights of the exhibition. The most famous of the stars was Johnny Weissmuller, a champion swimmer, who won several Olympic gold medals.

In the 1952 movie “Tarzan’s Savage Fury,” Lex Barker played the jungle man as an early ecologist, fighting ivory poachers and lawless animal traders.

The other highlight is the section on comic strips, particularly those by Burne Hogarth, whose elegant, dynamic style is admired even by people who couldn’t care less about cartoons. Hogarth frequently had run-ins with the syndicate, which found his way of depicting the female anatomy risque.

From its own holdings, the museum has added shields, lances, fetishes and other objects from the real Africa.

Somewhat incongruously, the show ends with the female robot from Fritz Lang’s film “Metropolis” (1927) -- perhaps as a premonition about what life holds in store for us if we don’t follow Rousseau’s advice: “Back to Nature!”

“Tarzan!” runs through Sept. 27 at the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris.

For more information, go to http://www.quainbranly.fr or call +33-1-5661-7000.

(Jorg von Uthmann is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer on the story: Jorg von Uthmann in Paris at uthmann@wanadoo.fr.

Last Updated: August 2, 2009 19:00 EDT