Rice Burroughs wrote 24 Tarzan stories and there have been 42 Tarzan films. Clearly an icon if ever there was, Tarzan is now the star attraction at Paris's new and rather magnificent ethnological museum, the Quai Branly. The show brings together comic books, film extracts, stuffed animals and African artefacts that tell us a bit about Tarzan and a lot about the way westerners see - or used to see - Africa.

Many visitors to the exhibition can't resist having a go at the Tarzan yell. And everyone has their own idea about what the figure means to them.

"Tarzan represents strength and virility," says one woman. "Man in all his splendor. Natural and wild."

"I think it was a very powerful myth of the Beast and Man," a male visitor says.

In Rice Burroughs's stories, Tarzan was the son of a British lord and lady who'd been marooned on the East African coast. His mother died of natural causes when he was one and his father was killed by the leader of a tribe of giant apes who carried off the little boy and raised him. His ape mother called him Tarzan, which means ‘white skin' in an imaginary ape language called Waziri. His real name, though, was John. John Clayton, Lord Greystoke.

In the books he gets back to England, attends Oxford University and learns 12 languages including Latin before returning to the jungle. A far cry from the films where Tarzan is depicted as someone who can barely speak at all, save for a few varied grunts.

Tarzan was also a vehicle for Rice Burroughs's opinions. The American loathed religion and loved Darwin, for example, and alongside the dynamic and sinewy cartoon strip drawings by Burne Hogarth, the exhibition includes caricatures drawn during the first debates about Darwin's "Origin of Species." It's possible to read Rice Burroughs's story of the King of the Apes and Lord of the Jungle as a fairytale version of Darwin's theories about the birth of Man and the survival of the fittest.

"Through his Darwinism he was also interested in the idea of different races which we now know is something a little bit weird, so there is a kind of dark side to Tarzan," explains Stéphane Martin, the director of the Quai Branly museu and the man who had the idea for the exhibition.

He is the first to admit that this white man in a loincloth subjugating not only Jane but everything around him is a political walk on the wild side. But, he says, even politically, Tarzan has some redeeming features.

Tarzan as champion of the environment

"There is also a bright side which is the interest for the environment," Martin says. "Tarzan may be the first Green hero, not killing animals for pleasure."

"There is also the erotic dimension and the fascination with the body," he adds. "When you look at some of the movies produced in the 1930s, you're a bit surprised that they're so scantily clad! In one of the sections of the movie we're showing, there's an incredible scene of Jane swimming naked. Of course, it was edited when the film was released commercially, but still there's this idea of freedom and a connection with our environment."

Fifteen different actors have taken turns portraying Tarzan in the movies. There's a portrait gallery of them in the exhibition. More than a couple look as if the cult of the body beautiful which the comics did so much to encourage had completely passed them by. But that certainly wasn't the case for the most popular of the Tarzan actors, multiple Olympic swimming champion Johnny Weissmuller.

Weissmuller was an ethnic German (albeit half Jewish) from the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the cry that made lions' knees go all trembly was based on the yodelling he did as a boy.

Shaping views of Africa

But if Tarzan was culturally a bit of an odd one, he wasn't nearly as odd as the Africa you see in the films. Rice Burroughs never went to Africa. And it didn't seem to bother any of the film producers that there were tigers in Tarzan's African jungle, for example, or that Tarzan encountered Vikings or Ancient Romans on his adventures.

Tarzan's Africa was as boundless as the bottom of a magician's hat. Anything could come out of it. These days, we wouldn't take such liberties. Or would we? Stéphane Martin believes Western pop culture has developed a taste for the exotic which is very Tarzan-esque indeed.

"Most of contemporary pop culture from Bjork's music to tattooing to haka dancing on the rugby pitch or things like that are taking their inspiration from outside traditional western culture," he says.

"When I was a kid, for example, rugby culture was mostly Scottish culture. People were in kilts and pipes. Now they're all into haka dancing, wearing mokos and sporting tattoos. It's interesting to see how western pop culture is constantly recycling stuff from non-western civilizations and Tarzan is an example of that of course."

John Laurenson (dc)

Editor: Helen Seeney