squeaky-pickle:

I know this sounds petty, but do you want to know something that legitimately upsets me about Disney’s Tarzan?

The fact that Tarzan never once has a beard.

He has no access to razors, and even if he did (because I know people are out there that say he uses spear heads and the stuff he sharpens for weapons), he has no preconception that he should shave. All the gorillas around him are incredibly hairy, both male and female.

He also has no prior contact with humans that he can remember, so he wouldn’t know that it is seen as attractive to shave sometimes. Not to mention that at that time many if not most men had facial hair that they wore proudly and was seen as fashionable. For goodness sake, his father has facial hair and he’s been around other people, so he’s a perfect example!

Tarzan should have a full blown beard and mustache that’s as long as the rest of his hair is on his head.

Now, once he meets Jane and company, it would make sense for him to stylize his beard. There could of course be a time of confusion where he couldn’t understand why the other humans he meets have shorter facial hair and why they would think it attractive to have shorter facial hair. It doesn’t even have to have dialogue, just show him arguing with Clayton with images of men with stylized facial hair on the projector.

Even then, they’ve designed Tarzan partially as an image of the current age, not the age at which he is depicted. He’s got long hair, but he’s totally clean shaven, something our age finds attractive because we’ve had it hammered into our heads that facial hair looks dirty or unkempt. So they chose to represent the longer hair that some men wore because it helped make him look like a wild-man, but they decided against the beard and mustache because that would make him look dirty.

For those who say that it was part of the design plan because it would make it harder to animate him speaking, eating, and kissing, I call bull. They gave King Triton a beard and mustache and he did just fine.

In short, Tarzan should have had a beard and mustache, and I can’t think of a reason why not.