While trying to acquire the elephant hair, Tarzan is seen by the elephants and mistakenly assumed to be a piranha, causing the elephants to stampede in panic. Terk then runs off to join Flynt and Mungo but soon Tarzan appears telling Flynt and Mungo that Terk said that he could come if he could keep up to which Flynt and Mungo complain that Tarzan is there and Terk takes aside and tells him that in order to convince Flynt and Mungo that he's cool enough to hang out with them he needs to go and get an elephant hair off an elephant's tail which is pretty dangerous and she tells Tarzan to go home but when Terk turns her head around Tarzan jumps into the water and swims towards the elephants to which Flynt and Mungo tell Terk that if Tarzan lives she should bring him around more often and leave to watch Tarzan get an elephant hair. Terk then orders Tarzan to stay away from Kerchak and then runs off to join two ape boys named Flynt and Mungo to which Tarzan asks Terk if he can come to which Terk says that Tarzan could come if he could keep up but he can't keep up. When Tarzan grows into a little boy, he accidentally runs into Kerchak, but Terk manages to help Tarzan by acting that she was looking for him, and takes him away from Kerchak. Just before she went to sleep, Terk slid off her mother's belly, picked a leaf for a blanket and climbed back on her belly. After that, Terk's mother picks her up and tells her that it's way past her nest time. After Kerchak allows Kala to keep Tarzan, Terk asks Kala what she's going to call him, and Kala says that she's going to call him Tarzan. Terk hands Tarzan back to Kala and tells Kerchak, the Leader, that Kala's going to be the baby's new mother. When Terk first sees Tarzan she calls him freaky looking, to which her mother scolds at her for saying and Terk asks Kala what Tarzan is and Kala tells her that he's a baby and puts Tarzan in Terk's arms to which Tarzan starts playing with Terk and when Terk asks where Tarzan's mother is, Kala simply says she will be his mother now. In the movie, Terk is one of the young gorillas in Tarzan's Ape Family and she is the first to spot Kala coming back with Tarzan. She is also the best friend of Tantor, whose neurotic persona often frustrates the ape to no end, though she truly values him as a friend and often takes advantage of him. Even though Terk is a bit overbearing at times, Tarzan knows it's because Terk cares, though she will never say so willingly. Terk loves ordering Tarzan around-that is, until Tarzan's physical strength proves he can hold her in a headlock instead. It seems positive to place queer characters where they don’t exist since they are so underrepresented, but it’s really rather limiting and assumes that queer people can only portray one range of sexuality in film- or that their sexuality is their most defining feature in what they bring to the screen ( like with Rosie, I would think her real defining feature, and the reason they used her voice, is her loudness, her brashness, her colorful way of speaking).Terk loves the spotlight, and she is perfect "big sister" material because she's Tarzan's closest friend-protective, selfless, and absolutely convinced that Tarzan can't survive without her. I don’t think it’s really a good idea to assume that simply because a voice actor or normal actor is queer, that their characters must follow suit. I don’t honestly think one can read her as a lesbian unless I haven’t gotten to a part where that happens in the film. But it’s interesting that simply being loud and active- “like a boy”- will make people assume an otherwise female gorilla is “a boy.” Which I don’t think is the “fault” of the viewer, but what we would normally think after a lifetime of girl characters usually being made less active and less loud by contrast (and she is also in contrast with the portrayal of other women in the film). It’s interesting that A) her introduction did have so many cues in it as to her identification and B) that her fairly ambiguous portrayal is often seen by people as being “boyish”- presumably because she is more active, more loud, et cetera.
#Terk tarzan movie#
After that point in the movie though, yeah, her portrayal becomes fairly “androgynous” in that she doesn’t seem to be placed into a gender binary.
#Terk tarzan full#
I’m still only halfway through watching the movie in memory, I couldn’t remember how gendered she was or wasn’t, but in rewatching it I realized that there are several cues right as she’s introduced ( they give her full name as ‘Terkina’ -'A’ name endings are usually used to indicate femininity, her mother or someone calls her a 'young lady,’ and something else I can’t recall).