Response to The Lion King

I remember towards the end of my senior year of high school, when my teacher announced that we were going to watch The Lion King, I was genuinely excited to see it, much more so than I would have been for say Mulan, Pocahontas, or many of the other Disney animated films.  Even though I had outgrown children’s movies, there was still a part of me that knew I would enjoy it as much as I did when I was six years old.  Re-watching it then, I realized I was right, and that the movie was great.  It felt like I was watching it for the first time, since there were so many parts that I had forgotten about.  Before watching it this time, though, I wondered if I would be as captivated, since this time I did remember most of the storyline because it was still fairly fresh in my memory.

Watching The Lion King for this class was just as great an experience, although this time I watched it from an analytical perspective.  As far as Disney films go, I thought it had a much deeper message than, say, many of the fairy tales.  The whole idea of the Circle of Life, and the wisdom that Mufasa passed down to his son, were much more than any six year old child is looking to get out of a Disney animated feature film.  This, to me, is a testament to the effort and time Disney animators put into their films.  Even if the end goal is to attract small children and make money, they still want to create films that will be remembered and that can be enjoyed by adults as well, which I would think is a fairly complicated task.

One key criticism with this film is that there are sexist undertones, seeing as the female lions never stand up to Scar and the hyenas until Simba returns to save the day.  Looking at Disney’s track record with sexism in their animated films, I would not be surprised if this is just a continuation of their tendency to undermine women in their stories.  However, in a lion pride, the males are always the ones who fight for control of a group of females, so I wonder if in this case the writers were just trying to be more realistic in the depiction of these lions.  This would also make sense, considering after the release of The Lion King, Disney started to make a push to include more diversity in their films, as well as a set of more dynamic female characters.