Walt Disney
The Lion King
1994The Lion King has always been one of my favorite movies but now watching it with a new perceptive it's a whole new movie to me. This movie has racism and stereotyping all through out it. No wonder little kids think the dark hair doll is bad all of their movies tell them they are. After today I don't know I could call The Lion King one of my favorite movies.
Mufasa the king of the green lands has lighter skin and light hair. Also played by a white actor as well as Simba. Someday everything will all be handed down to Simba. Teaching Simba not to have to work a day in his life and that the male in powers all. Kings can do anything they want and don't need advise. It plays off of the light skin and dark skin against each other treating children that it is the right thing to do.
Scar forms a army of hyenas to kills Mufasa and Simba ( acting almost Hitler like ). He make promises he can't keep and is not concerned about his own kind at all. He wants them to listen and do what he demands. Teaching children that is how darker skin handle their problems and get things done.
He treats Simba into believing he killed his own father and he needs to run away. Portraying children as naive and treating them it is okay to run away from your problems.
Woman in this movie are stereotype all through out it as well. When the light lion is king the woman are there to take care of the children. Then when the dark lion takes over they make their woman do all the work. They are lost without their male leader. Teaching children woman are hopeless without a light man their to guide them.
In the end Scar has the land and it's turned to dark dry land ( ghetto ) but as soon as Simba takes over everything returns to the greens. So just in case children didn't realize that light skin is better they get one last chance.
I searched the Internet to see if others felt the same way as I do and I found many site that backed up my new findings in this movie. As a child I'm not sure if I put two and two together but how could you not. Disney puts racism and stereotyping in our children's head but yet we still take them to see these movies. I hope to read in others blogs that they found a safe movie for our children to watch.
Hello, I was really interested to see how you would understand the movie and present it, because I too chose to analyse the Lion King. I agree with your point about the color, I also thought about it too, also I mentioned in my post family and betrayal. I actually was surprised to see how many people also believed that the Lion King is racial and unapropriate for children. I have to say as I was reading throught websites, I was suprised to see how many people actually dislike the movie and would not let their children watch it. I was shocked because I have watched this movie more than any other one and it was my favorite. I do not remember thinking that dark skin is bad simply because I lived in a country where we all look the same but I was always sad and couldnt understand why family would kill each other. I have to say talking about this movie was not easy since it was my favorite as a child.
ReplyDeleteThis is a good critique, you utilized graphics and one interesting video clip to illustrate your point about the Hitler similarity. Grammatical issues. You have several outside resources which relate well to your critique, but you needed to pull information from them and include this in the body of your written blog.
ReplyDeleteI too have watched this movie over and over and had always loved it. You brought up a great point about Scar having the darker features and being the "bad guy". I never realized this and I am glad that you pointed this out. It makes me think about this movie a little more now. Great post, I enjoyed reading it.
ReplyDeleteGreat review. I liked how you looked at the dark and the light of the animals "skin" color. It was a great way to create a juxtoposion of what was going on. I've seen this movei serveral times as well, although for me I noticed the strong deep voices of the Mufasa and it sort of reminded me of an ethic figure because of his voice. I'm now going to re watch this and see if I am able to pick it apart a little better because of post. I'm still in awe of how many stereotypes are portrayed in these Disney movies.
ReplyDeleteI think even before we had this assignment I critiqued certain Disney movies. Some of them have such obvious racial/discrimination/stereotype issues that this assignment made it difficult to choose a good movie. You picked great points; I loved how you differentiated between Scar(bad) and Mufasa(good) as both light and dark, this can have an affect on kids!
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