Jodley Green reviews the new Disney cartoon smash The Lion King A REACTIONARY moral message, stereotyped characters, a thin plot, corny jokes: yep, Disney is still doing what it does best.
But there's huge variation in the treatment of these eternal Disney themes. Between The Aristocats and Jungle Book there's a world of difference. So the question isn't whether The Lion King is reactionary nonsense, but whether it's enjoyable reactionary nonsense.
The animation is fantastic. The wildebeest stampede alone is worth the price of admission. But it's the baddies which are the best drawn. The star of the show, Simba, Is pretty characterless once he grows up.
The best voices also go to the evil animals - uncle Scar (Jeremy Irons) and the hyenas (who include Whoopi Goldberg and Cheech Marin). Rowan Atkinson is wasted on the completely dull part of Zazu, the courtier bird. And the music is rubbish.
But, The Lion King isn't a bad movie. It could be a bad influence on kids though.
The moral is clear - take your place in society, don't try to change destiny, the world is one of harmony. There's no place for struggle. The ecological 'message' is cute rather than hard hitting.
The film has been called racist. The evil hyenas speak like homeboys, and the laid back lazy philosophy of the Warthog and Meerkat characters is summed up by a Swahili phrase Hakuna Matata -'No Worries'.
Images
In the United States, where representations of young blacks as violent, lazy and irresponsible are used to justify police brutality and cuts in welfare payments, it is not surprising that every image is interrogated by anti-racists.
But black and white voices are fairly evenly distributed between good and evil roles, and the Hakuna Matata philosophy is presented by characters which can't possibly be construed as metaphors for 'welfare others' or other tar- REVIEW gets of the right wing ideologues.
Kids are more likely to come out of the cinema enraptured by royalty, than filled with racist ideas. The Lion King is a great punch up between good and evil (with a fight scene lifted from Raging Bull.).
And if you expected anything different, let me ask you a question - have you ever been to a Disney movie?
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 70, October 22 1994, Page 10