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Essay on A Review for “The Lion King”

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It is amazing how a seemingly educated woman that has won Oscar awards for her documentaries, could possibly be so far off base in her review of the Disney movie “The Lion King”. Margaret Lazarus has taken a movie made for the entertainment of children and turned it into something that is racist, sexist and stereotypes gender roles. She uses many personal arguments to review the movie but offers few solutions. The author is well organized but she lacks alternate points of view and does not use adequate sources. Lazarus utilizes the statement at the end of her review that “the Disney Magic entranced her children, but they and millions of other children were given hidden messages that could only do them and us harm” (118). She makes her…show more content…
She does not use a comparative statement to substantiate her argument and we are not able to corroborate her statement. Now Lazarus informs us that Whoopie Goldberg gives voice to the main hyena using inner city dialect (118). Cheech Marin, who happens to be Hispanic, gives voice to one of the other hyenas. He uses inner city dialect for his character as well. Disney got together some incredible talent to voice characters in this movie. The fact that Whoopie is Black or that Cheech is Hispanic and the use of inner city dialect is not any different from what a person hears every day. Whoopie Goldberg speaks this way much of the time in real life. The third hyena does not even speak in the movie; he just laughs hysterically which is what hyenas supposedly do in real life. Does this make the third hyena a mute because he never speaks a word? Not really, it is just the way the writer of the movie intended for it to be. Next, the author makes her interpretation of the main villain in the movie. It is a lion named Scar, and he “speaks in an effeminate, limp pawed style given voice by actor Jeremy Irons” (118). She calls him a “seemingly gay caricature” (Lazarus 118). If Lazarus is the accomplished filmmaker, she seems to be; she should have studied movies and would know how a typical British Monarch would act. Jeremy Irons portrays Scar as an uppity, well to do lion that is in charge and does not want to get his “paws” dirty. He spends his
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