Stereotypes In The Lion King

The Lion King is a film about a young cub, Simba, born to the king of the lions. The king, Mufasa, was loved by all animals. He took on great leadership and showed tremendous amount interest in knowing every animal, not just those of his kind. The only animal ever against Mufasa was unfortunately his own brother, Scar. The antagonistic Scar had a plot to kill both King Mufasa and his son Simba in order to take over the control

In “The Lion King”, Disney uses animals to tell a coming of age story. In this film, characters are used to symbolize racism. From the beginning of Simba’s life, his father forbids him to go to the Elephant Graveyard. Upon further investigation, the viewer learns that the graveyard is resemblant of the ghetto. Even the inhabitants of the graveyard are voiced by minorities and participate in illegal activities one would imagine happening in the ghetto: i. e. stealing food, kidnapping the king’s son. Gail Robertson’s essay, “Snow Whitey?”, states that the “embedded messages [ in “The Lion King”] can only be described as despicable” (43). This essay also on points out the “ghettoization of Blacks and Hispanics” (43). In the film, the integration

Through the eyes of the general public we see The Lion King as an entertainment asset but in the eyes of Gail Robertson; a diverse ethnicity towards characters is pointed out. After watching Disney's The Lion King under critical analysis, assumptions can be made that many characters grouped together are by race. In Robertson's Snow Whitey? Stereotyping in the Magical Kingdom, he bashes the fact that within Disney movies “a world filled with racism, sexism, ageism and heterosexism” (42) has to be viewed by the parents in order to understand Disney’s views on each stereotype.

Media is a powerful agent in entertaining children. It also influences and teaches the youth of society the suitable and appropriate gender roles that they inevitably try to make sense of. The power of media is very influential especially in the minds of the youth. Disney movies target the youth and plant certain ideas and concepts about social culture into the vulnerable minds of children. Media uses gender to its advantage, just like Disney productions. Humorous caricatures reveal some harsh realities about the portrayal of Disney Princesses in many movies made by the Walt Disney Company. Disney mixes innocence with the ultimate form of fantasy to capture an audience. Predominantly, Disney helps highlight the gender roles by showing the

Lazarus states her thesis by saying: “The Lion King is breaking box office records. But it’s not breaking stereotypes (1)”. She discusses how at first she believes it will be different from the traditional Disney movies because it is based on a group of animals and not on sexist princess movies such as The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast (1). Lazarus says she had grown “weary of reinforcing women’s subordinate status by screening fables about a beauty who tames an angry male beast or a mermaid who gives up her glorious voice and splits her body to be with a prince.(1)”

Sydney Rickabaugh Ms. Crider English 10 Honors Period 1 17 October 2014 Wonder for all ages Great stories seem to take people of all ages on a roller coaster ride full of emotion and wonder. An animated movie called The Lion King was produced by Disney and released in 1994.

In Disney’s movie, The Lion King, the manipulative and envious lion, Scar, represents the villain archetype because of several scenes throughout the movie where he is representing the archetype. Near the beginning of the film, Scar attempts to trick the innocent and naive hero, Simba, to go beyond the kingdom of Pride rock, and into the dangerous Elephant graveyard. The Elephants Graveyard is designed to look dangerous with giant elephant bones, and hungry hyenas lurking in the shadows of the bones of animals who had made the mistake by trespassing. Scar’s dark mane, yellow jealous eyes, and his clever manipulative antics are designed to make the viewers fear Scar and comprehend how he is the villain of the film.

The Lion King has always been considered a symbolic film teaching children not to dwell in the past. To demonstrate that what happens in the past does not matter, it will prevail how the person grows from it. Simba’s past was not the best, however he grew from it. His uncle Scar made him think that he killed his own father. When he found out Simba still did the kind-hearted deed and spare his uncle's life.

Surely an experienced lioness would have been better suited for the throne than her young, rash, and naive son. Sarabi would have most definitely made more logical sense to succeed Simba than Scar. She was closer in relation to both Mufasa and Simba, she ruled alongside Mufasa for years, and she was far more well-loved by the subjects than Scar. Yet she did not, to the extent of public knowledge, ever reign.

Walt Disney shows us how his strong feelings and or values shown in his films were all meant in a good way. “Our heritage and ideals, our codes and standards - the things we live by and teach our children - are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings”. Disney uses language predominately as means to imply the race of a character. Language has the ability to signal race and has been influenced to exploit racial stereotypes, which are displayed in Disney films. The problem arises when movies do not portray these values. Disney Classics that our generation adored as children are now thought to showcase many questionable values in their storylines. There is a clear representation of stereotypes through the use of language in many of these classics. An example of sexist stereotypes can be seen in Cinderella, where the young girl is helpless until the Prince falls in love with her. Most Disney movies exhibit lessons not desirable for children as this sets a precedent

His voice is deep, his walk is confident, his mane is impressive, and he is definitely in-charge. Simba looks up to his father because of these reasons. Mufasa does have one weakness that proves to be fatal: his son. While the movie lets us see some sort of vulnerability in the noble pride leader, there is a more selfish reasoning to his weakness. Simba is the only male lion in the pride, so he is heir to it. Mufasa would have to be very cautious in the care of his son because he is the only other person besides Scar who could carry on the line of succession. Simba as Mufasa's son brings a note a narcissism into the ordeal. Being a part of Mufasa shows that the king was concerned about a piece of himself, even if it is external. While this in itself is not important on its own, Nala's very existence makes the relationship status significant. By all technicality, being the daughter of one of Mufasa's pride lionesses means she is also a child of the king, but was shown no deference most likely due to her not being a boy cub. It could be said that Disney was not thinking about incest and polygamy when they wrote the story, but considering the familial relationship between the main characters of the sequel and the absence of other male lions besides Scar, it is quite possible that the future king and queen were

As a child I had often enjoyed playing pretend, emulating my favorite characters from television and film. In particular, I had often imagined myself as the heroes from popular Disney films and often looked to them as role models and inspiration. Disney movies played a large role in mine and millions of others children’s development, imbedding there themes and lessons into our personalities and conscious. The problem however, laid in the fact that the majority of these classic Disney films themes and lessons are from an era that promoted sexism and negative gender roles. Disney’s misrepresentation of the role of males and females portrayed in their popular films coupled with the rapid increase of digital media and merchandise sales has distorted

The character of Kong, according to the race reading, independently acts as a semiotic representation of the white man’s perception of black men. The film’s narrative takes us to Africa, asks the audience to embark on an adventure to a land so lost to the modern world that its inhabitants exist side by side with dinosaurs, which Brian McKay argues to be the most “obvious symbol for the perceived primitive nature of Africa and Blacks” (McKay, 2005) The gorilla that they bring back from that island may now be an icon of popular culture in himself, but before King Kong was released there was another image of popular social consciousness that he was associated with, which were the disturbingly dehumanizing cartoons of black people as monkeys popularized

The representation of females in Disney films can be interpreted to be very sexist and miss-leading to young girls. In nearly all Disney films women are represented as house wives that are vulnerable and need saving. Although in our postmodern society where laws are now in place to protect females from being discriminated against (such as the equality act.) Disney has not kept up with these changes in the view of many people and still remains to include these sexist stereotypes.

Happily ever after is a notion that is presented in all Disney movies, especially in Disney princess movies. Children who watch these movies grow up believe in happy endings, true love and heroic princes who save the day. However, these movies do not depict the reality of romance and marriage. Relationships do not consist only of heterosexual, cisgender, same-race couples. Interracial couples, homosexual couples, and transgender couples exist in our society, yet, they are never represented in Disney films.