By making The Lion King set in Africa, race relations are bound to be a part of any critical analysis of the film. But I was not aware that the hyenas would play a role and that Latino race relations had a part in the movie. Gooding-Williams brings up many controversial issues in his article. Some of these I agree with but most I do not.
Also, I found his writing style to be bit confusing. For example, at the beginning of the article he discusses Disney’s interpretation of Africa by comparing it to Hegel’s essentially stagnant idea of Africa. This is one of the problems with the article is that right from the beginning Gooding-Williams is making assumptions the reader may not agree with. He is assuming the reader has the opinion he does and uses isolating language. Gooding-Williams critiques Disney saying, “Like Hegel’s picture of Africa, Disney’s image of the circle of life reduces Africa to the endless reproduction of a natural and prehistoric course of life” (2). This may not be due to the fact that Disney is trying to portray Africa as primitive, but rather the fact that the movie has no human presence in it. The animals are supposed to be exotic and different. In fact, the animals are rather advanced, having a monarchal and organized hierarchal structure. In the end, the “circle of life” has more to do with the fact that the movie is about succession and growing more than anything.
Finally, the most interesting part to me in this article was the argument that the hyenas represent inner city minorities. This I found quite compelling. I guess when I was little I never actually considered that the hyenas were anything other than Scar’s minions. I would like to believe that this was not intentional on Disney’s part, especially considering that the movie is set in Africa, where many African Americans have roots. But it is interesting that one is voiced by a hispanic and one by an African American. I liked Gooding-William’s point about how, “the space of the inner city appears here, not as something ‘inner,’ but as something existing outside the boundaries” (3). I found this particularly interesting because where they live is quite literally outside the boundaries Mufasa sets. It is a really interesting point and it definitely is a point that Disney can be criticized on in regards to this movie.
One very ineffective aspect of this essay is the mention of Rafiki. Gooding-Williams tries to use Rafiki as a foil of the hyenas and Scar, but he has little evidence other than the fact the is “a good soul” (3). If that is the logic then all characters in the movie are foils of them.
Gooding-Williams is very confident in his claims and while this is affective for analyzing that there may be racial metaphors and commentary in regards to the animals, he fails to get the specifics quite right, and uses some isolating language to do it.
decodingdisneymeredith 