The Lion King
Myth, Religion, and Race
The Lion King as Myth
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The link between the sacred and myth is important… for the
primary myths from which The Lion King draws are religious, with
roots in Biblical stories. They include the stories of paradise, the
fall, desert wandering, the reign of Satan, the need for a savior, and
the cataclysmic destruction of the earth, followed by the return of
the savior who restores peace and the beginning of his full reign as
rightful king…. Following in the Disney tradition, the film aspires to
offer a positive lesson for children about behavior that Disney
values by associating itself with deeper myths; in a sense it is
sacralizing Disney s (some would say American) values.
Ward, p. 14
Myths in The Lion King
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Garden of Eden
Temptation/Fall from Grace
Wandering in the desert
End times, apocalypse
The Peaceable Kingdom
Cyclical pattern, circle of life, eternal return
Myths in The Lion King
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Joseph Campbell s Hero of a Thousand Faces
Call to adventure
Refusal of the call
Wise guide
Finding allies
Encountering the goddess
Confronting the shadow
Facing death
Return to world with boon )
Theology in The Lion King
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Salvation/Savior
Mufasa as God
Simba as Christ
He Lives in You.
–  God as immanent?
Opening sequence, The Lion King II
Religious Archetypes in
The Lion King
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Circle – wholeness, cosmic harmony
Rafiki – shaman/priest
Simba/Nala - Adam/Eve
Darkness (Scar’s mane, Hyena’s coloring, elephant graveyard) death, evil
•  Family/Mother/father - stereotypical mother role, 90 s involved
father role, child should be obedient? - side issue, is The Lion King
sexist?
•  Mountaintop - midway between heaven and earth
•  Fire cleansing of evil
 Rain - spiritual renewal
Ritual in The Lion King
•  Baptism
Ritual in The Lion King
•  Journey
–  Pilgrimage (travel, penance, ordeal,
leveling of statuses, community,
experiencing the sacred, return)
–  Rite of Passage (separation, liminality,
return)
Values in The Lion King?
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Accepting responsibility
Relatedness of all members of society
Circle of life - life, death, new life…
Other values: mystery, cleanliness, family (patriarchal?),
friendship, good/evil exist, reality of death, life goes on, guilt
inhibits growth, hakuna matata NOT enough, honesty is the
best policy…
An African Narrative?
•  The Lion King demonstrated that, after all the
decades of caricature and stereotype, it was indeed
possible for Disney… to reach beyond the Western
experience and the Judeo-Christian construct. With
the critical help of the studio s writers, producers,
and animators - and African American artists - they
could encounter a different culture and successfully
adapt it to the Disney tradition. Pinsky, 159.
Simba as Mandela?
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For these viewers [African viewers], Simba s restoration may
resonate in a special way, although they are themselves still
living with the divisive consequences of colonial-era borders.
The same year The Lion King was released, Nelson Mandela,
an African leader himself of royal lineage, was elected
president of South Africa in that nation s first free, multi-racial
election. Pinsky, 159
•  Hyenas as western colonialists, stripping Africa bare of wealth
and resources, propping up false European governments,
finally supplanted by rightful African rule?
Symbols of European
corruption?
Triumph of the Will, Nazi propaganda film
Nazis, fascists, and (Godless) communists
(and rightful African rule)?
Racism in
The Lion King
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The demented and dangerous hyenas,
whose leader is voiced by Whoopi Goldberg,
reproduce stereotypes about black Americans
that should be out of place in the revisionist
Disney corpus of the mid-1990 s… [The Lion
King reveals] the less loudly proclaimed
reluctance [of Disney] to represent black
people as people at all, African or otherwise.
Byrne & McQuillan, pp. 100-101
Blacks as comic relief,
child-like, unthreatening,
subordinate?
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The strategy of using well-known black actors to voice cartoon animals in
Disney s more recent films confirms [both the absence of African-Americans
as people from Disney films and the racially motivated ideological structure
of the Disney kingdom]… confirming the specific interest Disney has in…
disarming the destabilizing potential of America s racial fantasies and
fears. Byrne & McQuillan, 104.
•  So - blacks as threatening the social/moral order, or blacks as trivial sidekicks?
•  Does The Lion King uphold this analysis?
The Lion King s Voice Actors
Rafiki: Robert Guillaume
Scar: Jeremy
Irons
The Hyenas: Whoopi
Goldberg, Cheech
Marin, Jim Cummings
Mufasa: James Earl
Jones
Sarabi: Madge Sinclair
Simba: Jonathan
Taylor Thomas /
Matthew
Broderick
Nala:Nikita
Calame / Moira
Kelly