Considering the Canon: The Lion King

For the past 77 years, American kids have grown up watching Disney movies, having their worldviews shaped by the cartoon narratives. This is why the old "damsel in distress" trope has received its fair share of deserved criticism. The Lion King demonstrates this chauvinistic weakness, although perhaps less ostentatiously than Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or Sleeping Beauty.

Like those traditional princess movies, though, Lion King devalues female agency. Every change, besides one, that occurs in this story is the result of male action. The one exception is when Nala encourages Simba to return home. This barely counts, though, since what she's doing is getting a man to come fix things.

Irene Mecchi, Jonathan Roberts and Linda Woolverton's iconic story paints a picture of a simple moral dichotomy in which good is represented by responsibility to one's community and connection to one's ancestors, and evil by greed and familial estrangement. Directors Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff emphasize the point by drawing the Cain figure Scar as the leader of a Nazi rally in a hellish elephant graveyard, and the Abel figure Mufasa as a divine presence at the edge of the savannah. These two males in relationship to protagonist Simba, constitute the core of the plot.

For American boys and girls who became cognizant of stories in the early 90s, The Lion King was universal fare. Why shouldn't it have been? It taught us to value our families and communities, and to respect our ancestors. By phrasing the narrative so entirely in masculine terms, however, The Lion King also taught us that only males had the agency to change things for good or ill in the world. The movie's central crisis is created by one male, and solved by another male, while females are relegated to the role of dependent deuteragonists. The Lion King teaches us family values that disempower an entire gender.

It is unfortunate that such a beloved classic reflects such chauvinism on the part of American society. Moving forward, we need to work to create a canon that empowers all members of our society equally.