Why you should cheer when Mufasa dies…

• 24th Nov 2011

Why you should cheer when Mufasa dies…

… well, maybe not cheer, but to shed any tears for that tyrant would be like stabbing Timon and Pumbaa in the eye.

The Lion King is a love letter to the establishment, to hierarchy and to an unthinking, totalitarian, fascistic system of government.  It celebrates brute force whilst reinforcing the idea that greater intelligence is an indicator of evil.  In short; Mufasa is a dictator.

Consider the evidence.  The most obvious example is, of course, the unfair characterisation of Scar as “villain”.  Why is he so mistreated?  He is defined by an accident – his identity completely removed to be solely replaced by his physical dissimilarity.  Consider if you were to be disfigured in an incident, but from that point on, rather than treat you as a normal citizen, everyone (including, lest we forget, YOUR OWN BROTHER) were to refer to you solely as Scar.  Any achievements, anything you ever did, become incidental, because you now do not fit the norm aesthetically.  Would it not be understandable that you might become bitter at a society that so wilfully fails to see past your exterior to your obviously superior intellect?  That, as a result of this, you might think that you could do a better job of running the world, making it a fairer and more balanced place?  Scar is no villain; he is a tragic hero, let down by an ableist society that dismisses him on his appearance alone and cannot accept disability.

“But surely,” I hear you cry, “it is Scar who is the fascist! Is it not he who adopts the role of powerful leader, overlooking the goose-stepping hyenas?”  Of course it is.  But it has always been the argument of fascists that everything BUT fascism is fascism.  The hyenas are the film’s very unflattering portrayal of the working classes, banished to the wastelands where they obviously “belong”.  Should the underclasses ever rise up and attempt to seize power from their oh-so-benevolent overlords, it will unavoidably destabilise the “Circle of Life” and spell disaster for all.  Far better therefore, according to the morality of the film, to allow the established order to continue and let the lions maintain their stranglehold on all they observe.

It is telling that the lions’ power derives from only two things – strength and birth right.  There is not a hint of democracy here, but a blind acceptance that the best ruler will always be the son of the previous ruler.  Some are lucky enough to be born lions, others unluckily brought into the world as hyenas, but that the former should rule over the latter is presented as the natural state of affairs and completely closed to debate.  Presumably, this is the doctrine as laid down by the Circle of Life.

The Circle of Life is clearly one of the most remarkable pieces of doublethink ever committed to celluloid and capable of justifying sheer murder.  In what is surely the film’s most chilling scene, the young Simba asks the tyrant Mufasa how it can be fair that they slaughter and eat the antelope.  Calmly, Mufasa responds that when they die, they become grass, and then the antelope eat the grass.  Most frightening of all, he is being entirely sincere.  Under the pretext of the Circle of Life, the lions have developed a system of thinking, wherein they believe it to be entirely just that many antelope are massacred, torn to shreds whilst fleeing in fear of their lives, yet they can pass away peacefully in their beds.  Unsurprisingly, at no point do we hear the antelope’s perspective on this.

What makes it such an effective piece of doublethink is that the lions are able to reconcile their belief that they are the grass with the fact that they are also the stars.  It’s a remarkable display of arrogance that the lions appear to view everything they see as, in some way, an extension of themselves (or at least, everything good).  So whilst the antelope may be eating the grass of dead lions, the lions may rest assured that for them and them alone, there is an afterlife – an afterlife where they may continue their favourite pastime of looking down on everyone else.  It doesn’t matter how you go – if you’re a lion, there will always be a happy ending for you.

So, there you have it.  Ultimately, The Lion King is a reminder of who’s in charge and a warning that you will be punished for being smart or different, by something nondescript, self-contradicting and unfair.

Chris Meredith