Well, he's a little doubtful about the whole situation there.
The animators do a very nice job of this part of the movie, because one of the things you see is that his eyebrows
are always pointing up in the middle.
Whereas his father's eyebrows were pointing down in the middle,
and so that's the difference between this, which is sort of like, "things are happening to me," and
this, which is more like I'm imposing my will on things and that's an immature face, and the animators capture that brilliantly.
So here's where she shames him again;
she
tells him how much she liked him when he was little, and
you know, a potential king, and how hurt she is that he's this useless...
you know,
wide-eyed, naive,
impulsive, pleasure-seeking,
adolescent, and
she tells him that she missed him, and
God only knows why, because look at him again. It's like...
completely appalling creature.
And
this is when Pumbaa and Timon sing that song about the fact that, y'know... their friend's doomed because,
you know... this girl's got him and
Then they switch into another archetypal scene, and so they're falling in love here.
And so, the paradisal imagery is really highlighted in the movie and so they go off and have this romp...
self-reflective romp through this new paradise, and
they wrestle around, and
play, and then he
pins her, more or less, and she licks him.
That's - that's not so good.
(laughter)
And this is one of the most brilliant shots, I think, that the animators manage, because she's obviously
pushing this a little bit farther than he knows what to do with. And so, they're wrestling, and he - she licks them and then
she lays down and makes this face, which is... every single class I've ever showed
this to all laugh when they see that image, and that's a good example -
so Freud said that jokes were a good route into the unconscious.
So the question is - and this is an archetypal facial expression, and everyone knows exactly what it means;
there's something sexually seductive about it... something very sexually seductive about it, despite the fact that it's a lioness, and...
(laughter)
The animators do an extraordinarily good job of capturing that, and so that has a huge effect on him.
Well, these guys know that - (laughing)
The game's up man. It's like, they know they're dead.
Whatever attractions they can offer are paling in comparison to this.
So...
So anyways, things don't really progress past that, but you know, he gets a hint of her longing for him;
what's waiting for him if he grows up and the fact that she's completely
disappointed in him because he's so completely useless... and so now he's lounging about... you know,
like some basement-dweller with Cheeto dust all over his chest, and -
(laughter)
trying to justify his absolutely useless life, and you know, saying that he doesn't have any
responsibility to the devastated kingdom, and he's out there where, "Hakuna Matata." You know, I can just do whatever
I want, and follow my impulsive pleasures,
and she thinks he's pretty pathetic, and the reason for that is because he is actually
pretty pathetic and she she tells him that, you know, she's extraordinarily disappointed
and he gets all pouty about it.
I mean, even here you see when he's got kind of an aggressive look on his face, there's still nothing about it
that's commanding. It's petulant, right? It's like, "Well now I'm irritated!" but he's got no force, and still
completely appalling in this particular situation.
So, she judges him very harshly and leaves, and that makes him think.
He gets all self conscious because
this female that he admires wants to have nothing to do with him, and so... he's, first of all, then he thinks, "Well
maybe I'll just hate all women," which is, you know... a pretty pathetic
conclusion, but a very common one. And the next is, well
maybe there's actually something wrong with him, right? Which is a very painful bit of self-reflection, so he...
he knows that there's something wrong with him, and then he calls out to his father, and says, "Look, you said you were
always going to be here for me, and you're not," and so what's happening
is that he's become aware of the insufficiency of his current adolescent value structure,
and he wants something beyond it which would be associated with identification with the father.
But he can't - he can't find the father; the father's dead.
It's like when Pinocchio goes down to the bottom of the ocean to bring Geppetto up from the depths, right?
That's the situation that - that Simba finds himself in right now: the father's gone, and has to be brought up from the depths.