“You must take your place in the circle of life.”
The first line of The Lion King belongs to its villain, Scar,
who utters a very relatable observation:
“Life’s not fair, is it?”
And in fact, this whole story is about the universal rite of passage
of learning that life really isn’t fair.
Scar is annoyed by the social hierarchy that puts him in an inferior position
to his seemingly less deserving nephew.
“When I'm king, what'll that make you?”
“A monkey's uncle.”
But this kid who has everything soon loses the center of his universe,
as his beloved father dies a horrible death right before his eyes.
So The Lion King swiftly and harshly breaks it to kids that,
sometimes, life sucks.
Not only do you have to reckon with where you fall on the food chain,
but even if you do get to be King, you’re not exempt from the suffering
and loss that’s inherent to our mortal existence.
The circle of life is just as much a circle of death --
for you to grow up and become an independent adult,
your parents have to get older and eventually pass away.
Darkness is woven into everything that’s light.
So what actually made the Lion King so vivid and life-changing for 90s kids
is, it's not afraid to go to some dark places.
“Simba, what have you done?”
The movie's enduring success proves that kids want stories
that make sense of life’s difficulties, instead of censoring them out.
“It doesn’t matter, it’s in the past.”
“Yeah but it still hurts.”
“Oh yeah the past can hurt.
But the way I see it
you can either run from it, or learn from it.”
So here’s our take on why the brilliance of the Lion King
comes from inviting darkness into the Disney picture.
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The brutal, tragic death of the good king Mufasa
no doubt traumatized many of us as kids.
“Long live the king.”
Removing the parents from the fictional equation
subtly empowers young viewers to think about being independent
and self-reliant.
But rarely do we witness the actual death
of the character’s parents.
A big exception to this is one of The Lion King’s key inspirations:
Bambi,
A story set in motion by the heartbreaking loss
of Bambi’s mother at the hands of hunters.
In Lion King, Mufasa’s demise is even more shocking
due to the visceral, immersive experience we take in
through the eyes of the son who, until now,
thought his dad was invincible.
“But you're not scared of anything.”
Then, while Simba is still processing the unfathomable,
“Dad….
We gotta go home.”
The horror is doubled by the psychological torment
Scar inflicts,
persuading the poor boy he’s to blame for his own father’s death.
“But the king is dead.
And if it weren’t for you
he’d still be alive.”
After this point, the journey that follows for Simba
is about learning how to reckon with the role of pain
and injustice in our lives.
This is actually something Simba’s society has failed to do, too.
The Pride Lands don't acknowledge evil, wrongdoing or ill intentions.
All this badness is ignored and pushed out of sight,
as symbolized by the shadowlands which are explicitly rejected
by Mufasa’s kingdom.
“What about that shadowy place?”
“That’s beyond our borders -- you must never go there, Simba.”
Mufasa doesn’t explain what this disturbing place is,
or why it’s not a part of their kingdom,
So Simba is poorly equipped to deal with it,
“You can’t do anything to me.”
“Technically they can, we are on their land.”
Just as he later responds to tragedy by running from it
and suppressing his feelings.
“It doesn’t matter, hakuna matata.”
“What?”
“Hakuna matata, it’s something I learned out here.
Look, sometimes bad things happen.”
“Simba!”
“…and there's nothing you can do about it!
So why worry?”
He's been given no means of addressing the unpleasant,
apart from pushing it away.
As perfect as Mufasa seems as a king, his failing is not recognizing
the existence and role of darkness
in the kingdom.
He’s aware of his brother’s ill will
“Don't turn your back on me, Scar.”
“Oh, no, Mufasa.
Perhaps you shouldn't turn
your back on me.”
But won’t think too deeply about it.
He minimizes the seriousness
of the problem,
“What am I going to do with him?”
“He’d make a very handsome throw rug.”
“Zazu!"
This naive refusal to face ugly truths makes the kingdom weak... untested.
The godlike level of power of this absolute monarch,
“Everything the light touches is our kingdom.”
could easily be abused by a less benevolent and selfless leader.
Eventually, Scar brings literal darkness to take over the Pride Lands.
Now, to return and take his rightful place,
Simba has to understand the evil in the Pride Lands
in order to vanquish it --
and by confronting the darkness as his father never did,
he at last becomes an even stronger king.
His time away and his suffering make him able to defeat Scar
when Mufasa couldn’t.
“All right.
I did it.”
“So they can hear you.”
It’s also no coincidence that Scar -- one of Disney’s most popular villains --
is one of its most sardonically vicious.
“That hairball is my son and your future king.”
“Oh I shall practice my curtsy.”
and ideologically terrifying,
The “Be Prepared” visuals explicitly compare Scar to Hitler
and the road to healing and self-realization.
Simba’s name just means “Lion” in Swahili --
so he is the Lion, the self of this story.
The physical space of the Pride Lands reflects the state of Simba’s self
at any given point.
As the name “Pride Lands” suggest, a strong self relies on
taking positive pride in your actions and the group you’re responsible to,
like a pride of lions.
But when selfish, vain ego -- the negative version of pride --
is in charge, the space of the self is ravaged,
becoming a gloomy graveyard.
The villain of this story is actually named Scar….
So he represents that bitterness of holding onto resentment
over hardships you’ve experienced.
“Well, I was first in line, ... until the little hairball was born.”
And within the story, we can read this character as embodying
Simba’s scar.
The festering, guilt-infested wound formed by his father’s death
becomes so potent it takes over the whole Pridelands,
The visualization of his inner self and kills off all growth there.
Simba runs away from that land, i.e., from himself,
“You have forgotten me.”
“No how could I?”
“You have forgotten who you are and so forgotten me.”
And starts acting like a different animal
than he really is.
“Slimy yet satisfying.”
Simba’s behavior matches the textbook portrait
of a trauma victim.
He exemplifies symptoms like shock and denial, withdrawing from others,
Feeling sad, hopeless and disconnected and blaming oneself.
“It's my fault....
It's my ... fault.”
When he looks up at the stars and senses the ghost his father
looking down on him,
“Look at the stars.
The great kings of the past
look down on us from those stars.”
He turns away because he’s ashamed he’s not being himself.
When Simba sees Mufasa in his reflection but denies this,
“That's not my father.
That's just my reflection.”
“No.
Look harder.“
On one level he’s saying he’s not worthy of being a king,
even if he looks like one.
But others see that he is a king -- and that’s why they mistake him
for his father.
“Mufasa?”
Rafiki -- a name which means “friend” --
represents wisdom.
He translates and reminds Simba of his father’s guidance,
to help him become a fully realized self.
And what this requires is for Simba to confront his past --
which means battling the scar that all this time has been telling him
the bad thing that happened to him was his fault.
“If it weren’t for you, Mufasa would still be alive.
It’s your fault he’s dead.
Do you deny it?”
“No.”
“Then you’re guilty.”
Once he’s liberated from the falsehood that he’s to blame for his own trauma
“I killed Mufasa.”
”Nooooo”
“Murderer!”
Simba is finally able to destroy the wound that has terrorized him
for so long.
“Everything you ever told me was a lie.”
And the closing scene of Simba looking over the replenished land,
is an image of the healthy, complete self --
connected to the friends and family who are a key part of him,
ready to bring new life into the world now that he’s inwardly prospering,
stable, and stronger thanks to the trials he’s overcome.
“The king had returned.”
There’s also a second universal symbolic story in The Lion King:
about the darkness that's inherent to the passage into adulthood.
Simba’s “I want song” -- the number that in many Disney movies
clearly expresses the character’s deepest desire --
tells us he wants to be king -- and he doesn’t want to wait --
he wants to be King right now.
“Oh I just can’t wait to be king.”
But what he doesn’t realize is that with these words
he’s actually wishing for the death of his father,
because for Simba to become king, his father must pass away.
“Dad?”
“Hmm?”
“We’re pals, right?”
“Right.”
“And we’ll always be together, right?”
Later on, his fear that he did unconsciously will
his father’s death may be part of why Simba continues
to feel guilty,
even long after he’s an adult who should be able to grasp
how Scar manipulated him.
And this issue of guilt over replacing one’s father
doesn’t just apply to the royals.
"In every boy's life, the moment of greatest joy
and greatest sorrow is when he defeats his father
for the first time."
Think of the Oedipus complex -- which includes the idea that a son
feels instinctual competition with the father.
“Sooner or later, the son eclipses the father.
It's the natural order.
Yet it's frequently a stumbling block
because the son's competitive stirrings are accompanied by tremendous feelings
of guilt.”
“I see.
Yes, it's the classic Oedipal conflict.
My god, it seems so obvious now.”
Simba’s terrible revelation that his own independence
entails his father’s demise is like any of us realizing
that the closer we move toward adult self-determination,
the closer our parents inch toward the grave.
“One day, Simba, the sun will set on my time here
and will rise with you as the new king.”
On closer inspection, the main thing Simba looks forward to
about being king is the same one a child looks forward to
about being an adult.
“No one saying stop that, no one saying see here.”
“Now see here!”
Having autonomy, instead of being told what to do
all the time.
“Free to run around all day, free to do it all my way.”
The lion’s exile represents that adolescent
or post-adolescent period when the youth has to leave home
and seek new experiences to develop a fully formed identity
apart from everyone who knows him.
“I’m telling you kid.
This is the great life.
No rules, no responsibilities.
Ooh, the little cream filled kind.”
He also needs time away from his best friend Nala.
“I can’t marry her -- she’s my friend.”
“Yeah, it would be too weird.”
So they can see each other as adult romantic partners.
But ultimately this lion isn’t satisfied with his friends’ carefree life,
“You are more than what you have become.”
He feels the need for a greater responsibility --
“Because it’s your responsibility!”
Which is what adulthood really is.
The final scene -- a mirror of the first,
with Simba replacing his father -- is bittersweet.
Though peace is restored and Simba has become a good, wise king,
this progress is made possible only by the previous generation’s death.
“When we die, our bodies become the grass,
and the antelope eat the grass.
And so we are all connected
in the great circle of life.”
The unsettling and mature themes present in The Lion King
partly come from the literary classics that inform the story --
especially Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
When they were working on The Lion King, the creators nicknamed it “Bamblet,”
a combination of Bambi and Hamlet.
And it has plenty in common with Shakespeare’s play.
Young Prince Hamlet is visited by his father’s ghost
and struggles with suspicions that his uncle may have killed
his father.
Like Hamlet, Simba is plagued by indecision,
“But I am pigeon-livered and lack gall.”
When this lion starts living like a herbivore far down
on the food chain,
“Hakuna matata.”
It appears to Nala like he’s gone mad.
“What happened to you, you’re not the Simba I remember.”
Just as Hamlet puts on a show of madness as a cover
while he decides what to do.
“Though this be madness there is method in it.”
So what’s the point of translating the complexities of Shakespeare
for kids?
“Well your father lost a father.
That father lost, lost his.”
Perhaps what’s most compelling and enduring about Hamlet
is that it so articulately captures adolescent doubts and concerns.
“Why seems it so particular with thee?”
“Seems, madam!
Nay, it is, I know not "seems”.”
Hamlet’s obsession with insincere appearances
is every adolescent’s fixation on authenticity.
“You’re a phony, like everyone else.”
“I want people to like the real me.”
In Scar, we can also see the influence
of Shakespeare’s Richard III, which features an eerily
charismatic villain,
offering the audience a privileged view into his secret machinations.
“Shall I be plain?
I wish the bastards dead.”
And Macbeth, the cautionary tale of ambition,
about a man who plots the murder of his king
and is later unsettled by the vision of a ghost.
“Thou canst not say that I did it.”
“His Highness is not well.”
“Mufasa, no, you’re dead!”
Aside from Shakespearean echoes, the Lion King takes after
the biblical story of Joseph.
Simba and Joseph are favored children cast out into exile
due to the envy of family members.
Each evolves from the carefree, blessed youth into the smart,
savvy adult who is informed by the darkness he’s lived through.
The difficult truth underpinning this narrative
is that no one gets to remain in that state of pure love and light.
Sooner or later, we’re all exiled from Eden.
Simba and Joseph have to learn, too, that even our closest family may hate us,
“Simba, Simba.
I’m only looking out for the wellbeing
of my favorite nephew.”
This is an incredibly sad thing to understand,
that the most vicious darkness often doesn’t come from far away
but from those nearest and dearest to our hearts.
“I’d hate to be responsible for the death of a family member,
wouldn’t you agree Simba?”
And from within ourselves, too.
“You said you’d always be there for me.
But you’re not.
And it’s because of me.”
In recent years, more and more people
have revisited the Lion King to say, essentially, what if Scar had a point?
“I’m surrounded by idiots.”
The rigid social hierarchy in the movie allows for no progress --
you’re born into your place and there’s something wrong with you
if you try to change that.
“Why, if it isn’t my big brother descending from on high
to mingle with the commoners.”
Privileged little Simba does kind of act like an entitled brat:
“I’m gonna be king of Pride Rock!
“Oh, goodie.”
“My dad just showed me the whole kingdom!
And I’m gonna rule it all!”
Even Mufasa can’t help indulging the boy’s obnoxious side at times:
“Hahahaha, that’s very good.”
And when we hear Simba talk about his future reign,
he sounds like a tyrant-in-waiting:
“Well, he's the future king.”
“Yeah.
So you have to do what I tell you.”
“Not yet I don't.
And with an attitude like that,
I'm afraid you're shaping up to be a pretty pathetic king indeed.”
He sings with excitement of being in the spotlight.
“Everywhere you look I’m, standing in the spotlight.”
getting more attention even than any other king has,
“I’m gonna be the main event like no king was before.”
and how he’s practicing looking down on others,
“I’m brushing up on looking down.”
So Scar’s not wrong to find baby Simba irritating,
“Well forgive me for not leaping with joy.”
But it’s not like the uncle has any problem with inequality --
He just wants to be on top himself.
Scar’s style of rulership is exactly the nightmare,
immature Simba describes.
“I thought a king can do whatever he wants?”
“I’m king, I can do whatever I want!”
who’s more capable than he is.
“Ha.
Pinned ya.”
“Wakanda is strong enough to help others and protect ourselves
at the same time.”
Like Scar, Erik Killmonger spouts valid critiques of society’s injustice,
“It's about two billion people all over the world that looks like us.
But their lives are a lot harder.
Wakanda has the tools
to liberate 'em all.”
“We shall rise to greet the dawning of a new era
in which lion and hyena come together.”
And audiences find both characters so compelling in part
because it’s hard not to agree with their takedowns
of a rigid, hierarchical society that excludes some from prosperity.
But though Scar and Erik correctly identify a problem,
the only solutions these characters offer
are hatred, anger and destruction.
So the conflicted young ruler has to find a way to address
longstanding inequality and injustice, while preserving the delicate balance
of a productive and life-affirming culture….
“More connects us than separates us.”
What Mufasa tries to teach young Simba is that --
while the food chain ruling our day-to-day
puts predators on top and prey on the bottom --
the deeper reality is that the King is no better
than the lowest in his kingdom.
“Everything you see exists together in a delicate balance.
As king, you need to understand that balance
and respect all the creatures, from the crawling ant
to the leaping antelope.”
death is the great equalizer
Even if the pride lands could be a little more open
to social mobility,
the film isn’t really trying to say that some people are destined
for greatness and some aren’t.
It’s saying that we have to earn our place,
even and especially if it’s given to us.
“Oh there's more to being king than getting your way all the time.”
To be fair to Mufasa, he does, in the limited time he has,
start teaching Simba lessons in resilience.
“So whenever you feel alone, just remember,
those kings will always be there to guide you.
And so will I.”
He tries to prepare Simba for his own eventual death
by presenting the silver lining to the darkness:
that while our parents pass away, they live on through us.
“He lives in you.”
As much as it hurts to understand the true meaning of the Circle of Life
and how painfully temporary all of this is,
the best we can do to honor our lost loved ones
is to realize our full potential, and pass their wisdom
onto the next generation: teach our children to be brave
and equip them to face the shadows.
“I laugh in the face of danger.”