Simba Is The 1%

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Mom got the Blu-Ray for The Lion King. She says it’s her favorite Disney movie, mostly because of the “Circle of Life” song. I can’t argue. That’s a damn fine song.

Only thing is, the characters in the movie don’t seem to actually believe it. For all the lip service they pay to the Great Circle of Life, you start to think that some animals, to paraphrase Orwell, seem more connected in the circle than others. And then the movie starts to look a lot like a failed Equal Hyena Rights campaign.

Think about it. In the beginning the hyenas are inexplicably relegated to some foodless wasteland. When they’re in the wasteland the king’s all “Not my problem,” but if they get hungry and come to the place where all the other animals are allowed to hunt and eat each other, the lions call it poaching and FUCK THEM UP until they go back to their barren world of exile. Why the distinction? Are we all connected by the Great Circle of Life unless we’re hyenas? What’d the hyenas do to deserve that?

So they get desperate and try to ally themselves with Scar, because he says he’s going to let them be part of the Pridelands again and more to the point god dammit they’re HUNGRY.* So they have themselves a revolution, which has a rocky start because Scar is not really about Hyena Rights so much as It’s Good To Be The King,** and then Simba comes back and is all WHAT IS THIS SHIT and sets fire to everything and presumably after he takes his place as king he dumps them back in their wasteland, and everything’s all status quo again. Which is great, unless you’re a hyena.

Poor suckers. I’d suggest they try more civil disobedience next time, but that’s a bit tricky when the people in power will just eat you. Sorry, hyenas.


*If you listen to the countermelody they sing in “Be Prepared” after they did their little goose-step, it’s kind of heartbreaking. He gets them on their side by saying they’ll never go hungry again, and then while he's carrying on about how he deserves to be recognized as the most awesome king and he'll show everyone, you hear them singing “We’ll have food / lots of food / we repeat / endless meat!”

**Yeah, the drought. If this world has no god, that means it’s a really unfortunate coincidence and all the lions’ll say that just goes to show hyenas bring drought. If it’s theistic, then apparently God’s top priority is starving hyenas, and all his other concerns—such as feeding ALL THE OTHER ANIMALS—comes a distant second.

Comments

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, hyenas get the short end of the stick in that movie. Even if you allow that there's some sort of Fisher King thing going on with drought/rain thing that cares really earnestly about standard human-style monarchical succession in the local lion pride, the lions are still dicks for keeping the hyenas out of all the good gazelle lands. (And let's not get into the concept of a king who eats his own subjects.)

That said, "Be Prepared" is an awesome song. Back when the movie came out, I bought my little sister the Official Cassette Tape for Christmas (...my god, that was a long time ago), and we'd sing that song together, with her doing all the hyena parts and me doing Scar. It was fun!

[beccastareyes]

I actually do feel pretty bad for the hyenas. And it's not like the lions are doing it to every predator -- there are leopards and cheetah running around the Pridelands.

(You know, I assumed the ecological catastrophe was Scar's fault in that he's a shitty conservationist and bought a bunch of new predators into an ecosystem with no thought of actually feeding them in the long term. But that wouldn't affect the grass directly -- in fact, having a drastic drop of herbivores would cause a massive growth of undergrowth and things antelopes eat.

(And, yet, once the Rightful King is on the throne, no one cares that Sarabi pretty much said 'we're all boned, time to go let the land recover and eat things elsewhere'. Somehow having Simba being King of Pride Rock makes the grass grow and the antelopes breed like bunnies.)

[childthursday.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow. I always wondered what the chorus of the "Be Prepared" song was. I did recognize that the hyenas were being treated badly and terribly manipulated by Scar, but that song just makes it worse. :( Poor hyensas!

[stormteller.livejournal.com]

I have a hard time relating to The Lion King since I found out that hyenas are apex predators and lions are more likely to scavenge from them. The movie got their entire ecological pecking order backwards.

That said, the implication the filmmakers seemed to be going for was that the hyenas hunted indiscriminately, killing far more than was necessary and upsetting the delicate prey/predator balance, which in turn, according to the Circle of Life theory, cause the entire system to go out of whack. The drought was a way to easily visualise this for the viewing audience.

In any case, there's definitely a Fisher King thing going on, though. The giant-Mufasa-in-the-sky heavily points toward this.

[gethenian.livejournal.com]

For all the lip service they pay to the Great Circle of Life, you start to think that some animals, to paraphrase Orwell, seem more connected in the circle than others.

Well... yeah. There's a hierarchy in the food chain just like there's a hierarchy in a pride of lions.


I’d suggest they try more civil disobedience next time, but that’s a bit tricky when the people in power will just eat you. Sorry, hyenas.

Well, it worked for Timon and Pumbaa. The problem the hyenas had was that they were disloyal, disorganized, uncontrollable, whiny, unstable, impulsive, shallow assholes who were collectively stupid enough to be led like sheep by the highest bidder. Or only bidder, in this case.

Screw the hyenas, not one of them can think for themselves or is willing to do a damn thing to improve their lot unless they're told to by their evil dictator whose motives or methods not one of them ever questions even though there's no evidence that hyenas have ever had any reason to trust lions. I'm rooting for the interspecies gay couple who offered a rude gesture to the society that was keeping them down and buggered off to live somewhere they could define their lives on their own terms, raise an adopted child, and ultimately show that when people have the ability to be TRULY free, to prosper by finding the place in the world that suits them and using their own effort to have food and shelter, and by respecting the bounty that they have access to and using it responsibly, they thrive.

Lesson? Think for yourself. Be yourself. Respect, and harm no one, and just be. You're better off if you get out of the pride, or flock, or herd, or pack, realize the true potential of YOU, and use that to find a place in the world that is symbiotically beneficial based on your ethical and personal instincts and needs, not on hierarchical expectations or mob mentality peer pressure bullshit.

I can't feel sorry for a bunch of creatures who are given a bad rep that they then proceed to live up to every chance they get. I never saw that movie give us any reason to think the hyenas deserved to be treated any way other than how they always apparently had been. All they did was engage in territory scuffles with the lions, give themselves over without question to the first person with charisma who showed up, watch that system fail catastrophically, and then destroy it, presumably leaving them right back where they started.

What a waste.

Hakuna Matata.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

I'd rather not mar your journal, which is lovely by the way, by introducing an argumentative component into it that doesn't belong in it. Suffice it to say that I've already expounded on the reasons for which I agree with the gist of this entry elsewhere, that I've made no secret of my hyena sympathies before, and would like to encourage you to write other entries in the same vein in the future.