Review attacks Lion King

[Amaroq]

http://www.confusedmatthew.com/The-Lion-King.php

A person I watch on an art site posted this link in one of their journals, apologizing to Lion King fans before he did so. Maybe he was joking and thought the review was absurd. Maybe he believed it. But I couldn't just let it alone, since some of the traits he attacked in Simba were actually virtues from an Objectivist viewpoint.

My comment is as follows:

I can see the guy's point in some of the logical shortcomings, but I cannot agree with his opinion on Simba's, Timon's, and Pumba's personalities.

The philosophy I hold basically says that selfishness is a good thing. But I won't get too far into that on a Lion King commentary.

Back when the Lion King was made, people weren't afraid to portray characters having an abundance of self-confidence. (Contrast this with the media today where the hero in every show must be kind and caring in order to qualify as a hero. Or a woman. If you're badass, you're not allowed to be a man anymore. You have to be a woman.) The reviewer's criticisms of young Simba's personality look like an attack on arrogance, but I think it's really an attack on Simba's overflowing self-confidence. The song, "I just can't wait to be king" is also attacked for being a song about how much of an asshole Simba is. But I think the song is inherently about how Simba aspires to greatness, or at least doesn't feel guilty about wanting the best for himself.

The reason we love Cub Simba so much is because he expresses traits that are natural to humans before they're beaten out of us by society: Unbridled self-confidence and self-worth, a yearning for joy and greatness, and unyielding ambition.

Granted those traits got him and Nala into trouble. But what kind of a king would he be if he'd just rolled over and submitted and allowed himself to live a boring, miserable childhood without any zest for life whatsoever?

Arguably, Timon and Pumba were lazy-asses. But why should they work? They had everything they needed. All the bugs in the world right there for them to eat. Timon and Pumba were lovable characters because they also possessed a zest for life. (Hakuna Matata.) As for their "using" Simba: I don't think he had any problem with it. I'm sure their friendship went both ways, else it would not have flourished. The three were obviously friends, even if the other two didn't share Simba's wonder at what's in the sky. And that friendship is why they ultimately came back with him to help him when he returned to Pride Rock with Nala, who was obviously a very close childhood friend to him and still close to him when they met as adults.

Edited January 13, 2010 by Amaroq

[RationalBiker]

Actually, I'm kind of curious as to why you contrasted self-confidence with kind and caring. One can't be both and still be a bad-ass?

The trend I see more often is the self-confidence contrasted with the "flawed hero". I see plenty of movies today in which the hero is bad-ass and yet kind and caring. Rather, too many movies have to throw some emotional baggage into the hero to make him "real".

Edited January 13, 2010 by RationalBiker

[Mikee]

but if a hero is a bad-ass and cares for the ones he values why is that necessary a bad thing? Unless you mean caring for the res of the world

[Amaroq]

Yeah, I pretty much meant that a hero generally has to be altruistic to be a hero nowadays. I may have misrepresented my own view on that one.

EDIT: Oh, I see what you mean. Yeah, I've also noticed some heroes in shows that are depicted as an underdog struggling as much to be sure of himself as he struggles against his enemies. But this isn't there for the sake of that struggle. In my opinion, it's often there just to make the hero "softer" to appeal more to audiences who expect a humble, altruistic hero.

EDIT EDIT: Or writers are just as afraid to write proud heroes as people are to be proud nowadays.

I honestly don't watch much TV anymore, so I can't say. Look back at stuff like the Centurions for examples of proud heroes.

Edited January 13, 2010 by Amaroq

[JMeganSnow]

I don't think it's the fact that writers are *afraid* to depict people as proud as the fact that you must have an internal conflict as well as an external one in order to avoid being a pointless melodrama and a struggle for self-confidence is a struggle that many people experience, understand, and can thus identify with. Now, if you were to say that many people seem to confuse genuine, earned pride with being an arrogant jerk or stuck-up prig or a number of other negative traits, yes, this seems to be true. But where would they learn differently in this culture where so many people suffer from self-esteem issues of one kind or another and the expressions of pride they encounter ARE some sort of front or buried under piles of false modesty?