One of the things I'm trying to do as a parent and academic is to justify all those hours watching Disney content with my kids. (When they were younger, yes, it was Sesame Street; I still think I should go back and write about the sense of space created by the show, but that seems over for me, at least.) And as an academic parent, I don't really let them just sit back and accept all the rhetoric that most of the Disney films (and many of their series, Phineas and Ferb excepted), so they do have a reasonably critical sense of understanding.
One of my favorites from years ago is the Lion King sequel Lion King 1 1/2. My kids thought it was hiliarious, and I am continually knocked out by it. On a formal level, this straight-to-video sequel attempts to deconstruct not only the original film's story, but also the very process of both story-telling and story-experiencing. It is as playful a text (in the sense that scholar Robert Stam uses the concept of play) as you might expect from the Disney factory. If the original Lion King is an odd re-telling of Hamlet, then this sequel is an odd version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, sifted through the lens of Borscht-belt humor and Fiddler on the Roof.
And that's what I'm working on right now: a consideration of the Jewish narrative in a number of Disney video sequels.
Now, we all know that Disney's narratives follow a fairly consistent structural pattern. (Here, I'm speaking of the feature animation films; the pre-Snow White shorts cut a larger path, and even many of the popular Goofy shorts of the fifties offer more cultural satire than you might think.) Heroic characters, patterned in the Classical Hollywood mode, travel down paths that challenge their resolve, but ultimately succeed, reinforcing the dominant cultural norms of white heterosexual normativity. (Douglas Brode, in his book about Disney and the counter-culture, does suggest that it's not so simple, but I'm inclined much more toward the critical assessments rooted in feminism and critical race theory.) This is very clearly the case with The Lion King, which rather brutally presents us a world where subordinates bow before their leader -- who, when conditions are right, will eat them. (Matt Roth, writing in Jump Cut, offers a scorching assessment of the film, seeing it as fitting right in with Walt Disney's own anti-labor and anti-Semitic ideologies as it attacks the liberal politics of the inclusive welfare state that neolib Bill Clinton worked hard to dismantle.) Simba's path will exile him from his community until he rediscovers his true self (instead of the lazy slob he's become hanging out with two outcasts who adopt young Simba as their own, Timon the meerkat and Pumba the warthog). Simba's uncle, Scar, is an unfit leader: conniving and deceitful, he is clearly coded as unmasculine and interested in only the nominal power that being king brings. His allowing of the hyenas (stand-ins for Blacks and Latinos, voiced as they are by one of each -- Whoopi Goldberg and Cheech Marin) to "move into the neighborhood" brings down the property values of the pride lands. (The lionesses, Roth continues, apparently are unable to challenge Scar, despite their obvious collective strength.) All the usual emotional buttons are pushed, all at the service of the same fundamental sets of values Disney has come to be connoted with. (This remains the case even when the songs have been written by two gay men and the studio is now run by Jews.)
But Lion King 1 1/2 is a rather different animal (as it were). First, the very titling the sequel as a half suggests something is off. (A "straight" sequel, The Lion King 2: Simba's Pride, had previously been released on video, to mixed critical success. Though many copies have been sold, I actually don't know any child who has seen it.) I suppose, for some of us arthouse types, such a title evokes Fellini's masterpiece 8 1/2, but something else is afoot here. The premise of this sequel is to re-tell the first film from the points of view of Timon and Pumba, who do not appear in the original until halfway in. But the setup makes it a bit more complicated.
At first, the film opens much as the original does, with the famous Swahili chant that announces "The Circle of Life" and the sun rising on a new day. Suddenly, a voice screeches in tune to the chant: Whaaaat's on the menuuuu?" It is Nathan Lane's Timon, announcing his presence, and soon we are aware that he and Pumba are about to sit down to watch the original film, their silhouettes indicating their presence in a screening room, much like those of Mike and the bots on Mystery Science Theater 3000 (another likely inspiration for the filmmakers). And before the song can fully kick in, Timon, after agreeing with Pumba on the emotional pull of that opening chant, begins to fast forward the video images! He wants to skip ahead to the part where he and Pumba come in. (That's the half of the film he cares about.) But Pumba points out that "we" were there in the first half of the film, but that the audience of the original does not know it. So informed, they decide to tell their side of the story, which must take them back to "before the beginning."
"Our side" is really Timon's side, and we discover that Timon is a Jewish meerkat. He is a failure in the schlemiel tradition, inept at digging tunnels, unable to avoid causing accidental harm, Timon is forced to leave his family and "friends" behind, much to the chagrin of his overprotective mother (voiced by the most famous cartoon mom in history, Julie Kavner). The meerkats are subservient and live in constant fear; their connection to the Jews living in the diaspora of Eastern Europe is quite obvious. Timon is a visionary of sorts, seeking a place (homeland?) where he -- later, they -- will not be hunted. And while he does find such a place, he is unable to stay there after Simba arrives; TImon and Pumba "raise" the cub and Pumba follows Simba when he decides to return home to challenge Scar. Eventually, Timon is able to help defeat the hyenas with the assistance of the other meerkats, who use their digging skills to create a trap tunnel. Timon is given a chance to act heroically, but comically. The meerkats' occupation of their new space obviously has some larger implications as to Disney's views on the Arab-Israeli conflicts.
As I said, I was kind of stunned to see Timon "come out" as a Jew, and I think that his Jewish identity needs to have some further exploration. I want to take this apart in terms of thematic issues and the film's formal qualities.
But frankly, it's late, and I'm getting more root canal in the morning...
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