The Lion King

On Wednesday, we discussed the political themes of The Lion King.

This July article from Shalom Life explains:

2014 marks the 20th anniversary of Disney's The Lion King, one of the most successful animated movies ever made.

The film debuted in 1994 with rather adult themes of death, betrayal, and rebirth, marking it as of one Disney's most mature offerings. One of the film's darkest scenes involves the evil lion Scar singing about his plan to murder his brother and king of the pride, Mufasa, in the song “Be Prepared.”

As Business Insider notes, what most people don't realize, however, is that the movie's animators based much of this scene on a 1935 Nazi propaganda film titled Triumph of the Will that documents 1934 Nazi Germany.

According to a 1994 Entertainment Weekly article, the song “grew out of one sketch by story staffer Jorgen Klubien that pictures Scar as Hitler. The directors ran with the concept and worked up a Triumph of the Will-style mock-Nuremberg rally.”

I also mentioned a parallel (albeit less direct) between Mufasa's "circle of life" speech and a passage from Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France.

Mufasa: 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.
Simba: But, Dad, don't we eat the antelope?
Mufasa: Yes, Simba, but let me explain. 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.

[Society] is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primæval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place