Modern politics predicted 25 years ago
Twenty-five years ago, a dark, dystopian American film predicted the rise of modern politics in a chilling examination of patriarchal power, unearned hereditary privilege, and intense xenophobia. That film was called The Lion King.
It was a simple, brutal satire. Lions rule the African savannah. They see themselves as benevolent rulers, but then again, they would. Perhaps one might have given them the benefit of the doubt if they had set up a coalition government of predators, prey and scavengers, monitored by a strong judiciary, but they haven’t, because they’re lions, and lions rule by murdering everything that is
smaller and slower than them.
Indeed, their reign of terror is introduced right at the start of the film, where the new heir to the throne — a male cub, naturally — is held aloft for all to see, and every animal in the kingdom bows down before their future overlord in a gutchurning display of fear. It is difficult to watch.
Born into a family of untouchable warlords, young Simba revels in the prospect of following in his father’s bloody footprints. Early on, he sings a hymn to despotism called I Just Can’t Wait To Be King, in which he tells his tutor he is “brushing up on looking down” and eagerly awaits the moment he can stop being beholden to anybody. We are not given any visual evidence of how King Mufasa rules his kingdom, but since children learn how to behave by observing their parents, the king, despite giving a lot of motivational speeches, is clearly a world-class dick.
Things are looking up for young Simba as his father tells him that he will one day rule “everything the light touches”: it’s always good to have your imperial rule legitimised by science and a hint that God is on your side, too.
His budding megalomania is short-lived: literally dark conspirators, living in a literally dark land beyond the borders of the kingdom, are plotting to overthrow our dynasty of honey-blonde oligarchs. Worst of all, their leader is — reader, do not scream — British!
Simba finds himself exiled, but is adopted by a meerkat and warthog who share with him their nihilistic worldview of “hakuna matata” or “no worries”. This darkly comic mantra is a despairing admission by two vulnerable outsiders near the bottom of the food chain that it’s pointless’to you can t worry about things control, like being eaten by lions; but Simba interprets it literally, knowing that soon he ’ ll be big and strong enough to murder anybody he wants.
After he has a hallucination of his dead father in the sky, ordering him to seize power from his British uncle, Simba returns and allows said uncle’s hyena minions to murder him. It is a wry comment on the Machiavellian strategies used by powerful elites to suppress popular revolutions: the hyenas, the janitors of the plains, are mocked, belittled and portrayed as mentally feeble goons until they are crushed by a young playboy with no experience of running a kingdom.
It ends, as it must, with Simba and his queen showing their presumably male heir to their subjects. The circle of the one percent is complete, and the animals of the plains will bow yet again, staring at the ground beneath their feet, wondering when it will all end.
HIS FATHER TELLS HIM HE WILL ONE DAY RULE ‘EVERYTHING THE LIGHT TOUCHES’: IT’S ALWAYS GOOD TO HAVE YOUR IMPERIAL RULE LEGITIMISED BY SCIENCE AND A HINT GOD IS ON YOUR SIDE