The Lion King

Walt Disney Pictures

Released: 1994

Directors: Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff

Starring: Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Matthew Broderick, James Earl Jones, Jeremy Irons, Nathan Lane, Ernie Sebella

Rating: G

GRADE: 4/5

The Lion King is one of my all time favorite movies. I've rewatched it many times over the years and it just gets better and better. So let's dig in, shall we? Warning: spoilers ahead (If you don't know the plot of this movie I have no idea what planet you are living on or the situation of your depraved childhood, but you've seriously gotta get on that).

Before I get into the plot, characters, yada yada, first I have to get something big out of the way. This movie is about talking animals, not humans. So…this presents a complication to my queering mission. What is the difference between normative and queer in this animal world? Well. It’s not really an animal world. This animal world has a lot of human additions. The whole royalty thing? Not really how lion prides work. Actually, female lions pretty much run the pride; hunting, taking care of the cubs, defending land, all that kinda stuff. Male lions are actually sorta helpless. Mufasa being king of the pride, that’s plain old human patriarchal systems talking. So if we want to define what normative is in this animal world, let’s look to the royal family and the patriarchy that’s been constructed there. Where patriarchy leads, heteronormativity usually follows. The first family (Mufasa, Sarabi, and Simba) is the quintessential normative nuclear family disguised as lions. They have yellow fur – the lion equivalent to whiteness – they are privileged as royalty, straight, and able. And to top it off our protagonist Simba is male. That’s the normative side of it all. Now let’s get to the queer stuff.

First, let’s look at Scar. HE’S NOT WHITE (yellow, whatever)! His fur color is much darker than Simba and Mufasa (maybe he was adopted? Who knows?). It’s more of a dark reddish-brown than this world’s normative yellow. That’s the first clue. He’s also never EVER pictured with a lady friend. So he can’t be presumed straight. That leaves room for queerness to swoop in and do its work. (Bonus points for intersectionality!) But poor old Scar is a bit repressed. He’s got some hella serious gay shame going on. Represented by the huge scar on his eye that gives him his name. I don’t think it’s too far of a leap. I like to think he got the scar from being bullied as a cub for having different colored fur, but that’s just me.

Scar is just one in a long line of queer villains in kids’ films. I’ll probably talk about that a lot in these posts. In many of these cases, the queer villain trope pretty much sucks and is more than detrimental to queer visibility. But this movie is an exception. That’s because of Timon and Pumba.

Timon and Pumba. Where do I start? They’ve always given off a Bert and Ernie kinda vibe. Not to mention the fact that Timon is voiced by out actor Nathan Lane. AND that they are an inter-species couple (intersectionality points!). Plus, the whole hakuna matata thing? Aka no worries aka don’t care what people say aka we’re here we’re queer and that’s a-ok. When little Simba turns up all sad and orphaned in the African desert left for dead by his dear gay Uncle Scar, Timon and Pumba stumble to the rescue. They come in with their hakuna matata attitude and successfully parent Simba from a cub to a lion. Simba has gay dads! How freakin’ cool is that?

So we have these two queer representations: Scar with his gay shame, and Timon and Pumba’s happy coupledom. What does all this boil down to? Gay shame = downward spiral ending in death by vengeful hyenas. Gay pride = happy ending earning a spot on Pride Rock next to your adoptive son who has successfully ascended to his rightful throne. Sounds pretty damn queer to me.

MVQ (most valuable queer): Poor Scar. I’m gonna give this one to him because he deserves something good in his sad shame-filled life.

OTP: Timon and Pumba, duh.

Favorite moment: “I Just Can’t Wait To Be King.” All time favorite Disney song. Sorry to all those “Circle of Life” fans. Not only is it catchy, but it’s a pretty good theme song for aimless Millennials who just can’t wait for financial stability.

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