How Does Disney Use Discrimination In The Lion King

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Over the years, Disney has made many attempts of telling the stories of the otherwise unknown culture. However, in both The Lion King (1994) and Pocahontas (1995), for example, Disney poorly represented the African and Native American cultures for entertainment and monetary profit. The Lion King is the western interpretation of African culture represented by jungle animals fighting against each other for power, mirroring the apartheid becoming an anarchy. Pocahontas is the story of the British arriving and imperializing the Americas; representing the Native American culture negatively. A popular opinion is that Disney has a past of racism. Despite Disney’s attempt tell the unknown stories of different people and places, they failed to tell …show more content…
The hyenas had been excluded from Mufasa’s kingdom and treated horribly without any respect. Similar to the separation of races from 1948 – 1991 in South Africa. Disney supports segregation and this is a reason why Scar is seen as evil because he supports integration. In The Lion King, it was almost inevitable for Scar to thrive simply because he was ‘evil’ and society’s laws appeared to be set against him. However, Scar was originally seen as evil because of his successful attempt of changing the social system from the accepted method to his own. “Here, the Good Life depends upon an absolutely fixed social order in which nobody can climb up or fall down without the world collapsing into anarchy.” Here happiness or success is seen as something unattainable if not given at birth. This inherently shows that societal orders are the only underlying factor of progress and that progress is not really a pursuable concept. The Lion King is not the only movie where culture is belittled and undermined, Pocahontas is another example of Disney’s

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