Doing a scene-by-scene analysis of Disney’s The Lion King, we shall discover it is the most conservative, religious movie ever made for kids, a film laced with truth bombs. In fact, the only reason we are allowed to watch this right-wing masterpiece is because it was set in Africa. A similar movie about a wolf pack fighting snakes in Europe would have led to the directors’ and producers’ arrest.
Yet, most audiences around the world found this feature film a pleasant relief from our socialist gender dystopia. And I agree. The Lion King praises strong men and strong borders, exuberates a health now condemned as evil by an effeminately warped mainstream media. At least in the West, people have long been perverted to love what they hate and hate what they love. But in this Disney installment, we get to love what we love again, and hate what we hate.
The Lion King slaps us back to our senses. The only incomprehensible part about the film is how Disney ever allowed it to be distributed. The 2019 remake, once again a box-office hit, however, proves how much old and new audiences loved to see it. Deep down inside, people recognize and respect the rule of an able-bodied authority (Mufasa) and the ascent of his son (Simba).
We are, after all, still human beings, not communists.
Act I. Childhood: Birth, Pride, and Fall
The opening scene is a direct reference to the first few few lines of Old Testament Genesis:
Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, … And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
Several times, we see pairs of seven animals, a reference to Christianity, symbolizing completeness or perfection. We’re entering a perfect world.
It is the Garden of Eden, the lions’ pridelands, ruled by order and authority, a place where giraffes graze with giraffes and antilopes lie with antilopes. No race-mixing. The forbidden fruit, as we shall discover, is knowledge of the evil that lies beyond the shadowy borders of the kingdom. Before we get there, we meet the cast.
Here, in these lands, the family is the core unit of organization. The pridelands are ruled by the one and only Father (Mufasa, or king in Manazoto language). He is accompanied by his Son (Simba, meaning lion in Swahili), and the Holy Spirit (Sarabi, also called mirage in Swahili).
A ‘ceremony’, or a mass, takes places on a sunny day (i.e., a Sunday). The animals in Mufasa’s kingdom gather, and the Father, through his priest (the mandrill named Rafiki, or friend in Swahili), presents his only Son and then sends him down to earth.
The heavens approve. He, Simba, shall become the next Lion King. But he doesn’t know it yet.
Down below, the animals worship the coming of the king’s son. Note they are again neatly segregated by race. There is order in this world, and each living thing must lie with its own kind. It is an unmistaken reference to the worldview of the Old Testament.
By the way, the word lion, in Hebrew, means ari. In German, “die Ariër”, or the Aryans, could therefore mean the lions, perhaps it was a tongue-in-cheeck reference to the alleged German supremacy. (Propaganda minister Goebbels frequently called the Jews hyenas, the antagonists in this Disney film.)
Either way, the stage is set. We are in right-wing country.
When Scar (or perhaps Luke, the traitor) enters the stage, he is about to catch a mouse. And he speaks the words, “Life’s not fair. … While some are born to feast, others spend their lives in the dark, begging for scraps.” Scar complains about inequality. He embodies the entitlement syndrome of the Left. Why do some have more than others? He’s an angry socialist.
Scars says to the mouse, “The way I see it, you and I are exactly the same,” but then uses this reasoning as an excuse to prey on the weak. He’s selfish, too. What’s a lion doing catching mice, anyway? That’s not what a real lion would do. Scar is not a real man. We’ll find out later that Scar considers himself equal not only to mice, but to hyenas, too.
When Zazu compells Scar, “You will answer to Mufasa!” he retorts, “I answer to no one!” In other words, Scar is an atheist who doesn’t believe in God’s authority. The lions, of course, are natural authoritarians. Everyone in the pridelands obeys Mufasa, the king.
The bird Zazu—“It’s the news!”—represents the free press. (“Free like a bird.”) The bird enjoys the protection of the king. It isn’t the autocrat Mufasa, though, but his communist brother who wants to kill the free press.
Scar tries to eat Zazu, but Mufasa interferes. The bright light in this shot confirms Mufasa is God (the Light). Scar is alone in a dark cave. He is living in hell. He is the devil.
“Everything the Light touches is our Kingdom,” says Mufasa. “While others search for what they can take, a true King searches for what he can give.” The lions are capitalists in the sense that capitalism provides to most people ample wellbeing, as opposed to socialism. Mufasa is a provider to Sarabi. Scar is the selfish one who wants everything for himself.
When Mufasa explains Simba the circle of life, we are not living in a progressive-linear world that goes from zero to utopia. We are not waiting for the arrival of a perfect world but rather living with its flaws. Here, the Sun sets and the Sun rises in cycles, as do the kings. Time is cyclical. It denies progress. Lions are not progressive liberals.
Shortly after this scene, Mufasa and Simba pull a prank on Zazu (the free press bird), but they don’t kill the press. Scar would have. It means to say it’s O.K. for powerful rulers like Mufasa to trick the press now and then. But good rulers must also rely on a healthy press to keep themselves and their people informed.
And indeed, the bird fulfills his purpose. Zazu warns of an imminent threat at the border of the pridelands. The hyenas are migrating in. Mufasa tells Simba to stay put while he rushes off to defend the borders. In this movie, the good guys are the ones defending the borders against criminal immigrants—and the hyenas are not sending their best.
At the start of the film, we saw Simba had blue eyes. We may be in Africa, but our ‘Ariër’ lion friends happen to be a homogenous race of blonds who live as clans or families. They don’t mix with the lower races. They segregate. The weak are discarded. This is Sparta.
Simba, now by himself, speaks to his uncle Scar. Though Mufasa forbade the cub to enter the shadows that lie beyond the pridelands, Scar tells Simba to go and pick the forbidden fruit. Uncle wants the cub out of the way.
First, Simba runs over to his mommy, but he is eager to leave the society of females. He doesn’t like the rules the women lay down for him, especially not his mother’s. He already wants to be his own man. He invites a female friend, Nala (meaning gift or beloved in Swahili), to join him on a trip to adventure.
The Faustian Spirit is strong in this one—he wants to know everything there is to know about the world. Simba wants to meet the world’s end and transform himself into a Boundless Man. Though Nala ‘pins’ Simba several times to prove her own strengths, it is Simba who is the fearless leader of the two.
The difference between the pridelands and the elephant graveyard is the difference between heaven and hell, between day and night. Hyena civilization is clearly inferior. Now, Simba’s fearlessness scares Nala. She thinks he’s proven his bravery more than enough by now, and they should head back.
Too late! When the hyenas’ matriarch emerges from the shadows, threatening to devour Simba and Nala, even the hyena males shrink in fear. But Simba goes on the offensive and barks back at Shenzi (which is Swahili for savage).
The hyenas, then, are savages, a society ruled by old women, much unlike the lions who are ruled by virile males. Note that Simba and Nala make for a straight couple, whereas the two hyena antagonists are so afraid of women they seek comfort with one another.
The matriarch makes it clear “Mufasa does not rule me.” She, too, like Scar, denies Mufasa’s authority. She doesn’t believe in God. They’re godless communists. The matriarch doesn’t respect men in general. She is a sick woman.
When Simba protests, she ridicules him for “telling me what to do”—a mockery of feminists who echo those words. “Nobody tells me what to do. I’m a woman, I can take care of myself.” Nala is different. She respects Simba’s leadership, or at least his attempt to be a leader.
Then Shenzi says, “Hyenas and lions have been at war since the beginning of time, but Mufasa’s bloodline will end here!” She is referring to the primordial battle between good and evil, between day and night, between lions and hyenas, between families who care and communists who don’t.
The class war is on. After Mufasa saves the day, Scar goes to speak with the matriarch. He promises Shenzi they may take over the pridelands if the hyena armies help kill the King and his princeling Simba.
Assassinating kings and nobility was also a typical communist dayjob: Czar Nicolas and the Romanov family, for example, were butchered by such a conspiracy. Weak men prefer class struggle against their own kind, not because they would be better leaders, but because they are selfish.
At this point, Mufasa has been killed by the stampede in the gorge, but not after saving Simba from a similar fate. After having effectively killed Mufasa, Scar now takes over the pride, supported by the hyena immigrants.
Scar proclaims himself king using the language of a socialist tyrant: “The dawning of a new era, a great and glorious future!”
But darkness falls over the pridelands…
Act II. Adolescence: Rejection, Rise, and Rebirth
Simba, believing he is the cause of his father’s death, joins MGTOW—the Men Going Their Own Way movement.
Timon means he who respects in Greek, and Pumbaa means foolish in Swahili. But if you know that a philosopher is a lover of wisdom, then perhaps, putting the two names together, a timonpumbaa is a respecter of foolishness, the opposite of a philosopher.
In other words, anyone who joins this MGTOW outfit is an idiot.
Indeed, Timon proves himself to be a wannabe-philosopher whose advice to Simba is going to be all but helpful.
“Just forget about the past.” Timon says, “In order to change your future, you gotta put your past behind you.” Instead of confronting the past, as braver men would, Simba is instructed to pretend it never happened. “Bad things happen, and you can’t do anything about it, right?” Unless you have a free will, of course. Then you’d do something about something.
“When the world turns its back on you, you turn your back on the world.” Timon may have a good heart, but his respect for foolishness is useless. “And turn the what? into so what?” Who cares, right? Who gives a fuck? That’s the laisser-faire attitude of the Loser Left, of people who don’t take responsibility for their actions.
You’ll own nothing and eat bugs. “If you want to live with us, you have to eat like us,”—grub. The lion cub is going to starve himself next. His initial response is one of disgust. He has to go against his nature to eat the bugfood. His new friends are teaching him how to live in denial. He is not equal to prey. He is a predator. Equality is a cult.
If you listened to what they’re saying, you hear the voices of some YouTube vegans: “This one’s got some nuttiness! Now, that’s what I call umami! They’re local!” None of these things, of coure, provide you with the right nutrition. Veganism or bug-eating is the skeleton diet.
Timon (the respecter of foolishness) assures Simba, “This is the great life. No rules, no responsibilities.”
Meanwhile, while Simba has sworn off eating meat, the hyneas led by Scar go on genocidal killing sprees, eating every living thing to extinction, because they don’t know how to control themselves.
Though scar now deems himself one of the hyenas, the lionesses stay clear. The blonds do not mix with the black-furs. They have some sense of honor left, despite being humiliated by the invading lower race. Simba’s mom explains why the women endure: “This is our home, we must never abandon it. … Our time will come. Be patient.”
Sarabi proves her honorable nature by refusing to lie with Scar, even though it means starvation. Scar prides himself that, in the absence of authority, “We can finally take whatever we want.” He doesn’t see the problem in overkilling. It was always about his lust. When Scar tells Sarabi to stop being so selfish (his projection), Sarabi says, “You are the selfish one. … I will never be your queen.”
Back in Hakuna Matata, we see Simba has grown up, even grown a lion’s mane and roar. For a brief second, it’s as though the real lion inside him is coming out to play.
Alas, years of living as a vegan have made Simba completely retarded. He’s chasing butterflies instead of game. He treats animals of prey as his equals. The movie is trying to convey a message here: If you’re superior, then stop hanging out with the inferiors. You’re not one of them. Stop treating your food equally.
At this point, it’s almost as if Simba has turned gay. Pumbaa and Timon have noticed it, too: “You see, you [and the gnu] will never frolic.”
They also inform him that the circle of life is just a lie. Timon: “It’s the opposite, it’s a line, a meaningless line of indifference.” Pumbaa adds, “And we’re all just running toward the end of the line and then, one day, we’ll reach the end, and that’s it. Line over.”
Here, Timon is seen scratching his belly. He’s actually mimicking masturbation, upon which Timon adds, “Life is meaningless.” Yes, that’s the lefty way of life.
There’s no cyclical life of birth and rebirth, they say. There’s only death, the end. You can do whatever you want, because your line never affects anyone else’s. You don’t ever have to be responsible for anyone.
Pumba and Timon are immature. Pumbaa says about responsibility: “It would make doing whatever we wanted not that cool.” It’s a nihilist worldview. The two are atheists. Or as Christians call them: fools.
Like proper vegans, the three can’t stop farting later night. Simba looks up to the stars and remembers what his father told him about them: those are the souls of past kings watching over everybody. Timon and Pumbaa burst into laughter. Those are just balls of gas, Pumbaa thinks. That’s what scientists also think.
The Lion King is trying to tell you that the materialist worldview peddled by atheist jerk-offs isn’t true. These fools have bought into the belief that says everything is just dead matter in motion. Simba still has some senses left: he rather embraces the religious belief in souls and a free will.
The two’s insulting laughter, though, marks the beginning of the end of Simba’s time in Hakuna Matata-land. It’s time to grow up.
Nala! She does what Simba has neglected to do all this time. She chases the game. After a wild hunt, going after Pumbaa and Timon, Simba does the unthinkable and stops a female lioness in her tracks. He doesn’t know it’s Nala yet, but at least his male ferocity is in full force—for the first time in the movie. She pins him, again, though. The vegan grub diet has made him weak.
Simba shows Nala the socialists paradise. It is real but comes with serious flaws. There’s no eating meat, for example, and no carrying responsibilities while your people are dying. If he wants to stop being an immature child, “hiding himself,” he’ll have to leave. He’ll have to cronfront the real world, Nala implores.
Now that I think of it—ha-kunamatat-a really means: he-communist-a.
Nala leaves Simba. She doesn’t find his attitude worthy of her time. He’s a loser, a let-down. If Simba doesn’t want to be the king she knows he is, then he’s a lost cause. Saddened, Simba walks off into the woods. There, Rafiki, the real philosopher in the story, talks some sense back to him. “Everybody is somebody, even a nobody. … You don’t even know who you are.”
“Your father is waiting,” he says. Just look no further than within yourself. Mufasa lives on in you. When Simba looks up to the sky, he hears his father’s booming voice. It is The Father now, not Mufasa, but God. Simba learns that, all this time, he was never really alone. All this time, God was with him, and so were the spirits of his ancestors. They never abandoned him. Forget about materialism—you have a soul!
“I never left you. I never will,” says the spirit of Mufasa. This is the vote of confidence Simba was looking for. “Remember who you are,”—the king he knows he is. “I am Simba, son of Mufasa,”—I am Christ, the Son of God. This is not the Christ who’ll let himself be pinned to the cross again. No, this is the Christ who’ll exterminate the race of hyenas.
Upon realizing his duties, he runs off to find Nala.
Returning home, he sees what his absence has done. Without his leadership, the pridelands have turned into a desert. This is a very important visual metaphor. It refers to what German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said, “The desert grows, woe unto him who hides the desert within.” The hyenas have no soul. Wherever they go, the desert follows—but only because the plants and the life living there allowed themselves to be uprooted.
With Simba’s help, the lions wage war on the hyenas. They kill almost all of them, burn them in fires. The few that reman eat their false leader, Scar. The pridelands have been reconquered, the enemies have been driven out.
At the end of the movie, a new king is born—the circle of life begins its next cycle.
Conclusion
The Lion King is an antidote to our disturbed times. This is the film to show kids each time they return from school with more mandatory gendered homework reassignments. Tell them that The Lion King is how the world is supposed to be, and that it’s everybody’s job to fight the hyenas in politics.
I want you to ask yourself a simple question: Do you choose to believe in the worldview of the lions, in the circle of life and the eternal authority of the Living God? Or do you choose to believe in “material progress” that leads to the depletion of the world’s resources and then to eternal darkness?
Knowing that what you choose to believe affects the future of the whole world, choose wisely.
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