The Lion King

Last night we went to see the Lion King on stage. First of all, we all loved it. Jonah started yelling, "It's just what I wanted!" And luckily the mics and all that drowned him out. So I didn't worry about him disturbing others. Even though two older kids were looking back at him all the time. They were often looking back when he wasn't doing anything so whatever.

There were some parts where I was wondering if one day in the future, people may look back on this play and even the movie, the same way we look back at Show Boat, or minstrel shows. There was one particular part where Rafiki is shaking her butt acting like a clown and speaking more or less gibberish that is supposed to sound like an African language, and maybe some of the words were real, but still as the audience laughed I felt a bit of a cringe.

But ultimately as far as today standards go, it may be considered positive. A black king rules a black kingdom, Rafiki is ultimately something like Arthur's Merlin (who was also funny sometimes) and the displaced scar is "whiter" and the clowns Pumba and Timon are whitish, and Zazu who is advisor and goofy, is whitish as well. So in that way it is role reversal of many stereotypes.

Or is it?

Even the movie, the whole premise buys into a notion that Africa is somehow completely wild with no humans. Name another animated movie with no human characters. Even Ice Age has a human baby. But Lion King, set in Africa, where humans come from, where Cro Magnon man comes from, and where after some sort of global catastrophe that almost wiped our species out (we know this because of a bottle neck in the genetic code) our version of modern humans emerged from a specific village in Africa (we know this because people there differ more genetically more than people anywhere else on earth, even if taken from opposite sides.) Anyway, blah blah blah, the point is a lot of stuff about Lion King is sort of racist and culturally biased. But I think the only way we would look back at it like that would be if Africa became as powerful and dominant, or more powerful and more dominant than Europe or "The West" or China, or basically if Africa became the continent that had the countries that ruled the world, the 1% ers, That sort of thing.

This does not seem likely to happen soon.

Anyway, I still loved lion king. I loved the mvie more than the play though, It's hard to beat the movie. The actors are top notch Shakesperean actors (the lion king is pretty much Hamlet after all. Set in Africa. With Lions. And some references to Communism. And the Hyenas are sort of ghetto dwellers. Man there is no getting around it, it is pretty racist and classist. And promotes hereditary monarchy and a caste system.)

But the story is so good. The idea is so cool. The father son relationship is so sad and touching. Jonah kept hugging me during the scenes with Mufasa telling Simba about the stars. "I love you so much." he said.

The songs are so good. The costumes and scenery is so cool.

One part that I missed from the movie was the Shamanic trance part where Simba follows Rafiki to a reflection pool. This was simply done with a song, instead of a chase through vines with African drumming. That is my favorite part of the movie because to me it represents a Shamanic journey into the subconscious, and is entering that altered state that enables Simba to see a vision of his father in the heavens. I'm into that. But I guess it would be difficult to do on stage.

Anyway, a lot of the puppetry was really cool, and might help me for thinking about what my lion dance and Kung Fu class is going to do. The main thing I saw was keep it simple and focus on the ability of each kid to be able to move well on his or her own, even if that means that we all stay in the same place on their little dot on the floor.