From my three artifacts, I chose to analyze the Disney film, The Lion King. The Lion King is a anaimated film released in 1994 about a young lion prince, Simba, who becomes next in line to be the king after his father. His uncle, Scar, becomes jealous that he will not be king, so he kills his brother and tries to kill Simba. Simba is left thinking that it is his own fault that his father died, so he flees the Pride Lands. After years and years of exile, Simba's friends encourage him to return and overthrow his uncle and claim his title as the king. This film has been criticized for subtlety referring to racial, gender,homosexuality and class issues.
Although the characters in this film are protrayed by animals, it is evident that their voices show raicial stereotypes. For example, the hyenas who are protrayed by African American and Hispanic voices, live in the ghetto part of the Pride Lands. Some have argued that these characters are racists because they are colored darker, the accents that they have represent negative aspects of minorities, while the brighter colored animals represent the superior race. In addition to the race, the movie also displays the Pride Lands after the king's death. The lionessess are shown as being weak and in desperate need of a male hero to make the living conditions of the pride better. They are unable to protect themselves from Scar and the hyenas until years later when Simba returns. This goes with the notion that women need men to do things and that they cannot do them on their own.
This film suggests many things about our culture. Some people may feel that this these are not true, but I think that these are underlying things that the creators of this film purposely including in order to stir up it's audience. As I mentioned in my previous blog, because we were children when we first watched this film, many of the hidden messages in this film go unnoticed to us. I believe the ideology that is used in this film is that certain people are superior to others; that there is a superior class/race and a superior gender.
I believe that you should use your artifact of the "Lion King". The movie gives you a lot to talk about and a lot to analyze. It stands today as a classic movie and shows many different political and modern issues. Many people do not see the "Lion King" as a movie with underlying issues, they only see it as a children's movie. However, this leaves a lot of room for criticism.
ReplyDeleteI believe that you should use ideological criticism to analyze your artifact as opposed to using pentadic criticism. The "Lion King" is a creative piece and ideological criticism allows you to be creative and use your own evaluative beliefs to analyze.
In order to analyze this artifact I would identify the key elements and then identify the suggested elements. Using those elements I would form a framework for a main idea based around the movie. Using all of this information you need to formulate a research question then seek to answer the question.
This already is interesting to me. This little paragraph alone has me hooked. I think you could develop an amazing essay through this blog. Using a classic Disney movie like Lion King to discuss issues such as politics and social classes. It is fun and it is interesting so I think this is your most promising artifact to go with.
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