Children and Mass Media

The Lion King

By: Sarah Inglis, Laura Mallozzi, and Victoria Tsang

Have you seen that viral video with the three year old girl reacting to Mufasa dying in The Lion King? Her father filmed her crying at the scene all of us, who know and love The Lion King, can easily remember. That little girl’s reaction is unusual for a child her age, as younger children (ages 2-7) are not as easily aware of situational context surrounding emotional on screen portrayals. Facial expressions and basic emotions are more easily recognizable, whereas older children (ages 8+) would see Mufasa being killed, and Simba’s sadness after and develop a sense of fear because they know the situation could happen in their own lives. The display of emotions in the Disney film, The Lion King, have the potential to be great lessons for children, but for them to fully understand the underlying messages of these portrayals, the assistance and co-viewing by a parent or guardian would be beneficial.

The Lion King has many underlying themes of fear written into the plot of the movie and can potentially be very frightening for younger children to watch, much more so than for older, more developed children.  The main villain of the movie, Scar, and his ward of henchmen, the hyenas, are involved in many fear-provoking scenes throughout the movie such as the scene where they perform the song “Be Prepared” singing about how they are going to kill Mufasa and the hyenas swing around skeletons of dead animals in their mouths and then fire bursts up from the ground, adding to the scariness of the number.

 Also near the end of the movie the hyenas and Scar take over the Pride Lands and create a dark, dismal looking world that can also induce fear in children.  For the youngest children (2-7 year olds) the visual images from these scenes of the monstrous, grotesque, vicious characters will be the scariest to them.  For slightly older children (13 and up) the threat of realistic physical harm would be the most frightening (Cantor, 1998).

In addition to fear, The Lion King has both violence and bullying, things that wouldn’t be expected to happen in a G rated Disney movie. The cartoon violence is moderate, varying from pushing and shoving from Nala and Simba, to Mufasa being trampled in a  wildebeest stampede in front of his son. The bullying also occurs in small doses. Simba is taunted by Scar for his father’s death, leading him to run away in fear from the Pride Lands. In real life, running away does not solve problems, and neither does using aggression and violence to get what you want. But in The Lion King, it is portrayed as a good thing, and without running away, Simba wouldn’t have grown into the strong, courageous lion he is at the end of the movie. These ideas are misleading towards children, and may encourage the wrong ideas about how to get a situation to go their way. Reactions are also gendered, with boys being more receptive to the violence in the movie, and girls being more receptive to social aggression. Allowing these two concepts to be prevalent in a movie for children can be harmful, since they are still growing up and trying to figure out what is right and what is wrong.