"The Lion King" - battle of class uprisings or family issues?

Ever since the release of Disney’s The Lion King, historians and others alike have been trying to figure out what exactly the representation of the elephant graveyard and its hyenas really mean in relation to Pride Rock. Many have come to the conclusion that Pride Rock is meant to symbolize “suburbia”, or where the white elite live (the lions), whereas the elephant graveyard is the inner city, where the blacks and Latino’s live (hyenas). Robert Gooding-Williams agreed with this idea in his essay called, “ Disney in Africa and the Inner City: on Race and Space in The Lion King”. He argued that Disney “marked the elephant graveyard as inner city” through the hyenas in their voices and actions. Whoopi Goldberg and Cheech Marin are the voice actors for two of the hyenas, giving them a “black English and Latino slang”, whereas the majority of the characters living in Pride Rock are voiced by white actors. By placing the black and Latino characters in a place where ‘the light doesn’t touch’, this is signifying the divide between the two places, the dark and dismal elephant graveyard versus the beauty of the Pride Lands. In the scene where Scar is singing “Be Prepared”, Gooding-Williams states that as the hyenas are goose-stepping before Scar, which symbolizes Hitler at Nuremburg overseeing his troops, a connection to the inner city projects is made. “It depicts the building in which the hyenas live in as a bleak-looking and overcrowded hi-rise, the unambiguous image of a housing development in the projects.”  Gooding-Williams goes on to describe Scar as a “political revolutionary who thinks historically”, and as someone who wants to “end the otherwise endless reproduction of a natural course of life”, aka, the ‘circle of life’.

             Arguing against the views of Gooding-Williams is John Morton, who believes that The Lion King isn’t depicting a political battle of the classes, but is strictly showing a familial battle. In his essay, “Simba’s Revolution: Revisiting History and Class in The Lion King”, Morton begins by actually agreeing with some of the points Gooding-Williams made about the representation of class and how The Lion King’s Africa “is a natural paradise articulated by a stable social order benevolently dominated by lions and excluding a ‘ghetto’ containing an underclass of scavenging hyenas.” But, that is the line where Morton stops and begins his true argument against the ideas of Gooding-Williams, that the battle being fought is not based upon class upheaval and does not make Scar a historical figure. Gooding-Williams implies that those living outside of Pride Rock, namely the hyenas, are the social outcasts who join with Scar in his “historical revolution” to usurp the oppressing elite of Pride Rock (Mufasa). Morton disagrees with this, and states that Gooding-Williams’ argument about those living outside of Pride Rock being pitted against those who live in it crumbles when Timon and Pumbaa are mentioned. They are two primary characters who Gooding-Williams failed to mention that don’t live at Pride Rock, but who are perfectly content with their lives and even pair up with those of the supposed “elite” class (Simba).

For this story to be a true historical class rivalry, it would have to be a battle of a lower-level food chain group trying to usurp those at the top of the food chain, when really it is just against two characters who are both at the top of the food chain. If Scar wasn’t depicted as a lion, and was maybe a hyena, and wanted to raise the station of the hyenas, then yes, the conflict could be defined as a historical revolution, but because he is in the same class as Simba and Mufasa, and because he did not have any desire to raise the hyena’s status, then it remains simply a familial battle. Personally, I agree with Morton rather than Gooding-Williams because his argument was convincing enough to disprove all of Gooding-Williams’ points, and because Scar’s motives were purely to reign over his brother and nephew, not having in mind to raise the status of the hyenas.