Adam Hutton's strange genius

I was thinking about The Lion King earlier today and it occurred to me that they don't really explain the differences in domestic policy between Mufasa and Scar, in fact the only difference I can remember is that Scar allowed hyenas into the prideland and then things went to shit. This is the message we want to send kids? That utopia is possible only if you imprison boogeymen races to their ghettos on the outskirts of society?

It doesn't make any sense for the introduction of a few hundred hyenas to disrupt the entire savannah ecosystem, it's much more likely that they were a scapegoat when the reality is that those prey animals were almost certainly prisoners themselves, unless you actually believe the Mufasa regime propaganda about subjects to the throne hanging around to be killed and eaten because they respect the "circle of life" so much.

Yes we can blame Scar for the pride land ecosystem/economy fluctuation after the emancipation of TWO suppressed underclasses; the prey hostages on death row as well as the Hyenas Mufasa was trying to starve inside their shadowy concentration camp. We could also blame Lincoln for starting the horrible civil war.

The way I see it, Scar is guilty only of deposing a bloodthirsty tyrant and finally officially recognizing the personhood and civil rights of every non-lion species in the plains.

Thank you.



later on...

...AND THEN! AND THEN! A good quarter of the movie is devoted to the mission of a member of the former aristocracy, graciously and foolishly spared from exile or the animal equivalent of the guillotine, sent out into the wilderness to track down and seduce the deposed spoiled brat prince (who never worked a day in his life) to CONVINCE him to come back and lead a conspiracy to oust the new, democratically supported people's government and return the old money back to power. He doesn't even want to. Even the new king was a puppet to the former power structures.

Really the movie is a lesson about why it was necessary for ...I dunno, the french revolution, to be as bloody as it was. Within a generation or two the pridelands could have been a perfect egalitarian society had it not been for the naive, benevolent restraint of Scar.