Time to delve into the debate between Gooding-Williams and Morton...
Alright. So we have two arguments here. Introduce Exhibit A) Robert Gooding-Williams' (I am going to call him GW for short) piece "Disney in Africa and The Inner City: On Race and Space in The Lion King". In this piece, Williams argument... well although he had to throw many big words in it to get there... comes down to this for me. GW argues that in The Lion King, Disney has created an "Africa" that is "an allegory for the U.S" in which it focuses on the "inner-city of disenfranchised black & Latino residents... [and is] empowered by [Scar] giving them political power they have lacked." He pretty much also says that this Disney created view creates a negative and very Eurocentric view of urban poverty. GW also relies heavily on his homeboy, G.W.F Hegel . He uses Hegel to advance the notion that Disney's The Lion King supports this idea that Africa is "cultureless", "the land of childhood" , and "historyless". I would also go to say that GW doesn't buy this "Circle of Life" thing. Again, with his best bud Hegel, he says that "The Lion King re-cycles and re-values Hegel's Euro-centric picture of Africa". He pretty much thinks that the song reduces Africa and is just recycling and reproducing Eurocentric views.
GW doesn't stop there as he shifts his focus of his essay to analyze how Disney segregates the spaces within the film to support a racist agenda. By utilizing the desolate, death-land of the "Elephant Graveyard" as the home of the hyenas who use the "black English and Latino Slang" due to two main hyenas being voiced by Whoopi Goldberg and Cheech Marin. He then analyzes a scene with Scar and the hyenas to say that "it depicts the building in which the hyenas live as a bleak-looking and overcrowded hi-rise, the unambiguous image of a housing development in the projects."
Okay, so that gives a good summary of what Exhibit A is. Makes an arugment... but as you will see, I don't buy it.
GW got the conversation started...but for me... Morton hits it home.
Introduce Exhibit B) John Morton's essay "Simba's Revolution: Revisiting History and Class in The Lion King" focuses its argument solely around a response to GW's argument. I agree with how Morton puts it... GW's basic argument is "broadly convincing". Yes sure, I agree that Disney maybe hasn't been the best with creating media/entertainment that is counter to the single story depictions of Africa. But seriously. I would like to believe in the better qualities of humans to say that no one would go out of their way (during this time period) to create a racially divided film. Where GW sees the "The Circle of Life" to be recycling history and race with the example of the hyenas... but I mean... there is more to the film than just that. Morton highlights that GW "says nothing about the character of Mufasa, his kingdom, and his subjects as an allegorical representation of legitimate order". This helps Morton's argument in my opinion as he calls out GW's tunnel-visioned evidence. Morton is able to call out this flaw and to then further his argument by suggesting "that what is at stake in the depiction of Africa as a zone of apparent timelessness is the desire to maintain the standards and ideology which legitimate contemporary capitalist forms of social reproduction." Talk about a clap back. I also loved how Morton viewed GW's idea of "splitting" as more of "oppositions" of good and bad. Instead of making a stretch of a claim, Morton simply states that some characters were good, some evil, some places light, some places dark, and it is within these oppositions that a character, Simba, gets to discover who he is. Isn't that how life kind of goes for us humans? I believe so.
I don't know if I align with Morton's argument more because he doesn't rely on some German philosopher and idealist and then says a ton of fancy words in a sentence and loses me. But actually, I think Morton's argument is much more effective than GW's because his evidence is complex, yet his translation is simple. He makes it clear why these facts matter and how this actually comes to represent Africa history, but also the analysis of U.S class and space. In addition, GW's evidence can fall through very hard for him when he has this tunneled view. Did he know that almost all the top food-chain members were voiced by African American men and women? To me, how can you argue something without acknowledging where your evidence or analysis may become flawed (I guess thanks GW for a quick lesson before my final paper/project!). Overall, Morton makes the strongest, most effective, and convincing argument. He doesn't make it "his way or the high way", but rather enters the conversation of GW, analyzes his argument and its potential flaws, and then makes his own claim out of it. And in doing that, does a job well done.
Also, talk about a savage ending by Morton.
GW ending: "In effect Disney contributes to what, in the spirit of Marx, one could call the mystery of the fetishism of urban poverty."
Morton ending: "In effect Gooding-Williams, by favouring Scar outright, contributes to what, in the spirit of George Orwell (1951), one might call the mystery of the fetishism of proletarian revolt."
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