Katherine Tang, Gooding-Williams vs Morton Response

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The Lion King might’ve been a huge success, but it did not escape criticism. Robert Gooding-Williams outlines the issues with Disney’s film, and, in response, John Walton discusses his own thoughts on Gooding-Williams’s analyses with his own interpretations. Although neither of the arguments were "wrong" or completely flawed, I found John Morton’s more well-rounded and convincing. 

In his article, Gooding-Williams argues that Disney’s portrayal of Africa reflects Hegel’s depiction of Africa. As Gooding-Williams describes it, Africa appears to Hegel as "a geographically bounded and culture less place of spiritual infancy that has not once evolved a novel and non-infantile mode of spiritual existence.” Gooding-Williams argues that this is similar to The Lion King’s portrayal of Africa that “reduces Africa to the endless reproduction of a natural and pre-historic course of life.” I can follow this point of view. Indeed, Africa is quite often popularly seen as stuck in this natural state of living. Of course, making a film about animals set in Africa singing about the Circle of Life doesn’t do much to alter this Eurocentric view. 

I can also follow the rest of his argument of how Disney claims that transformations and “becoming historical” will cause “spiritual loss and decline.” At this point, I couldn’t really see what his purpose of emphasizing this information was for, and I would say that this weakened his overall argument (you could say that it was implied within, but his roundabout language was also hard to follow). He later ties the importance of this to Disney’s America, claiming that The Lion King is actually an allegory for America, specifically with the elephant graveyard as the American inner city and the hyenas living there as the blacks and Latinos that populate the inner city. According to Gooding-Williams, Disney’s film shows, through the changes of Pride Rock under different leaderships, “the perfect polity American would be if its circle of life excluded its underclass of black and Latino scavengers.” Drawing conclusions to his argument, Gooding-Williams ties in what exactly this means in terms of American society, demonstrating that reason for urban poverty is not exclusively due to those who live impoverished lives, but rather due to “macropolitical and macroeconomic social relations” that are ignored. Essentially, what I picked up from this was: America’s capitalistic policies are driving the country to the ground and are the driving force for urban poverty. 

I might not necessarily agree with accusations of Gooding-Williams towards Disney, but I could generally follow his reasoning (other than some wordy and strange language that I had trouble deciphering) and how he drew the conclusions he made. However, his overall argument felt quite unsatisfying. Beyond just how fluttery some of the language was (including but not limited to “macropolitical and macroeconomic social relations”, like, what exactly are you trying to say?), I found his argument quite one-dimensional. He doesn’t include any conflicting points of views, such as from other authors that might have interpreted the film differently, and this would’ve helped with building his argument and making it more well-rounded. In addition, he responds limitedly to the overall events in the entire film specifically, instead picking and choosing aspects to fit his point of view. His argument drew a lot on outside people and concepts that could be applied and molded into his conclusions, and I think some of the deductions he made were fairly huge leaps without more evidence from the film. These factors hurt his argument.  

On the other hand, John Morton’s response to Gooding-Williams’s article acknowledges that Gooding-Williams’s article is “broadly convincing,” yet Morton disagreed with Gooding-Williams's interpretations that he insisted were “evidently Marxist.” This form of agreement with disagreement I believe strengthens his argument in demonstrating his ability to think critically and not blindly disagree or agree. In another example, Gooding-Williams's argument includes claiming that Disney's Africa is portrayed as timeless, and Morton also argues with analysis a similar idea that "Africa... becomes the repository for timeless values," but specifically by maintaining capitalistic social values and ideologies and by demonstrating continuity through the beginning scenes and the ending. At the same time, Morton disagrees with Gooding-Williams that Disney’s Africa was a place without history, where he claims Africa is portrayed as “the site of history and ongoing struggle.” The agreement with disagreement thing works well.

Timelessness in the Circle of Life
Top: Mufasa and Simba URL
Bottom: Simba and Cub URL

In addition, Morton points out the shortcomings of Gooding-Williams’s argument regarding social inequality by exposing how Gooding-Williams makes most of his analysis through the hyenas, ignoring the other characters, such as Timon and Pumbaa. This was something that I was in agreement with. Morton instead argues that the comparisons between the different ostracized groups and the contrast between Mufasa and Scar expose the conflicts between good and evil that manifests itself through society whether it’s in the privileged or the impoverished. The logic and evidence that led to this argument generally made sense to me and was not difficult to follow. Ultimately, Morton points out the close-mindedness of Gooding-Williams, claiming that the film was “less black and white than Gooding-Williams recognizes.” I found that Morton did get slightly accusatory in some parts, including describing Gooding-Williams as “a malcontent driven exclusively by resentment and unwilling to reform his malevolence on the assumption of power,” and I felt that this hurt my opinion of him. However, I was thankful that Morton did not go in depth on the parts of Gooding-Williams's argument specifically commentating on America, as Gooding-Williams was actually educated in the U.S. and Morton was educated in England and lives in Australia. Since Morton may not have had the background to discuss these points, this omission (although not necessarily much) helps develop his credibility in my mind.

In general, I found that the way Morton expanded on Gooding-Williams’s argument and described his criticisms allowed for his article to be more informed and insightful. Consequently, Morton's analysis felt more convincing.