Lion King Report

The Lion King is a Walt Disney Film about a pride of lions living in Africa. The film depicts the story of Simba a young lion cub who is born to Mufasa and Sarabi the king and queen of pride rock. This is a prime example of how Disney movies are full of stereo types and gender roles. Walt Disney was raised in the early 1900s and has many of these stereo types about gender roles were taught to him. Intergenerational family theory states that theses learned behaviors from his family of origin will be passed on. In most family’s this would mean Walt Disney’s own family would be influenced by his views of gender roles however since Walt Disney had such a powerful medium of communication of films many more people saw and were influenced by him. The following paper will discuss some of the many gender roles depicted in the film and will cover them in a chronological order as they occur in the film. One of the first things you may notice is that there is significantly more male stereo types then there are female stereo types. There is almost a three tone ratio of male to female stereo types in fact and this may be partially because Simba is the main character in the film and also because as a male it was easier for me to pick out male stereo types. Throughout this film there are strong implications that men are the powerful, strong, protector and rulers of all things and that females are the nurturing, loving, motherly, hunter gatherers.
The movie opens to a ceremony for the birth of a new future King. Nothing is known at the outset of the movie is simply shows all sorts of animals traveling to a place called pride rock. Even in the beginning of the film we can see gender roles being depicted. The Giraffes in the beginning are female because they have smaller giraffes following close to them. The Elephants depicted are male because they are big strong powerful and stomp and strut on their way to pride rock. As all the animals travel on towards to pride rock we see a