For those of you who missed it, this past week marked the rerelease of the Lion King onto blu-ray and DVD. Since it was a piece of my childhood that I hold dear to my heart (even though most of you who are in high school weren’t even born when it was in theaters) I ran down and picked up a copy that included the original motion picture soundtrack so I could share all the joy with my sons. When we got home and popped the disc into the blu-ray player, my first thought was wow, this looks beautiful in high definition. It was like stepping back into my family’s living room 17 years ago. Then I started to notice some things that I had never noticed before. The movie wasn’t just about the good lions and the bad lions, it was about order and disorder. While I had always known that Mufasa and Simba had represented good, I never made the connection to a natural order, at least beyond the whole Circle of Life song at the beginning. It struck me that maybe there was something deeper that could be gleaned from this particular children’s movie beyond just a battle between good and evil. I think that in many ways the Lion King actually goes into what good and evil are really all about. On the side of good you don’t just have a bunch of happy feelings and people (or lions) just doing whatever they want. In fact, this irresponsible attitude is corrected by Mufasa, the king, several times. Leadership and power have responsibilities, and those responsibilities are rooted in nature itself, or natural law. When natural law is followed and protected society can thrive. When natural law is violated, society begins to unravel. Scar (the villain and King Mufasa’s younger brother) is set up as an almost idealistic example of someone who goes against natural law. He wants to be king, like his older brother, but without any of the responsibilities or the hard work. He also chooses to hang out with the hyenas, his natural enemies in the movies, and the enemies of natural law and order. In his quest for happiness he tries to be something that God never meant him to be. Scar murders his brother and then he and the hyenas take over, but take is all they do. They refuse to respect the natural order of the world, so their fertile chunk of Africa soon becomes a desolate waste devoid of food and life. What Scar thought would bring him happiness ultimately made him miserable and led to his downfall. Throughout the movie I could see the Catholic Church as the defender of the natural law and order in the created world and sin as our enemy. Sin works to corrupt nature and tries to destroy it from the inside out. When we adopt personal philosophies like hakuna matata (no worries) and turn our backs on our responsibilities as Catholics, our society will crumble. We can only truly be happy by embracing God’s plan for our lives and living for Him. All in all I think I enjoyed watching the Lion King almost as much as an adult as I did as a kid. I certainly think I learned a lot more from it. It continues to show that we can learn a lot through movies if we actually take the time to look beyond flashy explosions and amazing CGI effects.
