Well. I wasn't expecting that.
The Lion King was met with near universal praise when it came out 25 years ago. It grossed 312.9 million in the U.S. It won two Oscars. But an argument nevertheless emerged concerning the two main hyenas, Shenzi and Banzai—namely, that they were racist characters. In an overwhelmingly white voice cast (for a movie about Africa), they were brought to life by minority actors, Whoopi Goldberg and Cheech Marin, who played them as low-life gangsters, reprobates who speak in slang and live tucked away in a shadowy corner of the Pride Lands—the wrong side of the tracks.
Which the usual suspects immediatly recognised not as the usual Disney 'villian' trope, but as an attack on 'black street culture'. So, who exactly is the racist here?
Critics said their accents instantly demonized the characters. Academic pieces blasted the hyenas’ “street” vernacular. Some articles pointed out how the clever, cunning Scar—who speaks with white British actor Jeremy Irons’ King’s English—subjugates the destitute hyenas as his servants. “The good-for-nothing hyenas are urban blacks,” wrote a Harvard psychologist. A New York Times journalist dubbed them “Sambo-ish.”
Just goes to show, you can go to Harvard, or you can be educated at Harvard. People often choose the wrong one.
When asked about the controversy in 1994, Disney spokeswoman Terry Press dismissed it. “It’s a story. It’s fiction,” she said. “These people need to get a life.”
/applause!
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