The Lion King: A Question of Incest

I wonder sometimes if people take the time to sit and ponder the depths of a movie in a realistic sense. It can be quite surprising what one may discover. Some things may not be as obvious under first impression, despite there being a full knowledge of what is happening. Unfortunately, it is that type of thinking that can destroy a movie, or just annoy everyone else.

What comes to my interest is Disney’s The Lion King. The Lion King is, well, about lions (pretty obvious, eh?). Nearly everyone knows the story of The Lion King, about Simba and his growth and rise to become the king of the pride lands in Africa. More specifically what I find interesting focuses on Simba and his relations. Since the focus of this movie is about lions, particularly Simba, I have compared and applied real lion mannerisms on these fictitious lions.

Lions are members of the cat family, and are the only cats that live in social groups. Members of the cat family tend to live in solitude, but this can be changed under the right circumstances. These groups of lions, called a pride, basically are made up of one male lion while the rest are female lions, also called lionesses. You can say that these prides are family groups, since females tend to be related to each other, though newly matured females may set off and join other prides. Usually there is only one male, but there might be two dominate males or so, like brothers, that look over the pride. Male cubs that mature are kicked out of the pride, or sometimes fight for the position of dominate male. When there is fighting for dominance, the loser has the leave, and the winning continues or assumes the role of the dominant male. In a pride, the male will mate with all the lionesses within the pride. When a new male takes over, he kills all the cubs fathered by the previous male. This not only exterminates cubs that are not his, but also brings the females into estrus (heat) sooner. Kind of morbid isn’t it? Well this is typically what lions do.

Now, knowing this, let’s look at Simba and his situation. Simba inherits his pride from his father, the previous dominant male, and becomes the dominant male himself, and the “Lion King”. His “queen” is Nala, a childhood friend, and also a member of the same pride. We know that the male lion mates with all the lionesses in their pride. Simba’s pride was actually indeed Mufasa’s pride. Mufasa probably had, or would have, mated with all the females of his pride. Nala and Simba do not have the same mother, but knowing that they lived in the same pride, they would have had the same father, this being Mufasa. Therefore, Nala and Simba actually are half brother and half sister, if not closer. This means Simba mated with his half sister Nala, and produced their daughter Kiara; who makes an appearance at the end of The Lion King, and seen again in The Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride. And it doesn’t stop there, go back to the idea that the male lion mates with ALL of the females. In a pride, females tend to be related to each other: sisters, aunts, nieces, etc. Simba had become the dominant male lion in this particular pride. Thus, Simba will mate with all the females within his pride, including his mother. And since his mother would be related to other females in the pride Simba will basically be mating with his relatives. It seems to me that the workings of this movie, internally and externally, involve quite a bit of incest. Simba did mate with his half sister and produced a cub, and in the future will mate with his mother and his relatives when they go into heat.

My revelation seems somewhat disturbing, but this would be true according to how lions actually are. The Lion King does have some underlying incest structure to it, and it looks comparable to royalty of the past. Members of royalty would marry within their families to maintain the genealogy. This movie being cartoon and animals, it is much more subtle then if it were played out by human characters. However, this is just a kid’s movie after all, and the creators may say otherwise to my findings. Nevertheless, one can choose what they wish to believe.