This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

Civic Imagination

The Lion King

The Lion King is about Mufasa (a lion) who is the king of Pride Rock (an animal based kingdom) and his son, Simba (who is also a lion). Simba is the heir to the throne but his uncle, Scar, is very jealous of that. This results in him killing Mufasa and blaming it on a young Simba.

The rest of the film is about Simba coming to terms with what has happened, starting a new life and coming back to save his kingdom.

The film itself is set in North Africa and there are two scenes that stand out to me. The opening scene, which is iconic, where Simba is introduced to hoards of happy animals who are excited to see him introduced and the scene where Mufasa appears in the clouds to encourage Simba.

For some reason, I have always LOVED the Lion King. It's always been something I have genuinely seen as a work of art. I used to own it on VHS and watching it was genuinely some of the best moments of my childhood.

I personally engage with it because firstly, to me it was the first time I had seen an aspect of African culture receive such mainstream celebration. It was beautiful hearing songs in Swahili being sung. Even though my family are Ghanaian, it made me want to learn the native tongue of my family (even though I never properly did!) and to explore and be proud of the elements of their culture in which I identify as my own secondary culture. It sparked my initial acceptance of what it means to be unashamedly African and how it is so beautiful. It also explores the idea of never forgetting who you are and being proud of it. Growing up in England as a child, it was hard to fully embrace my African side as it wasn't well understood by my peers so having the Lion King did make it easier (even if that change was small).

It also has religious connotations for me. It was the first time as a child that I had properly thought of the idea of death, which terrified me! However, seeing Mufasa coming back to encourage Simba as some sort of spiritual entity reminded heavily with my own relationship with my Christian faith and with God. It helped to remind me that in my life, I had God to remind me who I was and to always encourage and strengthen me.

This story can inspire everyone to remember one thing; do not forget who you are. Many things will come your way to thwart your way of thinking and to scare you off but you as a person are unique and are strong to handle anything life has to throw at you! I believe that God lives in me and is my strength. I believe he lives in you too and lives in all of us. You may not identify with that message and I can understand that so I guess it can also be seen as this too:

You've got an unbelievably strong persona in you and that will always be you. You may be shy, you may be quiet, you feel out of place but you are strong regardless and that will always be yours.

If you are seeking for change in your life or for those around you, you can do it. Of course you can. Simba lost his dad because his uncle killed him AND had the blame put on him as a kid! Imagine that!! However, he acknowledged that he was strong enough inside to make a difference and with the help of good friendships and a strong family, good was able to come about. Yes, it just a cartoon (that was hard for me to type because I genuinely love it and it is SO real to me) but the themes it explores can definitely be applied to your life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GibiNy4d4gc

family, strength, friends, relationships, circle of life, africa

This page has tags:

Contents of this tag:
5. The Lion King
7. Chef "Chef is a film released in 2014 that was written and directed by Jon Favreau who was inspired by his own career in film and love of the culinary arts to create a movie about a popular chef who needs to find his creative spark and fall in love with cooking once more. The film begins in California where Chef Carl Casper lives and works. After receiving a brutally negative review from a well regarded food critic, Carl reevaluates his job at a fancy restaurant in California. He realized that sticking to a strict menu has taken away a lot of joy from the profession he used to love. After he quits his job, Carl heads to Miami, Florida with his family because his ex-wife, Inez, needs him to watch their son, Percy, while she works.
10. Freedom Writers: Bridging Racial Divides Through Writing Freedom Writers (the movie) is based on a true story of a school in Long Beach, California. The main character, Erin Gruwell, is a new teacher at Woodrow Wilson Classical High School and placed with the students who are considered at-risk and unteachable. These students were almost entirely comprised of minorities, with the exception of one student. With such a diverse class and a group of students who had no apparent desire to learn, the film explores the real-world challenges that Gruwell faced trying to get her students to come to class wanting to learn, if they would even want to come to their classes at all. The class divides itself based on race, and fights and arguments breakout regularly. The class later finds common ground on their feelings and discussions around The Holocaust. Her students become inspired to break free from the things that originally divided them, most notably with one character speaking out against someone who she was being forced to lie for during a trial. She tasked her students with writing in a diary and then compiled those journals and writings into a collection of them all in “The Freedom Writers Diary.”
13. Sailor Moon Sailor Moon is a young teenage girl that learns that she has magical powers that allows her to fight against the evils of the extraterrestrial world. She finds the Sailor Scouts, Venus, Mercury, Mars, and Jupiter. Each of them have powers that relate to the symbolism of their planet and a specific superhero outfit that they wear. Based in Neo-futuristic Tokyo the story was released in the 1990’s as a manga and then a television anime came out. It became very popular among teens especially young Asian-American girls because of where it was based although the characters were many depicted as white skin tone.
14. Roaring Lion
15. Sanjay's Super Team This is an animated short film from Pixar directed and written by Sanjay Patel who based it off his experiences as a child. The story revolves around a young boy, Sanjay, and his father, an Indian-American migrant. Sanjay is watching his favourite superheroes on TV while his father is praying by the shrine in the same room. His father urges him to join in the ritual but Sanjay refuses so he switches off the TV and takes his toy in order to force him into it.
19. Sandokan: A Post-Colonial Coldwar Hero The plot of the novel revolves around the adventures of Sandokan - a Bornean man who lost his status, home and family to British colonialists. Embittered by his experience, Sandokan sets up camp at the island of Mompracem. From there he leads a gang of pirates under the flag of the Tiger. Together they destabilize the colonialists’ authority through robbery and violence. Steeped in the colonial period in which it was written, Salgari’s novel pitted indigenous populations against the colonial powers in ways that highlighted the evils of imperialism and celebrated resistance. As Maria Bianca Gerlich (1998, 34) observes, “Sandokan, Mompracem, and the flag of the tiger are allegories in the fight for freedom.”
27. Train of Hope
31. Emmeline the Suffragist
34. Dana G.
37. My Dad
39. Maus: A Survivor's Tale
40. The colonial city
41. How the tortoise got cracks in his shell
47. Julia B. I am a third year student at the University of Maryland in the U.S. studying Journalism with a minor in French. Writing is a passion of mine, and journalism is one of the many real world applications of writing. I hope to be able to use writing to make an impact on the world through the news and help others get the information that they need in order to be informed citizens. In my free time I like to do triathlons and write poetry.
48. Stephanie Q
49. A Leader
61. How I "Eat, Pray, and Love"
71. Tiajna A
73. The doctors' team of the Aegean sea
Contents of this tag:
3. The Lion King
5. Sailor Moon Sailor Moon is a young teenage girl that learns that she has magical powers that allows her to fight against the evils of the extraterrestrial world. She finds the Sailor Scouts, Venus, Mercury, Mars, and Jupiter. Each of them have powers that relate to the symbolism of their planet and a specific superhero outfit that they wear. Based in Neo-futuristic Tokyo the story was released in the 1990’s as a manga and then a television anime came out. It became very popular among teens especially young Asian-American girls because of where it was based although the characters were many depicted as white skin tone.
6. Chef "Chef is a film released in 2014 that was written and directed by Jon Favreau who was inspired by his own career in film and love of the culinary arts to create a movie about a popular chef who needs to find his creative spark and fall in love with cooking once more. The film begins in California where Chef Carl Casper lives and works. After receiving a brutally negative review from a well regarded food critic, Carl reevaluates his job at a fancy restaurant in California. He realized that sticking to a strict menu has taken away a lot of joy from the profession he used to love. After he quits his job, Carl heads to Miami, Florida with his family because his ex-wife, Inez, needs him to watch their son, Percy, while she works.
8. Freedom Writers: Bridging Racial Divides Through Writing Freedom Writers (the movie) is based on a true story of a school in Long Beach, California. The main character, Erin Gruwell, is a new teacher at Woodrow Wilson Classical High School and placed with the students who are considered at-risk and unteachable. These students were almost entirely comprised of minorities, with the exception of one student. With such a diverse class and a group of students who had no apparent desire to learn, the film explores the real-world challenges that Gruwell faced trying to get her students to come to class wanting to learn, if they would even want to come to their classes at all. The class divides itself based on race, and fights and arguments breakout regularly. The class later finds common ground on their feelings and discussions around The Holocaust. Her students become inspired to break free from the things that originally divided them, most notably with one character speaking out against someone who she was being forced to lie for during a trial. She tasked her students with writing in a diary and then compiled those journals and writings into a collection of them all in “The Freedom Writers Diary.”
10. Sanjay's Super Team This is an animated short film from Pixar directed and written by Sanjay Patel who based it off his experiences as a child. The story revolves around a young boy, Sanjay, and his father, an Indian-American migrant. Sanjay is watching his favourite superheroes on TV while his father is praying by the shrine in the same room. His father urges him to join in the ritual but Sanjay refuses so he switches off the TV and takes his toy in order to force him into it.
11. The colonial city
15. The Infinite Forking Possibilities of the Future
21. Equilibrium Equilibrium is set in 2072 in Libria, a city state established by the survivors of World War III. “Equilibrium” is an action/thriller movie following John Preston (Bale), an enforcement officer in a futuristic world where a regime has decided to eliminate war by suppressing emotions using a certain type of drug. Books, art and music are strictly forbidden and "feeling" is a crime punishable by death.
24. Zootopia: Disney's Introduction to Reality for Children
26. SkyNet: the danger of Artificial Intelligence
27. Sandokan: A Post-Colonial Coldwar Hero The plot of the novel revolves around the adventures of Sandokan - a Bornean man who lost his status, home and family to British colonialists. Embittered by his experience, Sandokan sets up camp at the island of Mompracem. From there he leads a gang of pirates under the flag of the Tiger. Together they destabilize the colonialists’ authority through robbery and violence. Steeped in the colonial period in which it was written, Salgari’s novel pitted indigenous populations against the colonial powers in ways that highlighted the evils of imperialism and celebrated resistance. As Maria Bianca Gerlich (1998, 34) observes, “Sandokan, Mompracem, and the flag of the tiger are allegories in the fight for freedom.”
30. Be kind to yourself
Contents of this tag:
1. The Lion King