Channel J: Tooth and Claw: A Brief Look at Predators in Disney Films

As someone who has a vested interest in the portrayal of predators in popular media, I was thrilled to see that Zootopia was a step in the right direction, not only showing that a fox can be something more than what he was born as, but that predators in general are not something to be feared just because of who they are.  #NotAllPredators  Even the tigers dancing around a gazelle who would’ve been a meal in any other context were a positive portrayal of their species.

So now that we live in an enlightened age, what’s next for Disney?  Another movie that doesn’t show predators as scary monsters wanting to do nothing but kill?

Oh well.  Like Judy instinctively reaching for her fox repellent, it’s hard for Disney to turn a new leaf just like that and it’s not surprising, considering their long history of predator vilification.  Disney has never been kind to those who have to eat meat to survive.

A Meal Fit For A King: Diet vs. Motivations in The Lion King

Perhaps the most famous of the Disney animated movies, The Lion King, is a prime example of this.  Yes, it stars lions, but who’s the only lion whom you ever see actually handling meat?  The villain, Scar.  While delivering the opening soliloquy of the film, he attempts to kill and eat a mouse.  Later on, he brings part of a dead zebra to his hyena henchmen and tells them that they don’t deserve it for how badly they handled the trap he’d set for Simba and Nala.

Of course, he’s never one to take responsibility.  “It’s the hyenas who are the real enemy.”  Apparently so, since they’re the only ones shown on screen consuming the meat Scar gave them and once they join the lions in the Pride Lands, the land turns dry and desolate.  Presumably, they already picked clean the Elephant Graveyard and then they did the same to the pride’s territory.  It is not a good time for the lions who are only trying to live in harmony with nature, respecting the balance of the “great circle of life”.

“But Dad, don’t we eat the antelope?”  Not if you believe The Lion King.  Yes, Mufasa claims that they consume the flesh of other animals, but who out of all the protagonists do you actually see trying to hunt?  Nala?  As soon as Simba told her not to kill Pumbaa, that was the last (and only) time we ever see it happen.  Sarabi?  Not on screen we don’t, and the only time her hunting is ever addressed, there isn’t any food to find anyway.

So lions survive on meat but only when they’re not being watched, right?  Nope, wrong again!  It turns out that Simba’s diet is shown in the movie!  So what acceptable, G-rated food does Simba survive on during his time with Timon and Pumbaa?

The writers claim that Simba could live on bugs and grow up to be big and strong and capable of defeating Scar.  At first glance, that seems far-fetched.  Simba was still easily pinned by Nala as an adult, he obviously didn’t get any stronger on his insectan diet.  Just how many bugs would he have to have eaten in order to compensate for Timon being fresh out of antelope and zebra?

I was all set to do the math, but it turns out that Reddit beat me to the punch.  Secretninja35 calculates, based on the weight of a grub, that Simba would need to eat between 3780 and 9450 a day.  But factoring in calories, it gets worse for Simba.  Caloric intake per grub isn’t known for some reason, but figuring for crickets, PsychoRNGD calculated that Simba would require 24,292 a day to maintain his handsome figure and goes on to say “If a lion sleeps for 20 hours a day as most sources say then Simba would have to eat 1.7 crickets a second.”  In order to enjoy the easy life with Timon and Pumbaa, he would’ve had to gobble down as many insects as he possibly could in as short a time as possible.

So Simba’s stripping away entire jungles of insects daily in order to keep from eating his friends, right?  Not so fast.  According to this page of random insect facts, there are more insects in one square mile of rural land than there are humans on Earth, so about 7 billion.  There are an average of 50,000 spiders per acre in “green areas” and between 20,000 and 60,000 bees living in a single hive.  I couldn’t find the numbers for cricket and grub populations, but it can be assumed they’re of similar densities.  At first I thought substituting meat with insects was absurd, but with these figures in mind and despite not factoring in the amount of time involved in actually acquiring said bugs to eat, it actually seems plausible for a meerkat, warthog and full grown lion to survive on such a diet.

It’s neither here nor there, but it’s probably safe to assume that the only reason Simba defeated Scar despite his lack of training was because eating bugs in the jungle is better than starving at Pride Rock.

Bryon Howard, the co-director of Zootopia, recently revisited the convenient distinction between “good predator” and “bad predator” by declaring that the predator characters in Zootopia are not carnivores, they’re really insectivores.  Not even fish are on the menu, but then that’s not new either.  As Bruce in Finding Nemo said, “I am a nice shark, not a mindless eating machine. If I am to change this image, I must first change myself. Fish are friends, not food.”

Going Ape: Tarzan From Book To Film

But The Lion King was an original movie, not based on an existing property (or… is it?).  What about movies like Tarzan which are based on classic literature?  There’s not much wriggle room there, right?  Yeah, about that: in the Disney animated version, Sabor the leopard kills Kala’s young infant and has also killed Tarzan’s parents.  Sabor attacks Kala, Kerchak and Tarzan during the course of the movie as well, and Tarzan kills her in frantic battle.

Edgar Rice Burroughs’ book tells a different story.  Chapter 4 of Tarzan of the Apes introduces the reader to “Kerchak the Ape” as he is having one of his temper tantrums.  His anger management issues cause much grief among the troop he leads and is often lethal for those who are unable to run away in time or who accidentally fall within reach of him.  Kala is first seen returning home from hunting with her young one, only to be chased by a berserk Kerchak.  As she flees, she drops her child and it falls thirty feet to its death.

In the same chapter, Kerchak confronts Tarzan’s father and kills him.  His mother had already died of apparent natural causes the day before and Kala’s motherly instincts cause her to adopt Tarzan and raise him as if he were her own.  To be fair, John Clayton had been killing apes for a long while and Kerchak had enough, but then to be equally fair, the apes were the ones who opened hostilities in the first place.

Fast forward to chapter 11, where Burroughs says this of Kerchak: “In his little evil brain he sought for some excuse to wreak his hatred upon Tarzan.”  Kerchak is jealous at this point, due to Tarzan’s continued victories against foes like Bolgani the gorilla, who had attacked him randomly in chapter 6 for very little reason, Tublat, an ape in his troop and his reluctant adoptive father, who attempted to attack Kala in his own fit of anger in chapter 7 and who never loved Tarzan, and Kulonga the black man who killed Kala for food in chapter 9.  It is when Tarzan kills Sabor the lioness (Disney changed her to a leopard for some reason) that Kerchak flies into a rage, kills a dozen apes for the sake of it and then goes after Tarzan.  This would prove to be fatal to Kerchak, and Tarzan becomes king of the apes.

So what of Sabor?  She is little more than a minor speed bump in Tarzan’s life.  She is hunting in chapter 5 but is chased away before she can consume her kill.  In chapter 8, Tarzan tries to kill her and in the end merely teases and torments her for a bit before he leaves her alone.  And finally, in chapter 11, she is quickly and effortlessly killed by some poisoned arrows shot by Tarzan as she tries to hunt him.

Thus it is Kerchak and not Sabor who is the antagonist in Tarzan’s early life.  It is Kerchak who is the real savage killer of the jungle, he is a sociopath and tyrant.  But Disney’s history of anti-predator bias shone through, for in their version, Kerchak was changed from a savage ape who eats the flesh of his enemies and regularly suffers fits of anger into a reluctant but understanding patriarch who in the end grows to respect and love Tarzan as if he was his own son.  It should also be noted that none of the gorillas eat meat in the movie.  Burroughs admits in the book that meat is rare in Tarzan’s diet and it is inferred that it is also rare in the diet of the apes as well.  However, if we’re going by what’s shown “on screen” like with The Lion King, it’s clear that Kerchak is the true villain of the first act of the story and not innocent Sabor who, although she succeeded in killing an ape, never got the chance to actually consume any of her kill.

Fear & Loathing in the Indian Jungle

Sabor’s single-minded hatred of Tarzan in Disney’s animated version almost reminds me of Shere Khan’s single-minded hatred of Mowgli in the original version of The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling.

In it, Shere Khan is portrayed as being born with a defect which retards his abilities to hunt, so he always strayed a bit close to human villages, taking their cattle or taking men themselves.  When he first chased Mowgli into a wolf’s den, he may have been going after what he thought was easy prey, but didn’t realize how deeply a mother’s love can go, for as soon as Mother Wolf meets Mowgli, she resolves to protect the man-cub and thus drives Shere Khan off.

Over the course of a decade or so, Shere Khan is clever enough to win over the affection of a new generation of wolves to his cause, but like Scar, lacks the physical prowess to back up his position of power, for when Mowgli brings the Red Flower, the jungle term for fire, to do battle with Shere Khan, the tiger is easily cowed and driven away.

When Shere Khan returns with the intent of killing Mowgli once and for all, Mowgli traps him and causes him to be trampled to death, it is a rather easy victory.

Shere Khan isn’t as easily cowed in the animated version, but with a bear on his tail, his effectiveness fighting Mowgli is significantly reduced.  By far, the most dangerous version of Shere Khan was presented in this year’s live action remake, where he’s shown to be more than a match for damn near the entire jungle.  A pack of wolves are easily swatted away, even Bagheera and Baloo can’t slow him down.  Mowgli is the only one clever enough to defeat the tiger.

Surprisingly, I have no objection to the portrayal of Shere Khan in Disney’s versions of The Jungle Book.  The wolves who first adopt Mowgli are in all versions seen as gentle protagonists who have Mowgli’s best interests at heart.  Instead, it is Kaa who got the short end of the stick.

Kaa appears twice in the animated version, both times expressing a desire to eat Mowgli, and both times he’s thwarted in what’s probably the most comedic manner possible.  Despite how powerful his hypnotic stare is and how completely he can put someone under his control, he seems unable to maintain such on two people at once, so when he tries to hypnotize Bahgeera in order to neutralize him, Mowgli snaps out of it and pushes his considerable weight out of the tree.  He hits his head multiple times on the way down and slithers away in an undignified manner.

In his second encounter, Shere Khan distracts him long enough for Mowgli to snap out of his hypnotic spell and push him out of the tree again, once again hitting his head multiple times.

Mowgli only encounters Kaa, a female this time, once in the live action remake and true to form, she tries to eat him.  In this version, it is Baloo who saves him, and she never shows up for a second try.

In the source material, Kaa first appears when Mowgli is kidnapped by monkeys and is called upon to help rescue him.  There is no intent to eat the man-cub here, it is Disney who seems intent on casting Kaa as an enemy and not an ally of Mowgli.  Kaa uses his hypnotic dance to lure the monkeys to him after the battle so he can feast, but Mowgli is shown to be immune.  Kaa doesn’t seem inclined to consume Mowgli either.

Robin Hood and Beyond

Disney’s Robin Hood took much inspiration from their version of The Jungle Book, right down to casting Phil Harris as a bear, giving the snake the power of hypnosis, and making the antagonists all predators.  The Sheriff of Nottingham is a wolf, Prince John is a lion, Trigger and Nutsy are vultures.  Sir Hiss the snake rather ineffectively advises Prince John.

But what of the foxes, Robin Hood and Maid Marian?  The fox is often seen as a clever trickster rather than a ruthless predator and the phrase “sour grapes” is taken from a fable where a fox attempts to acquire the fruit and gives up in disgust.  In real life, foxes tend to eat birds, reptiles, eggs, small mammals… and insects.  It’s easy to see why Disney casts foxes in protagonist roles over and over again, since their diets make them eligible for “good predator” status.

Bears also have an acceptable diet for Disney protagonists.  Plants and insects factor into it and although fish and deer are common for bears to eat, Baloo in the live action The Jungle Book prefers honey and, in the animated version, he is also seen eating ants.  It is probably due to The Jungle Book that Disney returns time and again to the idea of a good-natured carnivore eating insects.

Winnie the Pooh, a honey-loving bear living in the Hundred Acre Woods, predates Baloo by one year.  In fact, it seems like honey is the main staple food enjoyed by all residents of the Hundred Acre Woods, which mainly include a piglet, a tiger, kangaroos and an owl.  Even Rabbit keeps a supply, presumably to share with Pooh every time he comes to visit, but more likely because his garden is always being ruined by bugs and it’s the only food he can reliably sup.

Lions are a special case for Disney, in that both The Lion King and Robin Hood feature good and evil versions.  One of the earliest of Disney’s lions was Lambert, nicknamed “The Sheepish Lion.”  The animated short was released in 1952 and featured a young lion being accidentally delivered to a flock of sheep by a stork.  The lion bonds with a ewe while the stork looks over his paperwork to find the clerical error and when it looks like he’s about to take Lambert back, his new mother angrily drives the stork away.

Lambert’s life isn’t easy, for he’s teased and bullied and discriminated against for not being a sheep like his mother or the rest of his brothers.  When a wolf tries to take away his mother and eat her, Lambert is angered and knocks the wolf off a cliff.  The punch line to the short is that we shouldn’t worry about the wolf, he’s clinging to a berry branch so he won’t starve.

But the unflattering depiction of the hungry wolf offsets the equally unflattering but somehow more favourable depiction of Lambert.  Wolves in general tend to get a bad rap in Disney media.  Several depictions of the “Big Bad Wolf” and his three sons were made throughout the years, examples of which include “Three Little Wolves,” “The Practical Pig” and of course, “The Three Little Pigs.”  Movies like The Sword in the Stone and Beauty and the Beast cast wolves in an unflattering light as well.  It’s a miracle that the animated version of The Jungle Book got away with showing Mowgli’s adoptive parents positively, although they didn’t show up for very long anyway.

In many cases where a predator is depicted in the role of an antagonist, it is either a human or a prey animal that he is hunting and/or opposing.  In a way, casting a wolf as evil is similar to casting a woman or a very effeminate guy as the villain.  Bob Chipman briefly explored the role of feminine tropes in storytelling in an episode of The Big Picture named “Pink is Not the Problem.”  With that in mind, it is not surprising that the Big Bad Wolf dresses as feminine characters several times when trying to lure in the pigs.  In “The Practical Pig” he dresses up as a mermaid and in “Three Little Wolves”, he dresses as Little Bo Peep.

The concept of femininity as evil might be different from the concept of the predator as evil, but both project certain qualities upon villains that are deemed bad by society.  Negative feminine traits, as described by Bob, are shown when a character is mincing, preening, indulgent, leering, interested in jewelry, et cetera,   These are not traits that a protagonist is supposed to carry with them.  You would not be able to accuse Hercules of being a beautiful character (not even the Kevin Sorbo version), instead he is shown as strong and brave, which are masculine traits.  A predator, meanwhile, is crafty, cunning and often subtle.  If you’ve seen a tiger hunting in the jungle, then you’ve seen Scar, you’ve seen Emperor Palpatine, you’ve seen Kuja from Final Fantasy IX.  While prey is typically meek and helpless and characters like Lambert exemplify those traits, we can’t help but root for an underdog as he learns to stand up to a bully.  Heck, there’s even an animated superhero character named Underdog.

This is perhaps where Zootopia succeeds.  Judy Hopps takes a few seconds in Little Rodentia to compliment another character on their hair, then pops the weasel she was pursuing.  That she embodies both feminine and masculine traits is a triumph of her character.  She also contains both predator and prey traits.  She is physically a prey animal, a rabbit, and at an obvious disadvantage to those around her, but she uses her sharp intellect to get the better of her superiors and rise to the top.  Now, while one wouldn’t necessarily accuse a prey animal of being stupid, in the wild they tend to flee first and ask questions later.  Judy, however, learned to use all the craftiness and cunning she had to get through police academy and become the first rabbit police officer.  In her first days on the job, she demonstrates that she’s equally as clever as Nick Wilde, a fox and notorious hustler, and takes it upon herself to chase after the aforementioned weasel after he robs a shop.

To be clear, the wolves in the newest version of The Jungle Book are a positive step for Disney, and the company can’t be blamed for the role Shere Khan has in Mowgli’s story.  That Kaa is still portrayed as an enemy is indicative that certain tropes are still hard to break: I think the only time Disney ever showed a snake as something other than evil was in The Princess and the Frog.  For now, even if Disney can’t quite throw off their long-standing bias against predators, movies like Zootopia and The Jungle Book show that they’re open to new ideas.

But please, Disney, redeem Kaa in the sequel, okay?

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In the coming weeks, as Channel J temporarily adopts a weekly schedule: Did you know that there are actually three Disney versions of The Jungle Book?  Plus, Disney hated cars almost as much as they hated predators.  The Jungle Book is once more revisited, sort of, as I take a trip to Cape Suzette, and then Judy Hopps is revealed to be nothing more than a walking stereotype!  Stay tuned!