prince, the son of African Americans, is white, a fact that did not go
unnoticed by the critics and scholars who consider race and ethnicity
(Benshoff and Griffin 2009; Martin-Rodriguez 2000; Sun 2008; Walker
1994),^16 gender issues, sexuality and sexism (Benshoff and Griffin 2009:
“Case study: The Lion King”) or class, power and hegemony (Gooding
1995; Morton 1996; Sun 2008).
What the directors and producers were thinking when they cast the
voice actors cannot be known; if notes on this process exist, they are not
available to researchers, nor do the producers respond to requests for
interviews. Nor is there any way to know which voice actors were
considered for the role of Simba, whether young African American actors
were considered and auditioned, or if the entire pool of candidates was
Anglo. It is unfortunate that so much of the process remains out of the
public eye, as that information would provide invaluable insights.
More subtle is stratification of characters voiced by actors who are
recognizably African American. James Earl Jones (Mufasa) has a deep and
commanding voice without AAVE intonation or grammatical structure;
Whoopi Goldberg shifts in and out of AAVE as the leader of the pack of
hyenas who do Scar’s bidding. Thus the message is a familiar one: AAVE
speakers occupy the dark and frightening places, where Simba does not
belong and should not be; he belongs on the sunny savannah where *SAE
speakers like his father live.
The three primary hyenas who threaten Simba are composed of the
AAVE-speaking Shenzi, Ed, a hyena who slobbers and grunts without any
language, and Banzai, voiced by Cheech Martin. Martin shifts in and out
of Latino-accented English, throwing in Spanish at one point (¿que pasa?)
to make sure there is no mistake about his ethnicity.
At the same time, none of the characters, whether they speak *SAE or
AAVE, show any clear connection to things African with the exception of
the wise baboon, Rafiki, who occupies a special but peripheral role in the
film’s story.
Other types of entertainment media use these same strategies, of course,
as bell hooks has observed: