The tradition that leads to THE LION KING begins with PINOCCHIO — arguably the most beautifully animated of the Disney classics, undoubtedly the creepiest. In this, Disney’s second animated feature, the blurry outlines of the Disney tradition suddenly become coherent — as the evocation of an ideology which still dared speak its name in the late 1930s, its power and prestige goose-stepping proudly across the world stage to the dazzlement of at least one animator-tycoon.
In 1938, the year PINOCCHIO was in production, Uncle Walt regularly attended meetings of the American Nazi Party in Hollywood, where Mein Kampf sold like hotcakes at corner newsstands. It comes as no surprise that Nazism resonated with Disney: he shared its conceit of white supremacy, its antagonism towards independent organized labor, its abhorrence of urbanism, and, above all, its hatred of Jews. He regarded himself as a bastion of Protestant morality in an industry dominated by Jew-spawned frivolity and lewdness. This sense of mission was buttressed by more prosaic market concerns: Hitler, who also made the link between Hollywood and Jews, barred U.S. films from Germany, an act which gravely distressed Disney. History is thus unclear on whether in making PINOCCHIO, Disney was paying homage to the Nazis or simply pandering to them. (Fortunately, Hitler returned Disney’s affection: his favorite song was “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf”; in 1937 Goebbels presented a birthday gift of 18 Mickey Mouse shorts to the Führer.)
PINOCCHIO begins among the honest peasants of a pristine Alpine village. Pinocchio, created by the gentle watchsmith Geppetto and “given life” by a Hollywood starlet descending from her celestial orb, sets out on the path of good: to school, where he can presumably learn about his national culture. Unfortunately, his puppet nature, lacking a will of its own, allows him to be rather easily led astray, his Jiminy-Cricket conscience notwithstanding. The villains who divert him from the straight-and-narrow, appearing in order of escalating evil, are straight out of a fascist primer; their real-life analogs would all, under the Nazis, wear distinguishing patches on their clothes before being shipped to the concentration camps.
The first villain, The Fox, is mannered, effeminate, urbane and of the theater. His small, strangely elastic companion, The Cat, constantly slithers around him and through his legs. Clumsily, the two of them often become entwined with each other in a chaos of limbs. They are clearly gay. The Fox entices Pinocchio to the “theater,” selling him to the evil Gypsy Stromboli, the most blatant ethnic stereotype in the movie. Stromboli, cashing in on his new stringless puppet, is greedy, dishonest, violent and inhumanly cruel — clearly of an inferior race. His presence also underscores PINOCCHIO’s distinctly Old World landscape, where Gypsies ranked higher on the list of despised minorities than they did in America. Stromboli locks a frightened and weeping Pinocchio in a cage; the puppet escapes only with the help of the starlet. Unfortunately, it’s out of the frying pan and into the fire for our poor hero.
The Fox traps him again, this time to sell him to the worst of the villains: a stout, cruel-visaged businessman, dealing from a shadowy corner of a restaurant on a dark and foggy city street — so greedy and evil that he scares even The Fox and The Cat. He is, in short, everything that a Nazi would expect of a Jew.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler explains the nefarious scheme of the Jews: they lure good, solid German men — artisans like Geppetto — into the city, to be corrupted by vice and Communism. Once degraded by these alien influences, the German worker is permanently enslaved. Accordingly, the Jew in PINOCCHIO lures little (gentile) boys to Pleasure Island, an amusement park where they can misbehave. The atmosphere is dark and crowded, dense and full of movement — in short, city-like. The urban vice is there: Pinocchio and a pugfaced boy hang out in a pool hall. The Communism is there: the main attraction is a mansion that the boys are allowed to demolish in an orgiastic attack on private property. The degradation follows: the boys, having made asses out themselves figuratively, become literal donkeys. Finally, their ultimate enslavement: the donkeys are put to hard labor in the mines. Pinocchio, at first on the road to a wholesome Aryanism, is ultimately at risk of falling into the debased proletariat. And all because of homosexuals, Gypsies, and Jews.
…In the 50 years since Walt Disney made PINOCCHIO, history has gone his way — that is to say, the wrong way. Resource-draining, environment-destroying suburbs have sprawled out of control, creating a centrifugal force that has not only reinforced segregation by race and income, but atomized humans to an unheard of extent. U.S. visions of collective action, both of the privileged and the oppressed, have almost completely decomposed into fascist fantasies of blood and soil. As the stockpiles of arms build up behind the ever more pervasive barricades, we are told that what everybody wants — and deeply needs — is a great leader.
It is an index of Walt Disney’s success that THE LION KING and its social message could be explained without any reference to him. PINOCCHIO is impossible to imagine without the man behind it, with his psychic imbalances and ideological preoccupations; the fascism in PINOCCHIO came straight from Uncle Walt’s heart. By contrast, THE LION KING was made by a studio run by Jews; the music was written by gays; many of the characters were voiced by respected black actors; and the writers were liberal enough to give the film a “multicultural” veneer. Its underlying fascism is not so much the product of a demonic individual. It simply reflects the “American reality” — a reality whose ugliness is not hard to discern below the slick surface of bland music and cute, fuzzy animals.
Matt Roth, The Lion King: A short history of Disney-fascism
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