GAEL SWEENEY
Near the dramatic climax of The Lion King, a battle between Prince Simba and Pretender Uncle Scar, Simba suggests that sidekicks Timon the Meerkat and Pumbaa the Warthog create a diversion to lure away Scar’s hyena cohorts. The cheeky Timon cocks his head and demands, “What do you want me to do? Dress in drag and do the hula?” An instant later—after a cry of “Luau!”—he’s doing just that, tricked out in grass skirt, lei, and hot pink hibiscus over his left ear, with his “bestest best friend,” the pig-like Pumbaa, as the main course. Their musical drag diversion, done as a Broadway-style 11:00 p.m. showstopper, buys Simba the time to defeat his nemesis and become the sole Lion King of the Pride Lands. This moment of high camp at the climax of Disney’s animated rewrite of Hamlet with lions1 may seem incongruous, but I have a stuffed Timon-in-drag doll, as well as a collectible “Luau” figurine, and signed print, all from the Disney Store, all immortalizing this now iconic image. Because as much as Simba, Mufasa, Nala, and the other lions are the heart of The Lion King, the characters who steal every scene are this film’s versions of Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern,2 Timon and Pumbaa, those long-time companions whose overtly queer sensibility problematizes and ultimately subverts the film and its themes with what I will call—with a bow to the deeply ingrained heteronormativity3 of the Disney Organization—their Alternative Lifestyle Dilemma.
The Lion King attracted controversy from its release in June 1994. While there has always been criticism of Disney from the Left for perceived corporatization of popular culture and racism and sexism in portrayals of minorities and women, in the 1990s, the organization which virtually invented the term “family-friendly” increasingly became the target of boycotts by conservative religious and “family values” interest groups. As the post–“Uncle Walt” entertainment giant branched out into more adult fare, buying Miramax Films and the ABC television network, as well as initiating more progressive internal policies, such as same-sex partner benefits, these moves were viewed suspiciously by conservatives, who began speaking out against the formerly revered company. Roman Catholic Cardinal John O’Connor blasted Disney for releasing the controversial British film Priest through Miramax, while the anti-abortion American Life League accused the company of purposely planting subliminal sexual imagery in their animated features. Rev. Jerry Falwell, who famously outed purple, purse-carrying Tinky Winky of the children’s show The Teletubbies, called for his Baptist followers to boycott Disney products and theme parks, while the American Family Association claimed that under CEO Michael Eisner Disney had become “one of the leading promoters of the homosexual lifestyle, as well as the homosexual political and social agenda in America today.”4 Their leader, Rev. Donald Wildmon, became the most vociferous critic of the company, railing against its insidious “homosexual agenda” and labeling two beloved animated characters as “the first homosexual Disney characters ever to come to the screen.”5 Liberal commentators found much to mock in the Religious Right’s earnest search for “proof”—the word “sex” hidden in a swirl of dust, a phallic turret on a cartoon castle, an animated minister with an erection, ABC allowing Ellen DeGeneres to come out on her sitcom—of the Disney Evil Empire’s campaign to corrupt Christian youth and promote a perverse homosexual lifestyle. It’s easy to poke fun at people like Wildmon, hysterically seeing things that aren’t really there.
Except ... when there IS something there. Something delightfully subversive6 and supremely popular. Because Rev. Wildmon’s bête noire, The Lion King, celebrates Timon the Meerkat and Pumbaa the Warthog, who are certainly the first openly gay animated characters in the Disney canon. And that poses a series of dilemmas for viewers attempting to sort out the contradictory messages of The Lion King.
Timon and Pumbaa are the “lovable” (Disney’s characterization) comic sidekicks of Simba, the would-be Lion King. Timon and Pumbaa are in the mode of what Steve Seidman calls “comedian comedy,” like the Marx Brothers, Martin and Lewis, Eddie Cantor, and Bob Hope and Bing Crosby: they are personas more than actors, addressing the audience directly, interpolating song-and-dance routines into the action and playing on their extra-cinematic selves with references to “showbiz” outside the diegetic universe of the film. This brings forth our first dilemma: Timon and Pumbaa subvert the “realistic” (in so far as animated characters can be realistic) performance style of the film. In general, animals in The Lion King behave like animals (albeit Disney animals): they walk on all fours, hunt (and kill) their prey, and are drawn in a fairly realistic style—with two important exceptions. They may wear the guise of meerkat and warthog, but Timon and Pumbaa have nothing to do with Africa. Said Nathan Lane: “My character, Timon, is more like a used-car salesman. Pumbaa and Timon are the low comedians. Kinda like two guys from Brooklyn who stop in the desert and became lovable cohorts.”7 The two guys from Brooklyn who show up in exotic locations and get into comic adventures are the mainstay of the road picture, best exemplified by Hope and Crosby, but also Laurel and Hardy, Martin and Lewis, and other comedy duos. Rather than realistic-acting animals performing a morality play set in pre-lapsarian Africa, Timon and Pumbaa are a classic comic duo dropped into a cartoon version of Hamlet. Timon is the crooning, egotistical wit, relying on verbal humor, puns, double entendres, wry looks, and double takes, while Pumbaa is the physical comedian, full of farts, belches, pratfalls, and visual gags centering on his ample belly and prominent rump.
Eric Smoodin points out that during the age of the classic cartoons, the 1930s and 1940s, animation stretched the boundaries of the Production Code because they were able to get away with double meanings and the kind of rude physical humor live actors would never be permitted to say or perform: “While cartoon sexuality was controlled by Hollywood’s Production Code, animation also stretched the code or openly battled with it, in part for reasons related to studio competition, audience demographics, and historical context.”8 Many “adult” characterizations and pieces of business were put into cartoons covertly, especially by mavericks at the Warners Studio and independents like Max Fleischer, while studio execs assumed they’d to go over audience heads.9 Many of the best animators, marginalized by their parent studios, made shorts that reflected their own concerns and sensibilities, creating cartoons that are often startlingly political, bawdy, and satiric, much in the manner of a certain flamboyant meerkat and flatulent warthog.
Critics have noted the similarities between Timon and Bugs Bunny in design, attitude, and language. Both are wisecrackers (Bugs’ catchphrase is “I’m a little stinker, ain’t I?”) and tricksters, and both are fluid in sexuality, regularly donning drag, singing show tunes, ragging on notions of love and romance, and undermining relationships between other characters. But Timon, unlike the solitary Bugs, has a loyal “significant other”: Pumbaa, his “bestest best friend.” These two characters are obviously a same-sex couple—something singular in the Disney canon. They live together, they work together, and, long after their relationship has been affirmed, they raise a child together—a lion cub named Simba. Both characters are outcasts from their respective societies—Timon from the meerkat tunnels because, according to his “Diary,” he broke into song while on guard-duty, and Pumbaa from his sounder due to excessive odor—but they find happiness together in their Oasis “dream home,” a place isolated from the Pride Lands. Like many traditional film couples, they demonstrate that opposites certainly attract. Whereas Timon is a skeptic (perhaps mirroring his Shakespearean namesake, Timon of Athens), Pumbaa is sentimental and romantic. Pumbaa wants to adopt lion cub Simba because he’s cute and helpless, ignoring that the cub will grow up to view his mentors as prey, while Timon only agrees for purely selfish reasons—“Maybe he’ll be on OUR side!”—but together they become loving and devoted “foster parents.”10 When the adolescent Simba attempts to confront his destiny, the pair advise “You gotta put your behind in the past” (i.e., put your past behind you): it’s the present that matters, not who you once were, but who you are now. The question of whether your identity and responsibility is to yourself or to your family is a universal dilemma, but one especially relevant to gay people, who have often been rejected by their families and found new “families” among like-minded friends. Obviously, the ultimate point of The Lion King is that Simba must realize where his true destiny lies and return to the Pride Lands and his responsibilities as king, but that message isn’t “problem-free.”
Which brings the next dilemma: Pumbaa and Timon’s Oasis paradise is a site of major contradiction and conflict between that intended message of The Lion King (“Remember who you are”) and the “problem-free philosophy” of “Hakuna Matata.” (defined as “no worries, no responsibilities”). The utopian pleasures of their in sectarian enclave contrasts starkly with the deadly desert from which they rescue Simba, the Elephant’s Graveyard of the hyenas, and Pride Rock itself, both before and after the reign of Mufasa: these are places Darwinian survival, of kill or be killed, of jealousy, greed, and Machiavellian plots. In their safe and secure Oasis, Timon and Pumbaa become surrogates for the murdered Mufasa and raise Simba to adulthood. With their humor, their charisma11 and their marketability, Timon and Pumbaa take on an importance not in keeping with their peripheral status to the plot, and begin to overwhelm the “official” message of the film, offering a subversive alternate reading. Pumbaa and Timon can be read as gay-identified characters, living the closest thing to an “alternative lifestyle” to be found in the Disney universe, and making that lifestyle a true option to the family values- heavy “moral” of the story. Timon and Pumbaa embody the sensualist philosophy of “Hakuna Matata” and persist as self-proclaimed “outcasts” in direct contrast to the Machiavellian family intrigues of the Pride Lands. This contradiction comes across strongly in the narrative, but also in the characterizations and marketing strategies of the film and later the television series, leaving the viewer (both child and adult alike) with a contradictory message about whether your responsibility is to your family and tradition, or to yourself and pleasure.
Obviously, as the plot plays out, Simba (and by implication the viewers of the film) is meant to reject “Hakuna Matata” and return to his obligations as the king of the Pride Lands. Timon and Pumbaa aren’t the most likely parental figures, but they can’t have done such a bad job with their foster son: Simba is able to defeat Scar and claim his birthright. The real dilemma is that “no worries, no responsibilities” and “remember your responsibilities” are mutually exclusive concepts, yet the film wants to have it both ways. King Mufasa (the resonant James Earl Jones) may be an authoritative voice from heaven, but Timon and Pumbaa and the philosophy they represent are presented as more appealing, more fun, and much more marketable than the heavy-handed and ultimately violent path of Pride Rock.
The alternative lifestyle of Timon and Pumbaa elicits the next dilemma of The Lion King. Do cartoon characters, especially those in traditional G-rated, child-centered animated features, have sexual identities? And if they do, how are those identities portrayed without actually suggesting sex acts? Sex is taboo in animated features (discounting underground films such as Fritz the Cat), especially at Disney, where the tradition of “family entertainment” is practically a fetish. So what do we make of Timon and Pumbaa? British gay cultural critic Mark Simpson, writing about Laurel and Hardy, another comedian comedy duo beloved by children and adults equally and famous for their “harmless” and clean comedy style, states that in dealing with the non-erotic, almost pre-sexual relationship between Stan and Ollie, one must say that “Laurel and Hardy are not ‘gay.’ But they are not ‘straight’ either.”12 Instead they exist in opposition to and in critique of heteronormative masculinity, and their confrontations with the adult world of regulation and repression are the basis of much of their comedy and our enjoyment of them. The skinny meerkat and the fat warthog partners function in much the same way as Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy and extend a similar transgressive pleasure.
The very presence of Timon and Pumbaa in a children’s animated feature offers a subversive reading within what is otherwise an determinedly conservative text. In the imagery and narrative (drag, camp mannerisms, two males raising a child together), in the songs they sing (by gay superstar Elton John), in their vocal characterizations (by gay Broadway star Nathan Lane, one of Terrence McNally’s stock company players and the star of The Birdcage, Mike Nichols’ film version of French drag comedy La Cage Aux Folles, and Lane’s frequent co-star, straight comic actor Ernie Sabella), and even in the marketing of products and a spin-off television series (Christmas ornaments of Timon in grass skirt and lei, Pumbaa’s huge rump foregrounded on pillowcases), Timon and Pumbaa are decidedly queer characters. Their performance style, especially compared to that of the Pride Rock lions, is pure camp.13 They also display many of the stereotypical markers of “gayness” in American popular culture. They read as white and New York (at least when compared to supporting character like the hyenas, voiced by Whoopi Goldberg and Cheech Marin, who read as urban and “Ghetto” and barrio!), are exaggerated in gesture and attitude, arch in expression and double entendre, overly emotional, and have an affinity for Broadway show tunes unusual in animals born and raised on the plains of Africa. As New Yorker reviewer Terrence Rafferty notes of Timon’s “showstopper” performance: “The meerkat wisecracks constantly ... and tends to get carried away when he sings and dances.”14 In other words, Timon isn’t just a drama queen, he’s a theater queen!
As stated previously, Timon and Pumbaa are outcasts from their respective families (in a film where family is the key to one’s identity), their social groups (meerkat tunnel and warthog sounder), and their species expectations (meerkat and warthog is not a pairing to be found in the “natural” order of things). In a world where mating and creating a family is primary, Timon and Pumbaa are content in their all-male enclave, complete with hot tub-like pool and insect buffet brunches. They also display a pronounced antipathy to heterosexual romance, as they prove when their adoptee, Simba, shows an interest in female interloper Nala, who, interestingly, can beat him up! And then there’s Timon’s famous hula drag. In the film, Timon puts on a grass shirt and lei, with a red hibiscus over his left ear, in order to distract the attacking hyenas, but the truth is that both Timon and Pumbaa revel in drag. In episodes of their television series The Lion King’s Timon and Pumbaa, Timon donned a sarong, a pink waitress uniform, and another grass skirt and hibiscus, but this time with a string of pearls. Another continuing bit centered on Timon’s various turns as a waiter (“My name is Timon; I’ll be your waiter”), a modern updating of the old gay hairdresser stereotype. Pumbaa also appeared in drag during the series, most notably posing as Timon’s wife to fool his mother so she won’t realize that her son is living with his male warthog partner. Then there are statements made by Lane and Sabella during The Lion King publicity blitz, which range from sly innuendoes about their characters to forthright outing, including their joint interview with The New York Times and Lane’s hilarious Tonight Show turn about gay, Jewish meerkats performing show tunes on the “Borscht veldt.”15
The characters of Timon and Pumbaa are also unusual for Disney in that they were created from the actors’ Broadway personas, rather than being cast to fit preconceived characters. Phil Harris in The Jungle Book and Robin Williams in Aladdin were two of only a handful of actors other than Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella to ad lib many of their lines—and Lane and Sabella were unique in being allowed to record their lines together rather than singularly, as did the other voice actors. In this way Lane and Sabella put their individual stamps on the characterizations. Timon and Pumbaa were only created after Lane and Sabella, performing in the same musical on Broadway, arrived together to audition for the hyenas and began to joke around in the attitudes of their Guys and Dolls characters, which partly explains the stylistic anomaly of these streetwise, New Yorkese creatures. Improvised dialogue inspired whole comic bits, such as Timon’s hula, and even bodily functions were incorporated into the narrative. One day Lane encouraged Sabella to make a rude noise into the microphone: “’We never thought they’d use it,’ Mr. Sabella says, but the warthog’s flatulence is now a running gag in the finished movie. ‘They stole everything,’ he says.”16 The characters were then animated (Timon by Mike Surrey and Pumbaa by Tony Bancroft) from videos of Lane and Sabella acting out their lines together, capturing their distinctive features, such as Sabella’s fat, blustery cheeks, and Lane’s eloquent eyebrows and anguished shoulder shrugs. Characters voiced by actors with distinctive vocal styles and personalities, such as Timon and Pumbaa, Robin Williams’ Genie, Phil Harris’ Baloo, or Pat Carroll’s Ursula, have often become the most memorable and beloved.17 Disney products are usually kitschy instead of campy, but it’s interesting that the popular Cruella DeVil, Genie, and Ursula are all extremely camp creations, while Lane’s Timon is the campiest of all, whether in drag, doing show tunes a la Jolson, or demonstrating the most flamboyant hand gestures since Jack Benny. Lane, who was still publicly closeted at the time, but whose sexuality was widely known in New York theater circles, told the New York Times that “Timon is really me.... It’s essentially me talking.” When asked what specific aspects of his character the animators used, he replied, archly, “Oh, you know, staggering sensuality. Sexual danger.”18 This is not what most Disney voice artists would be touting, but it’s typical of the comments Lane and Sabella made in support of the film.
If Lane and Sabella’s campy interpretations influenced the development of their characters, then openly gay composer Elton John certainly impacted the way his music was used in the film, but to a different effect. The Academy Award winning ballad “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?” was originally a comic parody of soft-focus movie interludes sung by Lane and Sabella. But John objected to the way The Lion King team had conceptualized his song as a satire. Said co-director Rob Minkoff: “Elton really felt it was part of the Disney tradition to keep the love song romantic,”19 and the number was taken away from Timon and Pumbaa (except for the intro and tag ending) and given to Simba and Nala, revamped from a pointed satire to the kind of gushy ballad it been had intended to mock. The song is thus heteronormalized by playing it “straight,” turning a comic critique of traditional Disney romance into an idyll of heterosexual awakening. It’s possible that John, whose stock-in-trade is love songs for mainstream audiences, was uncomfortable with Lane and Sabella’s camp send-up of his song (and by implication, his entire catalog) and therefore squelched their version. It’s also possible that he recognized the power of Timon and Pumbaa’s appeal, realizing that if the pair successfully undermine Nala, then Simba has no reason to question life at the oasis, let alone decide to reject it.
Timon the Meerkat is not only gay-identified, but also New York and Jewish-identified: “Timon has a recognizable ethnicity.... ‘Sure, he’s Jewish,’ says Mr. Lane. ‘Didn’t you see him kiss the mezuza on the little tree?’”20 Nathan Lane, an Irish Catholic from New Jersey, instilled in his portrayal of Timon an amalgam of elements: his assertive stage persona as Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls, his gay leads in Terrence McNally comedic dramas Love! Valour! Compassion! and The Lisbon Traviata, the gay sidekicks and neighbors he played in films such as Frankie & Johnny. But he also stirred in more than a hint of New York Jewish humor. Lane delighted in ad-libbing phrases such as “Carnivores! Oy!” “So ... Where ya from?” and the deathless “What do you want me to do? Dress in drag and do the hula?” in a voice with more than just a touch of Flatbush Avenue. Walt Disney himself was known to be anti-semitic in his personal life, if not in his business. Joked Lane of the traditionally conservative attitude at Disney: “I heard Walt wasn’t very fond of the Jewish people. I’m sure he’s spinning around in a refrigerator somewhere.”21 So how much was Lane (in consort with Sabella) consciously subverting Disney norms? I would argue a lot, and that the writers and animators gleefully encouraged and nurtured his over-the-top interpretation of the role. Lane openly twitted Disney Producer Jeffrey Katzenberg, proclaiming Timon and Pumbaa’s alternative sexuality on television and in print, and aligning the duo with various minority groups—Jews, gays, meerkats, people who sing out loud in public places—not usually associated with Disney product (but very often in Disney production and business!):
“Timon’s a feisty little cheerful fellow,” says Mr. Lane. “He has a very nice life. He and Pumbaa seem to have a very nice arrangement—though I couldn’t say what the extent of their relationship is.” The suggestion is obvious. Mr. Lane’s grin is devilish. “I know what Nathan says about them,” says Mr. Sabella, laughing. “’These are the first homosexual Disney characters to come to the screen.’ Now that ought to get Jeffrey Katzenberg’s attention. Hello!”22
Katzenberg’s response to the actors’ teasing was reportedly, “I love it when you guys make fun of me”23—but he didn’t deny the possible validity of their remarks. The irony of all this banter is that one of the attack points of the Religious Right in their campaign against The Lion King and Disney outlined earlier, is that the company and its products were part of a conscious “assault against Christianity”24 by Jewish CEO Michael Eisner and his minions, who had distorted the American, Christian, and family-oriented fare served by “Uncle Walt” and replaced it with “Zionist sentiments” that not only denigrated Christian values, but in film such as The Lion King and Pocahontas, “distort(ed) European-American history and disparag(ed) white America’s racial-cultural heritage.”25 During a mid–1990s debate about Hollywood “family values,” Billy Crystal offered that, “When people say ‘Hollywood Elite’ what I really hear is ‘Jew.’”26 So perhaps it’s to be expected that beyond the initial criticisms from the Left of the film as racist (the hyenas as Black and Hispanic stereotypes), sexist (the father and son relationship that marginalizes Sarabi and Nala), homophobic (Scar27), were overshadowed by Right-wing Fundamentalist harangues against Disney itself. The Lion King a cog in a larger campaign of overtly sexual and homosexual propaganda linked to the release of the British independent film Priest in the spring of 1995 by Disney subsidiary Miramax, and was part of an on-going “Hollywood versus American Family Values” diatribe that called for the boycotting of all Disney products. As stated earlier, anti-abortion group The American Life League railed against “subliminal messages” hidden in Disney animated films, claiming that Disney cartoon features are full of erotic content and accus(ing) the head of the multimedia giant of peddling off-color products in the guise of family entertainment.... “I have no idea what (Disney CEO) Michael Eisner thinks he’s doing. I have no way of knowing what their plan is for our kids. But they’re making a fortune and these cartoons are filled with sexual imagery.”28
Judie Brown, president of the group, called for all Disney products to be removed from stores—a request Eisner and the Disney organization simply ignored. As The Lion King was released to video and DVD, spawned two sequels and a television series, and as Pocahontas (1995) continued Disney’s animated feature success, the threatened boycott had little effect.29 But perhaps the greatest impact these campaigns had was less on business and more on the artistic process, where the creators seemed to delight in tweaking their critics. In the Timon and Pumbaa television series, as well as the second DVD sequel, The Lion King 11⁄2, the characters were made even more subversive to “Christian” norms. Timon, still voiced by Nathan Lane, was gayer than ever and unmistakably Jewish, gaining a last name, Berkowitz, a stereotypical Jewish mother who calls him a “meshugener,” and an Uncle Max who wants him to go into the family business.
While Pumbaa and Timon were created around actors Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella, their addition solved a major plot dilemma: what to do with Simba during his adolescence. The original storyboards showed Simba brooding ineffectually on Pride Rock like a leonine Hamlet, while Scar and his hyenas ran rampant. Exiling Simba gave him an alternative to the Pride Lands, as well as much-needed comic relief after the trauma of Mufasa’s violent death. Simba’s Oasis interlude allows him to grow up in safety, but it also exposes him to a philosophy completely at odds with the law of Mufasa. Which brings us to the ultimate dilemma of The Lion King. In order to be true to its moral, Timon and Pumbaa should be rejected in favor of privileging the dominant social order of the Pride Lands. But is that what actually happens? Who and what, in the end, is Simba? Is he only a reflection of his father, the rightful heir to Mufasa’s authority? Or is he a true product of the “no worries, no responsibilities” lifestyle of his unconventional foster fathers? At the Oasis, Timon and Pumbaa, with Simba, are a selfcontained unit, a created family bound not by blood-ties, but by friendship and love. Although Timon’s mother, Ma Berkowitz, appears in the television series (leading directly to Pumbaa dressing in drag), and also appears with Uncle Max in the made-for-DVD sequel, The Lion King 11⁄2, both Timon and Pumbaa are adamant in their songs and dialogue that they have rejected family and species because they were themselves rejected. In a film overtly about fatherhood, Timon and Pumbaa are fatherless, yet they offer a different model of parenthood to Simba, one that privileges pleasure and care of the self. And of that other possible father—it’s problematic. Is “Uncle Scar” also a father? In The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride, we learn that he is, but the plot, dealing with the redemption of his black sheep son, is pure soap opera with little of the original film’s charm. And do we really know who is Nala’s father? This point was hotly debated at the time on Lion King internet groups such as alt.fan.lion-king. Is she Simba’s half-sister, or Scar’s daughter? Either solution brings up uncomfortable possibilities. But Scar is more an anti-father figure, the antithesis of Mufasa: under Scar’s sterile regime the Pride Lands wither, the herds move on, there are seemingly no cubs and a lot of frustrated lionesses.30 In contrast, Timon and Pumbaa’s Oasis is lush and abundant, and if there’s no overt sex there, there is also no overt death.
Timon and Pumbaa have a refreshing disdain for the tangled family drama of the Pride Rock lions, even when they are quick to aid their foster son. But as they help Simba, these “funny uncles” (as contrasted to Scar’s “evil uncle”) continue to flaunt convention, social regulation, and the prevailing ideology. Their pleasure is not in the serious work of hunting, but in eating bugs, wallowing in mud, breaking wind, and breaking rules, triumphing as low-comedians and rebels against authority. In this Timon and Pumbaa are true carnivalesque characters. Pumbaa’s disorderly body, flatulence, belches (“Pumbaa, with you everything is gas!”), malapropisms, and dimwittedness (his name means “foolish one” in Swahili) hide a sweet, sympathetic nature and idiot savant insight, but he can also fight back when the chips are down: “They call me MR. PIG!” he bellows at the hyenas before he charges. Timon, the “brains of the outfit,” uses his uncontrollable speech (Disney promotional material refers to him as a “motormouth”) and camp wit to cut through much of the narrative angst, speaking honest truths. When he first views the destroyed Pride Lands, he grimaces, seeing not a magic kingdom but a morally corrupt and ravaged wasteland. Says Timon in disbelief: “We’re going to fight your uncle for this? Talk about your fixer-upper!” These characteristics get the pair into trouble, but also get them out. Doing the hula isn’t simply transgressive, it demonstrates the value of thinking outside of the box, something the pragmatic lions can’t seem to manage.
Timon and Pumbaa immediately recognize the danger in the appearance of Nala at the Oasis. For Pumbaa, the danger is actual—the lioness attempts to kill the warthog for food, introducing death and the reality of the “food chain” into their insectarian Eden. But for Timon, Nala is a different kind of threat: the romantic ballad “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?” underlines Nala’s function in bringing Simba back to his main “theme”—and back to heteronormativity. Simba’s discovery of his sexuality is simultaneous with remembering who he really is: the Lion King. Simba and his pals live in a pre- adolescent fantasy of no parents, no school, no girls—until Nala appears. Timon understands exactly how Nala will break up their happy menage: “With all this romantic atmosphere, Disaster’s in the air!” “Our trio’s down to two!” he sobs, “In short, our pal is doomed!” As Simba tells the dubious Nala, “Pumbaa and Timon: You learn to love ’em.” Timon equates the appearance of Nala at the Oasis with The Fall: it’s the end of their stint in Paradise. Nala is a voice of moral choice (along with Rafiki), but also a sexual object, a dangerous carnivore (“OY!”), and the ultimate fatal female (Pumbaa should be Simba’s prey, as Timon so correctly points out). These values are all equated with Pride Rock and the survival-of-the-fittest ethos (of which mating is equal to eating). Scar not really an anomaly there, but the logical result of it: power to the strongest is the Law of the Jungle (the original name of The Lion King was King of the Jungle). Simba must fight: even as he says, “I’m not like you, Scar,” he becomes like Scar, and like Mufasa and all the Lion Kings before him, ruling by strength. However, Simba’s foster fathers have also taught him ways that Mufasa never dreamed of: how to use his wits, how to make a joke, and how to sell a show tune.
In the final scene, Pumbaa and Timon “rest their rumps” on top of Pride Rock next to Simba and Nala; Timon, characteristically, shakes his fists over his head in a gesture of victory. But can Pumbaa and Timon be integrated into the Pride Rock ideology when they stand so contrary to it, having always placed themselves outside the Circle of Life, refusing its kill or be killed ideology and rigid hierarchy?31 Both “Hakuna Matata” and the deleted song “Warthog Rhapsody” (written by Elton John and Tim Rice and included on the Rhythm of the Pride Lands CD) celebrate their freedom from the dictates of society, the work ethic, and the regulation of the body, while glorifying living for the moment and reveling in natural functions, the latter song offering the laid-back Pumbaa as the role model for this blissful lifestyle, but only if you stay upwind of him! Characteristically, one of Timon’s first acts in the Pride Lands is to dress in drag. Timon’s drag turns in the films and television series are always in the name of helping someone, but the carnivalesque pleasure he takes in dressing up is obvious, as the virgin sacrifice scene the “Boara Boara” episode demonstrates. This is not an act which the humorless Mufasa (who lost his song, “To Be King” for just that reason) would have approved, but which the Oasis-raised Simba not only tolerates, but encourages.
The Lion King swiftly became the most successful animated film in up to that time. In its first weekend in general release, June 1994, it took in an estimated $42 million (twice that of Disney’s previous hit, Aladdin), making for the third largest opening weekend up to that time, after Jurassic Park and Batman Returns. Unlike earlier Disney features, which had to wait years for re-release, film was given a second wind in the same year as its initial run: withdrawn in September 1994 and released again at Thanksgiving, it took advantage of both the summer and Christmas movie-going seasons, generating over $740 million at the box office worldwide. In its first month on sale, March 1995, the video cassette sold 20 million units, becoming the new number one video seller and earning over $1 billion in retail merchandising sales in toy stores, retail outlets like Walmart, and Disney Stores. The characters of Timon and Pumbaa soon became ubiquitous, available as stuffed animals, cards, collectible figurines, limited edition prints, games, nightshirts, bath toys, and Halloween costumes, to name a few. Many of these products featured the most subversive moment in the film, the “Luau” scene; you have to wonder at thousands of children playing with a stuffed meerkat in drag—not something Uncle Walt would have envisioned!
As the most recognizable, and therefore saleable, characters in the film, they were the logical choice to be spun off into their own television cartoon series, The Lion King’s Timon and Pumbaa (a.k.a. Around the World with Pumbaa and Timon), as well as featuring in the 1998 Tony Award-winning Broadway version and a straight-to-DVD sequel, The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride, and starring in their own straight-to-DVD feature, the extremely meta The Lion King 11⁄2. The television show, first on CBS, then on the Toon Disney cable outlet, made no attempt to tone down Pumbaa and Timon’s colorful personalities. If anything, both characters appear in drag numerous times and Timon especially is more flamboyant than ever. The question of how Timon and Pumbaa are ultimately integrated into the Pride Lands is avoided by setting many of their adventures before The Lion King. In “Doubt of Africa” they befriend a tigress and anticipate the reasoning they will use in adopting Simba: “What if she’s on OUR side?” In another episode, “Never Everglades,” they raise a baby alligator, Pumbaa, Jr., who hatched underneath the warthog’s ample rump. Pumbaa is happy to be a mother, but “Uncle Timon” mourns for their carefree “Hakuna Matata” days when they didn’t have such a responsibility. Other episodes focus on the pair far away from Africa: on a cruise ship, in the Old West, the South Seas, Russia, Paris, and, of course, on Broadway, leading Nathan Lane to refer to the show as “Timon and Pumbaa Go to Las Vegas.”32
More than fifteen years after its initial release, Timon and Pumbaa continue to be the “faces” of The Lion King. Whether in film or DVD, on Broadway or television, the inimitable warthog and meerkat long-time companions are still singular representatives of the philosophy of “Hakuna Matata”—and subversive forces in the monolithic Disney universe. Every Christmas I look forward to hanging my Disney-sanctioned ornaments of Timon in a grass skirt and Pumbaa with an apple in his wide mouth among the traditional Santas, elves, and angels. It’s a small rebellion, perhaps, but one I’m certainly not alone in performing, like the boys themselves belting out another show tune on the Serengeti, with great satisfaction.
1. When television writer Jeffrey Stepakoff began working in the Disney Feature Animation department in 1994, he was given some ideas to develop that summed up the Disney storytelling philosophy. One note read “King Lear/Joseph with Bears.” Out of such a note, The Lion King was born.
2. From the insert booklet for The Lion King 11⁄2 DVD release, which reiterates the original film as a retelling of Hamlet, while also suggesting that this sequel owes more to Tom Stoppard than William Shakespeare.
3. Heteronormativity, the idea that culture always privileges heterosexuality and therefore always marginalizes homosexuality and queerness, is well accepted in the gay community, but what constitutes “normal” is still a contentious issue. Some queer theorists hold that any attempt to “normalize” gay people, with gay marriage, desire for acceptance by the straight community, etc., further labels homosexuality as “abnormal.” See Michael Warner’s The Trouble with Normal for a deeper discussion.
4. Quoted in Mark Weber, “Subverting the Disney Legacy,” Journal of Historical Review (September–October 1998).
5. Quoted in James R. Peterson, “The Ridiculous Right,” The Playboy Forum, December 1995.
6. By “subversive” I mean anything that undermines the status quo. But when dealing with Disney specifically, I mean anything that is presented as “naturally” innocent and meant for children, such as cartoon characters, animals, and fairy tales, but is undermined by overtones of sexuality or queerness. Because Disney’s reputation is almost ridiculously white bread, such “subversive” elements bring a thrill of the forbidden to what can otherwise be a very flat and conventional text. Timon and Pumbaa certainly bring that unexpected frisson, which is why I believe they are so popular.
7. “Real Roar of The Lion King,” Disney Adventures, July 1994. Online interviews.
8. Eric Smoodin, Animating Culture (New York: Routledge, 1993), 3.
9. That animators in the past often peppered their cartoons with subversive and even X-rated imagery gives credence to the fears of the Family Values crowd, but rather than being intentionally provocative, such inside jokes were never intended to be seen by an audience. Only with the advent of video and the pause button did they come into general notice.
10. The “Diary” is included in the Exclusive Mini-Storybook insert in the DVD release of The Lion King 11⁄2.
11. As critic Richard Dyer calls the marker of true film stardom.
12. Mark Simpson, Male Impersonation: Men Performing Masculinity (New York: Routledge, 1994), 274.
13. “Camp” is another one of those terms, like “normal,” that seem to have a different meaning depending on the context or even the era (see Susan Sontag, Esther Newton, and Andrew Ross for examples), but I see it in the context of Timon and Pumbaa as a style of performance that is pointedly ironic, over-the-top, sexually suggestive, broadly comic, and leans heavily on cross-dressing and reference to performers from the past who also fit this criteria. For instance, Timon’s drag turn harkens back to kitschy Fifties Hawaiian imagery, while Bugs Bunny prefers Forties musicals, Carmen Miranda, and Grand Opera divas.
14. Terrence Rafferty, “No Pussycat,” New Yorker, June 20, 1994, 87.
15. Jess Cagle, “No Mere Kat,” Entertainment Weekly, July 8, 1994, 24.
16. DeNicolo, “A Pair of Runyon Guys Roam the Serengeti,” New York Times, June 12, 1994, 15.
17. Compare Lane’s tour de force as Timon or Carroll’s delightfully evil Ursula to Mel Gibson’s wooden Captain John Smith: he’s the more famous star, but as a voice and animated persona his character has little screen impact.
18. DeNicolo, 15.
19. Ari Posner, “The Mane Event,” Premiere, July 1994.
20. DeNicolo, 18.
21. Ibid.
22. DeNicolo, 15.
23. Ibid.
24. Weber.
25. Ibid.
26. Quoted in Frank Rich, “Dole’s True Lies,” New York Times, June 4, 1995.
27. Scar, the voice of Jeremy Irons in his best George Sanders drawl, seems more in line with the Brit-as-villain trend in recent American films, rather than homosexual-as-villain. There is also more than a trace of Irons’ portrayal of Claus von Bulow in Reversal of Fortune, especially when he says to Simba, “You have no idea,” von Bulow’s famous catch-phrase. Of course, many Americans seem to agree with Archie Bunker and read a British accent, especially upper class “RP” speech, as innately “faggy.” But Scar’s Britishness and affectedness is matched and contrasted with that of Zazu the Hornbill (Rowan Atkinson), a prissy character done more in the manner of Clifton Webb or Eric Blore—haughty but ultimately sympathetic.
28. Aly Sujo, “Sex in Disney Toons? ‘Ridiculous’ Says Company,” Reuters New Service, September 1, 1995.
29. Wildmon’s American Family Association didn’t officially call off the boycott until Eisner stepped down as Disney Chairman/CEO in 2005. It will be interesting to see if these groups reignite their campaign with the October 2009 appointment of a gay head of Disney Studios, Rich Ross (the first openly gay head of any Hollywood studio), as well as a gay president of Disneyland Resorts, George Kalogridis, the former chief of Disney’s Paris theme park. Since the toleration of the popular, but unsanctioned, “Gay Days” at all the Disney parks has been a flashpoint with conservative Christian groups in the past, Kalogridis’ new job may well bring increased attention to the event. Ironically, Ross, former head of the Disney Channel, had been praised by a number of conservative groups for his family oriented programming—but that was before his sexuality was widely known by the general public.
30. A scene in which Scar propositions Nala, causing her to flee the Pride Lands, was rejected before the animation process began.
31. The Lion King 11⁄2 offers an alternate ending to the narrative: Timon and Pumbaa lead Ma, Uncle Max, and the rest of the meerkats back to the Oasis to live, apparently on permanent vacation.
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