"All’s Not Well in Mind of Margaret Lazarus"

While reading “All’s Not Well in Land of ‘The Lion King’”, I could not help but wonder what was wrong with Margaret. Margaret Lazarus, the author of the writing that can be found on page 418 in “The Prentice Hall Guide for College Writers”, bases her argument off the belief that “The Lion King” and other Disney films are focused around stereotypes. I personally believe her methods of determining this are very much flawed and over critical.

First of all, Margaret Lazarus uses the characters from the Disney movie “Beauty and the Beast” to prove a point on how women are shown as subordinate. She says the story is “about a beauty who tames an angry male beast.” It sounds to me like the male character is getting the bad rap in this example. She also used “The Little Mermaid” to support her weak argument on how women are viewed as inferior in Disney films. She whines about how the mermaid gives up her glorious voice and splits her body to be with a prince. Couldn’t that same story line be about a woman’s power of choice to be with her true love. And if I recall, the evil octopus who took the mermaid’s voice away was a woman too. Margaret failed to mention that. If you go into a movie looking for stereotypes, chances are you can skew characters and plots to align with your argument.

Margaret also states that “The Lion King” promotes the stereotype of blacks being ghetto and trashy like the hyenas were portrayed, when she says “the hyenas are dark-mostly black.” If you look at a picture, hyenas can be pretty dark and nearly all are covered by black spots. With black being a common color of evil, nothing to do with a skin color, it is not a surprise that the bad guys in this film were dark. She also went on saying that Whoopi Goldberg, a black entertainer, was the voice of one of the hyenas who talked with a ghetto inner-city dialect. However, she fails to mention the voices of the other two hyenas (Cheech Marin and Jim Cummings) were Mexican and white. While the voice of Whoopi was viewed as entertaining by most, it is sad that some people have to take it into a racist content. This shows again how Margaret has a one-set mind to prove her point.

While reading the conclusion, I could not help but laugh at Margaret’s motive of writing this piece against Disney. She did it for the kids! What kind of sheltered and skewed childhood are Margaret’s kids having that causes them to be “scared and frightened by the ‘Lion King’”. Seriously, I must have been misinformed because I thought it was a Disney cartoon. Being a kid who has grown up watching Disney films, particularly “Lion King” being a favorite, I believe Margaret is looking way too hard to find these “stereotypes.” I think the Disney creators are just making unique characters and storylines to keep people of all ages entertained. They are not portraying a preference of a racist and sexist society by showing bigoted images and attitudes, like Margaret Lazarus argues.

"I'm O.K., but You're Not"

The writing “I’m O.K., but You’re Not”, by Robert Zoellner, proves a great point that people should not judge others’ actions without looking at their own flaws first. The main character is a smoker, who is sitting on the edge of the smoking section in a restaurant when an older couple sits down close by in the non-smoking section. The older man asks the main character to stop smoking, with a “holier than though” attitude. After the couple is done eating, they go out to the car where their two pedigree poodles are waiting. After the car door was opened, the dogs pooped and peed all over the restaurant lawn. The couple then sped off in their gas-guzzling Mercedes with a huge cloud of pollution rising in the air.

This judgmental behavior can be seen in a lot of situations today. Who is to say smoking is worse than polluting the air with your car or not cleaning up after your dog in a public place? I believe that many people have a double-standard and judge other people for things they also do to some extent. Everybody has things they can improve on or change to some extent. Instead of worrying about what other people are doing, people should just worry about themselves.

Arrogance and being judgmental will not get anybody far in life. If you are too busy saying how perfect you are and how imperfect those around you are, you will never improve yourself. Zoellner really expressed this well with the “righteous” couple judging him for smoking. They were too busy caught up in their judgmental lifestyle they failed to see, or even to care, about their own flaws.

Some people may think their lifestyle and habits make them superior to other people. However, who is to say what bad habits are worse than others? Couldn’t being judgmental about smoking be worse than the habit of smoking? Maybe the main problem in society is not smoking, drinking, or letting your dogs relieve themselves on public property, but instead judging others.

A biblical reference I thought of after reading this writing was from John. Jesus was brought a woman who was caught in the act of adultery. The scribes and Pharisees believed the just punishment was to have her stoned. To this, Jesus replied “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” Obviously, nobody threw a stone. Nobody is perfect, or even close. However, it seems today some people throw stones at everyone they pass.

Matthew 7:4 – “Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye’, and behold, the plank is in your own eye?” (Even though a million people already quoted this, I was proud of thinking of it so I am keeping it.)