Anthropomorphic Predators and the Circle of Death on Film and TV

Anthropomorphic
adjective
definition: 1. ascribing human form or attributes to a being or thing not human, especially to a deity. 2. resembling or made to resemble a human form: an anthropomorphic carving.

definition from Dictionary.com

In my writing, I like to analyze commonalities and trends in film and on television and try to figure out what they say about us, the viewer. One of those commonalities is pretty long-standing: that of the cuddly anthropomorphic carnivore, and how it is hardly ever portrayed onscreen doing what carnivores really do IRL.

My first example is cute little Simba, the lion cub from the beloved Disney animated classic, The Lion King. Simba’s birth is hailed by the famous Circle of Life opening sequence, where all the animals from the African savannahs and jungles rush to the central gathering place to celebrate. These include zebras, giraffes, wildebeests, and the like — the very animals that lions kill and eat.

This sequence has always struck me as very weird. It’s as if all of these prey animals are getting together and high-fiving each other: “Wow this is great! A new lion has been born that will kill us and eat us. Yay!” The Circle of Life sequence is actually a cruel distortion of animal world reality, yet everyone loves it. Nobody stops to think about how Simba will eat once he's weaned from his mother's milk.

The implication of the sequence is that lower animals should just be happy to give up their lives in the service of the Circle of Death (TM). Significantly, the legions of lower animals bowing to Simba don't look like the lion family or any of the other featured animal characters in The Lion King. They're drawn more realistically, and they are much less anthropomorphic than the featured animals. You could almost say that there are two tiers of animals in the Simba world: one, the ordinary animals who don't talk, sing or dance and two, the anthropomorphic animals who have their own agency, individual personalities, and who act like humans.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the complete film, but are there even any scenes showing cute li’l Simba or his noble Dad killing and eating their prey like a real lion would? I don’t recall any. Viewers probably just have to go on believing that Simba and his pride are the only vegetarian lions in the history of the world. Depicting anything else would make the children watching turn against cute little Simba and stop seeing him as a cuddly toy they want to sleep with.

The weirdness of the Circle of Life scene is similar in a way to that of the long-running tv ads for Starkist Tuna, featuring Charlie the Tuna. Charlie is perpetually chuffed that Starkist doesn’t want him because he’s a substandard tuna.

“Only good-tasting tuna get to be Starkist!”

Yet, if Charlie ever achieves his goal, he would die. Why does Charlie want to be killed, canned and then eaten by a Starkist customer? In one especially surreal Starkist ad from the early 60s, Charlie meets a cute girl tuna and convinces her to go with him to be a “star” in the Starkist universe.

But when Starkist comes a-callin’, only the girl tuna is taken, leaving a crestfallen Charlie behind. Significantly, when Starkist sends down their line with a big hook at the bottom, the girl tuna doesn’t swallow the hook, but just takes ahold of the line with her anthropomorphic fins, and then is lifted gently to “stardom." Starkist can’t afford to remind customers--especially the juvenile ones--of how fish are really caught by big, sharp hooks. Meanwhile, Charlie looks like a murder pimp who lures unsuspecting fellow tunas to their deaths and then thinks that's a great thing.

Another apropo situation crops up in the animated film Madagascar (2005). In this film, four zoo animals “break out” of a city zoo and head for the island of Madagascar off the coast of Africa. The four friends include a lion, a hippo, a zebra and a giraffe.

When they get to Madagascar, an uncomfortable truth emerges: the lion needs to eat. The other three friends are plant-eaters, but the lion is a carnivore. He gets so hungry that he starts to look longingly at the zebra. Eventually a solution is found: he can eat fish! And the fish are not anthropomorphic. They don’t have cute little faces or sing cute songs. They are just fish. As in the case of The Lion King, there are two tiers of animals, human-like ones and ordinary ones.

The implications of the fish scene are clear: it’s okay to eat other animals if they don’t look or act like people.

What does that say about us, the viewer, most of whom probably eat meat that came from a styrofoam platter covered by shrinkwrap and sold at the supermarket? We want cute animal films that don't address the harsh realities of life, just like we want hamburger that looks like a supermarket commodity rather than a formerly living fellow creature. The fact that this aversion to harsh reality sets up weird, illogical situations in kids' cartoons and television ads goes unnoticed.

Note: the above is not a criticism of meat-eaters. I eat meat. I'm just riffing on the psychological implications of how and why meat-eating animals are portrayed in film and television.

One Disney animated feature that actually (somewhat) faces the bitter reality of the Circle of Death is The Fox and the Hound (1981). This film starts off with a puppy and a cute little baby fox frolicking in the woods as the best of friends.

However, when they grow up, they realize they can’t be friends anymore. The puppy is a hunting dog, and the fox is what he hunts. They become bitter enemies, but eventually reconcile somewhat when the fox saves the dog from a bear attack. At the end of the movie though, they still understand that the predator and the prey can’t be friends anymore, like they were in innocent youth. There's no happy ending with singing and dancing. And there's no cop-out featuring a non-anthropomorphic "ordinary" animal for the hound to hunt instead of his friend the fox.

The Fox and the Hound wasn’t one of Disney’s big hits and seems to be largely forgotten today. In short, it's too sad and too realistic to be a blockbuster like The Lion King.