Popular Culture Review Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1994 | Page 34

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constitute no less than "the rankest form of degeneracy and treason to
caste."
By the same token. Cleaver's analysis brilliantly correlates with
the precise form that Disney's denigration takes: what is so
repugnant about King Louie and the ntonkeys, at least in part, is their
"malignant desire to transcend the laws of nature." In fact, what
better image could the film provide of this desire than King Louie's
and the monkeys' quest to be human, revealed as much by their
kidnapping of Mowgli as by their attempt to gain the secret of fire?
Of course, from one point of view it is not so "unnatural" for naonkeys to
aspire to be human since of all the animals depicted in The Jungle
Book, they are closest to human beings on the evolutionary ladder.
However, even if one accepts the logic that monkeys should not strive
to be human, the problem is that in this film the literal and
metaphorical merge almost so neatly as to defy separation; it is one
thing to grant that monkeys should not aspire to be human but quite
another to grant that, as the film metaphorically suggests, AfricanAmericans should not aspire to be human either.
One might say that the film tricks the viewer into conflating the
literal and metaphorical. As a result, the viewer is seduced into
complicitly supporting segregation and regarding African-Americans
as inferior and undesirable. After all, are not viewers meant to feel
relieved when Mowgli is rescued from those threatening "flat-nosed,
flaky creeps," and satisfied at the apparent justice of seeing those
who want to rise above their assigned station ultimately exiled in
their toppled ruins, never again to appear in the film? In this way
The Jungle Book seems designed at least partly as propaganda whose
function is to teach Mowgli—and by extension, the viewer—the proper
understanding of race relations, which in this film is as much as to
say, "Stay away from those nasty monkeys!" It is a veiled at tempt to
preserve white dominance in the context of the emerging Civil Rights
movement. Could one reason, then, for the critical silence alraut
racism in The Jungle Book-so neatly wrapped in its innocuous family
cartoon package—be that, as propaganda, it has until now succeeded?
Baldwin-Wallace College

Karen Ciha
Janet Joseph
Terry J. Martin