For a generation of viewers, The Lion King and other big studio cartoons are comfort watches, not political texts. A new academic analysis argues that these same films quietly teach children to see White characters and cultures as the default center of the story, even when the cast is made up of lions, mermaids, or superheroes. The professors behind the study say that once the nostalgia is stripped away, the patterns look less like harmless fantasy and more like a curriculum in racial hierarchy.
The debate has spilled far beyond campus, colliding with broader fights over “woke” education and what children should be shown on screen. At stake is not only how parents interpret familiar movies, but whether Hollywood’s most profitable genre is still recycling ideas about who belongs on top and who exists on the margins.
The professors’ claim: cartoons as racial training ground
The professors at the center of the controversy argue that Hollywood’s cartoons and animated films function as a kind of racial training ground, shaping how children understand power and belonging long before they encounter those concepts in civics class. Their analysis focuses on The Lion King and a slate of other mainstream titles, contending that these stories normalize a social order in which White-coded characters and cultures are treated as natural leaders while others orbit around them. In their view, the issue is not a single offensive joke or villain, but a repeated pattern in which the “right” way to be heroic, beautiful, or fully human maps onto Whiteness.
According to the professors, this pattern is especially potent because it is wrapped in catchy songs, comic sidekicks, and sweeping adventure plots that feel apolitical to most viewers. They describe Hollywood’s cartoons and animated films as “recycling racist cultural narratives,” arguing that the repetition across franchises and decades turns these messages into background common sense rather than explicit propaganda, a claim laid out in their analysis.
How The Lion King became a case study in White privilege
The Lion King sits at the center of this debate because it is both wildly popular and, in the professors’ view, unusually clear in how it maps racial politics onto an animal kingdom. Their reading builds on earlier scholarship that linked The Lion King and the politics of California’s Proposition 187, arguing that the film’s narrative of a rightful king reclaiming his throne from “outsiders” echoes an ideological framework of White resentment. In that interpretation, the Pride Lands become a metaphor for a threatened homeland, and the restoration of Simba’s rule represents a return to a patriarchal and exclusionary order that reassures audiences who feel their dominance is under siege.
One academic paper describes how The Lion King and the debate around Proposition 187 share a narrative of defending a bounded territory from supposedly dangerous intruders, tying the film’s story of patriarchal restoration to a broader climate of White resentment. The new professors’ analysis extends that line of thought, suggesting that even when the characters are lions, the logic of who deserves to rule and who is cast as a threat mirrors real-world racial hierarchies that privilege Whiteness as the natural center of power.
From nostalgia to scrutiny: why childhood favorites are under the microscope
For a lot of adults, The Lion King and other big-budget animated movies are bound up with childhood memories, family rituals, and the comfort of rewatching familiar scenes. The professors argue that this very nostalgia can make it harder to see the racial messages embedded in stories about lions, mermaids, or superheroes, because viewers are inclined to protect the emotional meaning those films hold. They suggest that once people begin to rewatch these films with a critical eye, the patterns of who gets to be complex and central, and who is reduced to comic relief or villainy, become more visible.
The current backlash, amplified on social media, reflects how jarring it can be when beloved films are reframed as vehicles for White privilege rather than neutral entertainment. A viral post criticizing the professors’ claims framed the study as an attack on harmless fun, insisting that cartoons about talking animals are “no longer just about nostalgia” but about ideological policing, a reaction that was highlighted in coverage of the professors. The clash between sentimental attachment and critical scrutiny has become a defining feature of the conversation.
The research toolbox: Media Analysis of Racism in Movies
To move beyond gut feelings, the academics say they relied on a structured framework known as the Media Analysis of Racism in Movies. This tool is designed to identify how films encode racial hierarchies through casting, character arcs, visual symbolism, and narrative outcomes, rather than focusing only on explicit slurs or stereotypes. By applying the same criteria across multiple titles, the professors aim to show that the patterns they describe are systemic, not isolated quirks of a single script or director.
According to their account, the Media Analysis of Racism in Movies was used to examine a range of animated features, including Disney’s The Lion King, in order to track how often White-coded characters are positioned as saviors, how nonhuman characters stand in for racialized groups, and how integration into the “normal” world is framed. The academics explicitly state that they used this framework to study Disney’s catalog and other studio releases, a methodological detail noted in reporting on the research methods. That emphasis on process is central to their defense against critics who accuse them of reading too much into children’s entertainment.
Beyond lions: what other animated films are accused of teaching
While The Lion King provides a vivid case study, the professors’ critique extends across a broader landscape of animated Hollywood films. They argue that stories about sea monsters, superheroes, and other fantastical beings often follow a similar script in which nonhuman or marginalized characters must assimilate into a dominant, implicitly White-coded society to be accepted. In their reading, the journey from outsider to insider frequently involves shedding markers of difference and embracing the norms of the human, usually Western, world.
One example they highlight is the film Luca, where the protagonists are sea creatures who can pass as human when dry and must hide their true nature to live among villagers. The professors describe Luca’s protagonists’ integration as “rather simple,” noting that they take on humanness, move into a human town, and accept a social order in which human eats nonhuman species, a dynamic they see as mirroring real-world expectations that marginalized groups conform to dominant cultural standards. This interpretation appears in their discussion of how animated films promote integration narratives, which they see as reinforcing White privilege even when race is never named outright.
Connecting new claims to a decade of Disney scholarship
The current flare-up over The Lion King and White privilege does not emerge in a vacuum. For at least a decade, scholars have been examining how Disney and its affiliates shape children’s ideas about race, gender, and power. One study on “Seeing White” in animated Disney films describes how the Disney brand, alongside Pixar, has become a pervasive force in children’s visual culture around the world, making its portrayals of Whiteness and non-Whiteness especially influential. That work argues that when White characters and settings are treated as universal and unmarked, while others are exoticized or sidelined, children absorb a lesson about who counts as the norm.
The new professors’ analysis builds on this foundation by treating animated films as a form of racial pedagogy, not just entertainment. They point out that while the Disney brand persists as a ubiquitous presence in children’s media, the question of how race is represented in that media remains unsettled, a concern echoed in research that scrutinizes how Disney and Pixar construct Whiteness. By situating their claims within this longer scholarly conversation, the professors argue that their focus on White privilege in cartoons is a continuation of, rather than a departure from, established academic inquiry.
How the professors say White privilege shows up on screen
In the professors’ account, White privilege in animated films is less about overtly racist caricatures and more about who is granted narrative centrality, moral complexity, and the power to define the world. They argue that even when characters are animals or mythical beings, their voices, mannerisms, and social structures often map onto White, Western norms, while characters coded as non-White are more likely to be sidekicks, villains, or comic relief. This distribution of roles, they contend, teaches young viewers that leadership and heroism naturally belong to those aligned with Whiteness, while others exist to support or challenge them.
Their analysis of multiple animated Hollywood films concludes that these stories collectively promote White privilege by repeatedly centering White-coded protagonists and framing their experiences as universal. Reporting on the study notes that the professors explicitly argue that animated Hollywood films promote White privilege and racial hierarchies, citing examples from Disney’s The Lion King through more recent superhero fare like Into the Spider-Verse to illustrate how even progressive-seeming narratives can still revolve around White privilege. The professors maintain that recognizing these patterns is a first step toward creating children’s media that does not quietly reproduce the same hierarchies it claims to transcend.
Public backlash and the politics of “woke” criticism
The professors’ conclusions have sparked a swift backlash from commentators who see the study as an overreach, or as part of a broader trend of politicizing every corner of popular culture. Critics on social media and in opinion columns have mocked the idea that The Lion King and similar films are vehicles for White privilege, framing the analysis as an example of “woke” academics projecting ideology onto innocent stories. Some have argued that reading racial politics into animal fables or superhero adventures strips away the joy that made these films cultural touchstones in the first place.
Coverage of the controversy notes that for many adults, The Lion King and other big-budget animated films are cherished precisely because they seemed to offer an escape from real-world conflicts. The professors counter that this sense of escape is itself shaped by privilege, since not all viewers can ignore the racial coding embedded in stories about lions, mermaids, or superheroes, a tension highlighted in reporting on how Lion King andg animated films are received. The clash between those who see critical analysis as necessary and those who see it as joyless policing has turned a scholarly paper into a flashpoint in the culture wars.
What this debate means for parents, teachers, and studios
For parents and teachers, the professors’ claims raise practical questions about how to handle films that are both beloved and, in this reading, implicated in teaching White privilege. Some educators see the controversy as an opportunity to use familiar movies as starting points for age-appropriate conversations about fairness, power, and representation, rather than banning them outright. Others worry that framing every screening as a lesson risks turning shared entertainment into a minefield, especially in classrooms already under pressure over how they address race.
For studios like Disney, the debate underscores the stakes of decisions about casting, story structure, and which cultures are centered or sidelined. The company has invested heavily in more diverse stories and characters in recent years, yet the professors’ analysis suggests that deeper narrative patterns still tilt toward White-coded norms. Earlier scholarship on how the Disney brand and Pixar shape children’s understanding of race, combined with the new focus on White privilege in The Lion King and other animated films, signals that future releases will be scrutinized not only for who appears on screen, but for how their worlds are built and whose experiences are treated as the default.
More from Decluttering Mom:
