One
of the most renowned poet playwright and actors was William
Shakespeare, who is presented as possibly the best-selling fiction
author of all time. From comedy to tragedy, Shakespeare never failed
to entertain. Similarly, Walt Disney was also one of our most famous
presenter of the arts. With all the magic and imagination that Disney
puts into his label, few realize he also procured one of the most
loved remixes by children and families .
The
Original text, William Shakespeare's Hamlet,
communicates a tragic hero’s story of revenge. The purpose of this
work was to bring entertainment to an audience that idolized stories
of vengeance and self-realization. However, the play actually
presented more inaction than action, which was displayed through
Hamlet’s conflicting emotions and over-dramatic brooding.
Walt
Disney’s well known movie, The
Lion King,
was a form of inspiration taken from Shakespeare's very own story,
Hamlet.
This updated remix presented its own form of the story in a more
child-friendly manner for an audience who did not popularize tales of
revenge but rather helping the people and saving homelands. Like
Hamlet, the Lion King’s main character, Simba, struggles with the
difficulty of acting in the face of his more powerful uncle’s
betrayal, as well as internalized guilt over the death of the father
he idolized. The method used to represent some of these themes was to
include inner dialogue and dramatized conflicts with other characters
to influence the main character’s actions. For Hamlet, his love
interest, Ophelia, represents the temptation of inaction. Hamlet is
also confronted by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, comic relief
characters who are sent to spy on and persuade Hamlet out of his
revenge-seeking grief. In The
Lion King,
Simba’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dramatized by everyone’s
favorite duo, Timon and Pumba, though these two take on this role
much more heavily than Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. This
demonstrates how changes in something as abstract as the story’s
tone can result in total recontextualizing of some characters.
The
central conflict in both stories is the same-- to be, or not to be;
to go back to the Pridelands, or to say Hakuna
Matata-- to
act in the face of injustice, or not. However, the differences in
tone make the acting itself mean dramatically different things in
each story, and thus the final thematic push of each story is very,
very different as well. However, Hamlet
is a tragedy. Though Hamlet decides to act, the theme the story ends
on is that his revenge is as poisonous to himself and what he loves
as it is to what he hates. By contrast, Simba becomes the new king,
immediately brings life back to the kingdom, and is celebrated as
having done the right thing. The theme of The
Lion King,
then, falls much more favorably on the actions of its protagonist.
Again, these drastic differences can all be traced to a change in
tone, the defining difference between the original text ant the new,
tonally different remix.
