Saturday, May 11, 2013

The Lion King Situation

During high school, a lot of my friends really enjoyed Disney movies, so much that they bedecked  themselves with Pluto sweatshirts, Mickey Mouse letter jackets, and other outrageous Disney apparel, spontaneously broke out in songs from their favorite Disney movies, and oftentimes talked about one day being a princess or such at Disneyworld. I don't know how I've turned out as normal as I have with such heavy theatrical influence.

I've been pretty apathetic to Disney movies throughout my entire life and hadn't been one of the millions to see Lion King in the theater. Instead, I was honing my humor in the theater on Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly's Gold, Dumb and Dumber, and Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult, and other highly influential, high-brow movies. My friends, however were obsessed with the Lion King, raving how wonderful the songs were, how inspirational the story line was, how dreamy it was to have Jonathan Taylor Thomas (JTT) as the voice for Simba, blah, blah, blah. In sum: the highest grossing film of 1994. It was that good!

And so, at one fateful sleepover at my friend Sarah's house, we watched it soon after it was released on video (VHS if you must know). And: it was awful. Just awful. Excruciating*, really. The movie did not live up to the months of hype and adoration I had been exposed to. It was weird to hear JTT as a lion pup, the hienas were annoying, and the plot, just deplorable. It's quite a veritable sociological experiment when expectations created by cultural influence aren't met.

Because of this, I've met a lot of culturally popular tends with trepidation. It's really hard for me to jump on the pop culture bandwagon because I'm concerned that I'm going to be incredibly frustrated by what my culture is telling me I should appreciate, enjoy. Maybe it's because my tastes don't fit into pop culture and these situations remind me of that, or maybe my tastes are a little more high-brow, cultured than the average person, or maybe I'm just a little hipster and naturally want to avoid pop culture. Whatever the reason for my trepidation, whenever I catch wind of something new, I call my skepticism and hesitation the "Lion King Situation."

 Lion King Situations have permeated my life through a few cultural odds and ends:
-Lion King
-Sketcher Shoes
-Abercrombie & Fitch
-Harry Potter
-Paper plate aerobics
-New York City
-Evite
-The entire state of California
-"YOLO"
-Colored pants
-Sriracha sauce


I can't predict when a Lion King Situation will come or whether I'll end up accepting the trend or eschewing it, but at the very least, Lion King Situations make quite the menagerie of a list and good stories.

*Even more excruciating was seeing the influence of this movie on the tourism industry in Tanzania. If you look Western, street vendors will greet you with "Hakuna matata, rafiki!" This is unfortunate.

Up next: Traveler's Serendipity

No comments: